THERE NEVER WAS A country more fabulous than America,” wrote the British historian Robert Payne after visiting America in the winter of 1948–49. “She sits bestride the world like a Colossus; no other power at any time in the world’s history has possessed so varied or so great an influence on other nations ... Half of the wealth of the world, more than half of the productivity, nearly two-thirds of the world machines are concentrated in American hands; the rest of the world lies in the shadow of American industry ...”
