“Alan Petigny has pulled back the camera to project a wider angle on a series of dramatic changes generally associated with the 1960s. From the sexual revolution to the decline of faith, Petigny illustrates the slow evolution of values that permeated American culture from World War II to the 1970s and that shape the world we live in today. In doing so, The Permissive Society emphasizes the crucial role played by psychology and the ‘therapeutic ethos.’ Petigny also reminds us of the often-neglected role of adults – not just youth culture – in driving the changes that produced a cultural revolution.”

      – Brian Balogh, University of Virginia, author of A Government Out of Sight  

“Challenging conventional views of early postwar America as a conservative, conformist, and somnolent era, Alan Petigny finds a ferment of shifting social codes, more tolerant child-rearing practices, evolving religious thought, changing views of women’s roles, and a vogue for self-actualization. Boldly provocative and wide-ranging in coverage – from bingo and blue jeans to Peale, Spock, and Niebuhr – The Permissive Society invites us to look afresh at an era that Petigny finds more complex, and more interesting, than we had thought.”

      – Paul Boyer, author of By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age 

“In the past few years, historians have begun to disassemble the stereotypes of the 1950s, rejecting the descriptions of a uniformly rigid, conservative, and dour society. With Alan Petigny’s astute and surprising book, this demolition project hits with full force. Focusing on liberal religion and the widespread popularity of psychology, counseling, and the ideals of identity-fulfillment, the author describes a very different society in the making, in which permissive behavior rejected the strident calls for Cold War conformism. Contrarian in the very best sense of the term, this remarkable book transforms what we thought we knew about the postwar world, restoring balance, common sense, and dispassionate perspective to the history of the period.”

      – James Gilbert, University of Maryland 

“Alan Petigny audaciously challenges our understanding of the 1950s as a time of staid tradition. With a fine eye for detail, he shows a turbulent decade in which sexual mores, the role of women, ideas of child rearing, conceptions of God and the place of religion in society, and psychological assumptions of self-worth underwent profound, and sometimes destructive, change. This is an important book.”

      – Donald T. Critchlow, Saint Louis University