Pt. I. The World War and American power -- 1. American politics from Roosevelt to Truman -- 2. 1940s : the cultural legacy of World War Two -- Pt. II. The Cold War and American culture -- 3. American politics from Truman to Eisenhower -- 4. Alienation and affluence in the 1950s -- Pt. III. War in Vietnam and revolution in the streets -- 5. Kennedy, Johnson and the crisis of American liberalism -- 6. The imaginative crisis of the 1960s -- Pt. IV. The ambiguous legacy of the sixties -- 7. American politics from Nixon to Carter -- 8. The clash of two countercultures -- Pt. V. From the Cold War to globalization -- 9. American politics from Reagan to Clinton -- 10. From the global village to bowling alone -- Pt. VI. America after September 11, 2001 -- 11. George W. Bush and the trials of the American conservatism -- 12. Hard facts and millennial fictions