Promised Land: How the Rise of the Middle Class Transformed America, 1929-1968

I am not entirely sure what his audience is or what kind of point he was trying to prove, but this book is full of anachronisms, something that a professional historian should know to avoid. Plus, he often failed to address the nebulous, and often race-based, idea of the middle class in general. Professor David Stebenne looks at how the middle class, whatever that means since he spends no time defining it, helped to transform, his word, America between 1929-1968; though there is really no explanation of why those two dates. He mainly focuses on the efforts made by the Federal government to provide relief to those less fortunate, whether it was through Social Security, job programs, or the expansion of the bureaucracy.

I am not sure if Professor Stebenne really had a point other than to score points with the radical left. As he often mentions that many of these programs did little to support women or minorities, and acts like it is a surprise; when someone with a history degree already knows that to be the truth and not really shocked. In the end, this was a confusing wayside that was unnecessary in the larger literature.