In the book’s epilogue, Cohen cites the nation’s reluctance—one that nearly qualifies as selfishness—to provide generous welfare benefits and universal health care as evidence that Americans won’t give others what they call “something for nothing.”
She begins to offer broad policy considerations, such as affordable housing in well-off suburbs and equalized school spending.
Last Friday she returned to these issues, arguing that the belief in “what’s best for me is what’s best for America” needs to change.
Cohen told The Crimson of her apprehension that undergraduates studying the post-war era, and particularly the 1950s, will over-idealize the period.
Her job is “getting students to recognize that it is more complicated than that.”
—Staff writer Lisa M. Puskarcik can be reached at puskarc@fas.harvard.edu.