Ours Was the Shining Future

Leonhardt's argument is less nostalgia than diagnosis: postwar American prosperity was never automatic, it was engineered by policy choices — strong unions, progressive taxation, public investment — that were later dismantled by both parties, not just one. The book's most debated move is assigning real blame to the left, arguing that a turn toward identity politics and away from bread-and-butter economic organizing left an opening for the right's deregulatory turn to go largely unchallenged. That thesis has drawn pushback from readers who find it tendentious, but the underlying data work is rigorous enough to survive the argument's partisan edges.