Toward the end of World War II, the three democracies faced a common choice: return to the civic order of prewar normalcy or embark instead on a path of progressive transformation. Offering a fresh appraisal, Isser Woloch examines three progressive postwar manifestos that reveal a common agenda in the three nations. The issues at stake included "full employment" via economic planning; price controls; the roles of trade unions; expansion of social security; national health care; public housing; and educational reform. Woloch details the progressive reforms' roots in the interwar decades, their development during wartime, the struggles to enact them in the early postwar years, and the mixed outcomes in each country.