Between 1940 and 1965, New York City witnessed a period of intellectual ferment and artistic creation unsurpassed in the history of any modern city. It was during these years that New York became known as the global metropolis of the twentieth century, as Paris had been the city of the nineteenth. As early as the turn of the century, the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan’s rising skyline had proclaimed the city’s importance, but not until the decades after 1939 did New York attain the cultural influence to match its political and economic stature.