Considered America's greatest living playwright, Arthur Miller was born in 1915 and raised in New York City. As a college student during the Great Depression of the 1930s, he grew deeply concerned with the social and economic injustices of capitalism. From the earliest plays he wrote as a student to his latest works in the 1990s, social and political pressures and their effects on human values and morality have remained Miller's central concern. For most critics, his subtlest and most effective exploration of these themes to date occurs in his third major play, Death of a Salesman, long recognized as a classic of American theater.
Postwar prosperity. With the end of World War II in 1945, Americans began a period of unparalleled national prosperity. Gone were both the poverty of the Great Depression and the austerity of the war years, as industrial production, stimulated by the war, found newly invigorated domestic and foreign markets. For the first time in decades, Americans had not only money to spend-an unprecedented $140 billion in savings at war's end-but also items on which to spend it.
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