num_pages: 264
description: In the aftermath of World War II the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the countrys traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment postwar Americans looked to the countrys secular liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral visionone rooted in the Protestant values of the founders.
language: English
title: The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief
publisher: Basic Books