James Patterson's contribution to the Oxford History of the United States runs from Nixon's resignation in August 1974 to the disputed election of 2000. He begins with the jeremiads of the mid-1970s, an age of limits, conflict and decline, and with a public grown suspicious of every authority, then follows stagflation, the rise of the religious right, Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton alongside changes in family life, sexual mores, immigration, computing and the media. Patterson concedes much that went wrong, above all sharply rising income inequality, persistent racial injustice and wretched inner-city schools. His argument is nonetheless that American life improved in manifold ways across the quarter century, in affluence, environmental quality, tolerance and expanded rights, and that the culture wars were less profound and less implacable than partisans and the press made them appear. He explains too why he abandoned a drafted epilogue on September 11.