Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.

I'm Peter Robinson.

A graduate of Yale, Amity Shlaze is the author of four New York Times best A

Bade Shlays is the author of four New York Times bestsellers,

including Coolidge, her splendid biography of the 30th President,

and the forgotten man, a new history of the Great Depression. Her newest volume, Great Society,

a new history. Amity, welcome.

Thank you, Peter.

By the way, I should note that you are the author of four New York Times bestsellers

and the mother of four children.

At some point, we may get around to asking how on earth you pull off that act. We're recording today on the campus of

Stanford University. This June the class of 2020 will graduate more than 50 years

after the enactment of the Great Society, more than half a century after the era

of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Richard Millhouse Nixon. Briefly right now, we'll vote the whole show to the Great Society, but briefly, what do current college students need to grasp about the great society?

The young people then were like you, they were idealistic.

They saw tremendous wealth in the United States and said,

why can't we just do the little bit that's left?

Why can't we make the last 10th or 1th of America happy?

Why can't it all be fair? It's an intensely idealistic period. The Great Society commenced in the early 60s and that we have as well.

Secondly, an interest in flirtation with or affection for socialism.

All right. Great society. There were not many self-described socialists in the country in the early 1960s.

Still, many Americans ached to make American society over,

...