Writer Kurt Vonnegut once said that high school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else. Our high school reputations--as leaders or scapegoats, good girls or fast girls, popular athletes or feared delinquents--haunt Americans long into adulthood. "The High School Scene in the Fifties: Voices from West L.A." offers a look at the high school clubs and social pecking order of postwar Los Angeles, when students' social lives were determined by male or female rites of passage, and Jewish or Gentile identities.

Through interviews of adults attending primarily...

With sharp wit and keen insight, Bonnie J. Morris opens new perspectives on the gender and generation gaps on campus, exploring the negative stereotypes that keep many students from taking women's studies courses. Since 1993, the George Washington University women's history professor has traveled the globe with her one-woman play, "Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor," engaging audiences from New Zealand to New York in a frank conversation about the backlash against feminism and women's studies. This book presents scenes from the original play along with reflections on changing views...