Howard Ahmanson’s life provides an “ideal lens through which to view some of the most momentous developments in America following the war,” according to historian Robert Bruegmann, who reviewed Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream for the Wall Street Journal. In a succinct summary of the narrative and the main ideas, Bruegmann notes that “seen from the vantage of 2013, the 1950s in Los Angeles look to have been something of a golden age in which the economy boomed, real income rose, institutions flourished, business and government cooperated, and citizens respected both.” “The implications to be drawn from Mr. Abrahamson’s narrative about the value of both private initiative and government regulation and of consensus and compromise are likely to be frustrating to ideologues on the right and the left. But the book provides a compelling account of one era in which the ‘managed economy’ seemed to work out pretty well for almost everyone.”
