An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy

For thirty years after the end of World War Two, the global economy experienced an unprecedented period of stability, growth, and prosperity. And then suddenly, in the early 1970s, everything fell apart. In An Extraordinary Time, Marc Levinson investigates how the 1973 financial disaster marked a radical turning point in global economics – and paved the way for the political and financial troubles of the present. Levinson begins by describing how a generation of visionary policymakers rebuilt the international economy in the wake of the devastation caused by the war, bringing unforeseen affluence to populations from Washington to Berlin, Rio de Janeiro to New Delhi. Then he examines why a series of shocks caused this fragile new system to collapse, giving way to an era of uncertainty and political extremism that we are still grappling with. Above all, he shows that we must understand the economic collapse of the 1970s if we want to overcome the problems of today: the stagnant wages, public anger and political polarisation that define the early twenty-first century all had their origins in the crisis of the post-war economy. Full of vivid anecdotes and rigorous analysis, An Extraordinary Time is an exciting new examination of the last sixty years of global history; by focusing on a pivotal but often forgotten moment in the twentieth-century, Levinson offers a crucial and timely reappraisal of our age.