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Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945–2000 (1995), is a sweeping survey and interpretation of social trends. P. Flora, State, Economy and Society in Western Europe, 1815–1975 , 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1983–7), is also valuable.
    Historians have started to write on post-war reconstruction and the USA’s contribution to it: see D. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction (1992), a vigorous survey which spans the debate between A. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–1951 (1984), and M. J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (Cambridge, 1987). C. Maier, “The two postwar eras and conditions for stability in twentieth century western Europe,” American Historical Review , 86: 2 (April 1981), makes an important comparison. R. Kuisel, Seducing the French: the Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, Calif., 1993) and I. Wall, The United States and the Making of Post-war France, 1945–1954 (Cambridge, 1991), cover the USA’s impact on the country which tried hardest to resist it. R. Wagnleiter, Cocacolonisation and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria (1994), is a rollicking account of the country which arguably resisted it least. For Italy, we have J. Harper, America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945–1948 (Cambridge, 1986); on Greece, there is L. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949 (New York, 1982), and H. Jones, “A New Kind of War”: America’s Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece (New York, 1989). T. Barnes, “ ‘The secret Cold War’: the CIA and American foreign policy in Europe,” Historical Journal , 24/25 (1981/2), covers a different kind of influence. Essays in M. Mazower (ed.), The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century (1997), suggest that Europeans did not need the CIA to teachthem about anti-communism. P. Hennessy and G. Brownfield, “Britain’s Cold War security purge: the origins of positive vetting,” Historical Journal , 25 (1982), pp. 965–73, makes fascinating reading.
    On the boom, the classic account is M. Postan, An Economic History of Western Europe, 1945–1964 (1967). To this should be added P. Armstrong, A. Glyn and J. Harrison, Capitalism since World War II (1984), A. Boltho (ed.), The European Economy: Growth and Crisis (Oxford, 1982), A. Maddison, Phases of Capitalist Development (Oxford, 1982), and A. Shonfield, Modern Capitalism (Oxford, 1965). The winter 1964 issue of Daedalus (“A New Europe?”), contains brilliant analyses of the post-war socio-economic changes in western Europe. A. Sampson, Anatomy of Europe (1968), is a misnamed but highly readable view of the same region. J.-E. Lane, Politics and Society in Western Europe (1994 edn) has a lot of useful information conveyed very accessibly. The origins of European union are covered by E. Haas, The Uniting of Europe (Stanford, Calif., 1958), and more historically—and controversially—by A. Milward et al., The European Rescue of the Nation State (1992).
    For consumerism, no historical study beats the novel by G. Perec (tr. by D. Bellos), Things: A Story of the Sixties (1991), though V. Bogdanor and R. Skidelsky (eds.), The Age of Affluence, 1951–1964 (1970), has some very readable essays. A. Pizzorno, “The individualistic mobilization of Europe,” in Daedalus , 93: 1 (winter 1964) is a remarkable analysis. S. Gundle, “L’americanizzazione del quotidiano: televisione e consumismo nell’Italia degli anni cinquanta,” Quaderni storici , 62 (August 1986), pp. 561–94 opens up the Italian case. S. Weiner, “The consommatrice in Elsa Triolet’s Roses à crédit,” French Cultural Studies , 6 (1995), pp. 123–44, does something similar for France. F. Mort and P. Thompson, “Retailing, commercial culture and masculinity in 1950s Britain,” History Workshop Journal , 38 (1994), is good