Growing up in the 1950s "was golden" remembers Caryn Pace. "My parents wanted me to have everything they couldn't." But ownership wasn't just an American dream. As Marshall Plan aid rebuilt Europe, cars, motorbikes, washing machines, televisions, and refrigerators became affordable for the newly employed.

"It was like a fairy tale," says German autoworker George Stege. "We could buy something and enjoy it. We'd become somebody again." The desperate days of breaking ice at the wash-house or farming with real "horse power" were over, replaced by steady work, rising wages, mass production, and an American-inspired consumer economy. Cheap oil sustained the boom for 30 years, until the Arab oil embargo and the cost of fuel slowed it down.

The People Remember: American cars, motorbikes, vacations, electric kitchens, Levittown, the Marshall Plan, Edith Piaf.