Bad Old Days: The Myth of the 1950s

ISBN-13: 9781412855082 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 215 str.

Alan J. Levine

Opis

For many, the 1950s are the -bad old days.- This was the time of the Cold War, McCarthyism, racial segregation, self-satisfied prosperity, and empty materialism. These failings are coupled with ignoring poverty and other social problems, complacency, conformity, the suppression of women, and puritanical attitudes toward sex. In all, the conventional wisdom sees the decade as bland and boring. -Bad Old Days- shows that this view of the 1950s stands in opposition to the reality of the decade. Far from being the dismal prelude to a glorious period of progress, this was an era of unprecedented progress and prosperity.

Spis treści

1 The Myth and the Problem, 2 The Post-World War II Era: Its Characteristics, Achievements, and Problems, 3 Race: The Great American Obsession, 4. The Myth of McCarthyism, 5 Prosperity and Poverty in the Postwar Era, 6 Men and Women, 7 Conformity, the “Silent Generation,” Liberalism, and Social Criticism, 8 Postwar Culture, 9 Seeds of Disintegration?, 10 Post-Sputnik “Declinism”, 11 Those Suburbs—Suburbia, Disturbia, and the Slurbs, 12 Cars: Getting Around, Gorp, and the “Vaginal Look”, 13 The Economy and Industry in the Postwar Era, Index

O autorze

Levine, Alan