Developments in the United States profoundly affect the lives of the greater part of the world's population. It is not only the impact of America's military and strategic power. American films and television, American consumer goods, American cultural values, lifestyle and economic expectations, now permeate the existence of millions of human beings who will never set foot in America itself. To understand the world we live in we need to come to terms with this overwhelming economic dynamo; and for that, we must first understand its history. How did the United States become the twentieth century's dominant economy? What is special about the land and people of America, and the American way of capitalism, that favored such a rapid climb to wealth and power? And, as the old postwar certainties begin to crumble, as the communist world dissolves in crisis, as cracks appear in American economic confidence, and as the new economic powers of Japan and a united Europe begin to jostle for their own place in the sun, is the climax of American capitalism already over? - Back cover.