Critics of affluent excess during the boom years of the mid-1950s tended sometimes to expect human beings to deny themselves material pleasures. Yet a culture in which rising numbers of people have the luxury of fairly secure food and shelter—increasingly the case in the United States in the post-World War II era—is one in which hopes for still greater comforts will expand. The majority of Americans, their basic needs more secure, developed ever-larger expectations about life. Some, concentrating on material gain, came to crave quick personal gratification. Others, however, began to imagine a
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