The Longman Companion to America in the Era of the Two World Wars, 1910-1945

Between 1910 and 1945 the United States transformed itself from being a great power into a superpower. By 1945, with rivals in Europe and Asia shattered by world war, the US dominated global economic, financial and political arrangements and monopolised the atomic bomb. American Depression, New Deal economic and social reforms showed democracy evolving more efficient and humane solutions to economic collapse and mass unemployment than dictatorship could achieve.