In February 1941, as the United States entered the Second World War, the press magnate Henry Luce proclaimed the birth of 'the American century', which he foresaw as a period in which free enterprise would triumph in a post-war world regulated in accordance with America's wishes: the American Dream. The American Half Century brings together distinguished political and cultural commentators such as bell hooks, Manning Marable, Todd Gitlin and Noam Chomsky, to consider the extent to which Luce's imperfect vision of a global American hegemony - America's twentieth-century 'manifest destiny' at home and abroad - was subverted by the cultural and political upheavals in the years following the Second World War. In an invigorating collection of essays - on race, gender, popular culture, the politics of resistance and oppression - the contributors trace the patterns of domestic opposition and dissent that have mirrored the growth of America's role in the 'new world order'. In doing so they offer a fresh perspective on postwar cultural history in the United States.