What a joy it would be to show the America of 2015 to Edward T. Chase.

Chase, the author of a 1962 Atlantic essay titled “Money Isn’t Everything,” was positively euphoric as he observed the cultural changes of the post-war period. “It is my belief,” he wrote, “that in fact we in the United States are evolving beyond what J.K. Galbraith calls the ‘consumption society’—one that has mastered the problems of production—and are approaching a new order of society, the society of self-realization.” Via the alchemy of mass prosperity combined with mass education, Americans, Chase explained, were losing their narrow-minded focus on material success, and were instead developing an appreciation for culture, conservation, and jobs that provided “self-fulfillment” over financial remuneration.

His evidence: a massive uptick in spending on “culture” (at $5 billion in 1961, an amount that “is all but incredible”), a doubling in how much Americans spent on books between 1955 and 1961 (“an extraordinary development no one predicted a decade ago”), an increase of 29 percent in library-book circulation over a five-year period (“with the emphasis upon serious nonfiction”), a boom in paperback sales (“supermarkets too have become a recognized outlet”), an explosion in the number of museums and in museum attendance (quoting a Metropolitan Museum of Art operator: “a cultural renaissance is occurring in this country, there is no question about it”), a rise in a desire to pursue “intrinsically important work” (“the Peace Corps is a phenomenon that deserves very close scrutiny”), and on and on.