Download or read book America in the 1950s written by Edmund Lindop and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlines the important social, political, economic, cultural, and technological events that happened in the United States from 1950 to 1959.
Download or read book Daily Life in 1950s America written by Nancy Hendricks and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-22 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Placing the era firmly within the American experience, this reference illuminates what daily life was really like in the 1950s, including for people from the "Other America"—those outside the prosperous, white middle class. 'Daily Life in 1950s America shows that the era was anything but uneventful. Apart from revolutionary changes during the decade itself, it was in the 1950s that the seeds took root for the social turmoil of the 1960s and the technological world of today. The book's interdisciplinary format looks at the domestic, economic, intellectual, material, political, recreational, and religious life of average Americans. Readers can look at sections separately according to their interests or classroom assignment, or can read them as an ongoing narrative. By entering the homes of average Americans, far from the corridors of power, we can make sense of the 1950s and see how the headlines of the era translated into their daily lives. This readable and informative book is ideal for anyone interested in this formative decade in American life. Well-researched factual material is presented in an engaging way, along with lively sidebars to humanize each section. It is unique in blending the history, popular culture, and sociology of American daily life, including those of Americans who were not white, middle class, and prosperous.
Download or read book American Culture in the 1950s written by Martin Halliwell and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a stimulating account of the dominant cultural forms of 1950s America: fiction and poetry; theatre and performance; film and television; music and radio; and the visual arts. Through detailed commentary and focused case studies of influential texts and events - from Invisible Man to West Side Story, from Disneyland to the Seattle World's Fair, from Rear Window to The Americans - the book examines the way in which modernism and the cold war offer two frames of reference for understanding the trajectory of postwar culture. The two core aims of this volume are to chart the changing complexion of American culture in the years following World War II and to provide readers with a critical investigation of 'the 1950s'. The book provides an intellectual context for approaching 1950s American culture and considers the historical impact of the decade on recent social and cultural developments.
Download or read book The Age of Eisenhower written by William I. Hitchcock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 895 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling biography: a “complete and powerful assessment” of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency (Booklist, starred review). Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower tells the story of a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s, from McCarthyism and the Korean War through civil rights turmoil and Cold War conflicts. This is a portrait of a skilled leader who, despite his conservative inclinations, found a middle path through the bitter partisanship of his era. At home, Eisenhower affirmed the central elements of the New Deal, such as Social Security; fought the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy; and advanced the agenda of civil rights for African-Americans. Abroad, he ended the Korean War and avoided a new quagmire in Vietnam. Yet he also charted a significant expansion of America’s missile technology and deployed a vast array of covert operations around the world to confront the challenge of communism. As he left office, he cautioned Americans to remain alert to the dangers of a powerful military-industrial complex that could threaten their liberties. Today, presidential historians rank Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, and William Hitchcock’s “rich narrative” shows us why Ike’s stock has risen so high. He was a gifted leader, a decent man of humble origins who used his powers to advance the welfare of all Americans (The Wall Street Journal).
Download or read book Rise of the Spectacular written by John Hannigan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-29 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as ‘the tranquillized decade’, America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of ‘spectacular’ events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the ‘spectacular gaze’, a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.
Download or read book Becoming America s Playground written by Larry D. Gragg and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1950 Las Vegas saw a million tourists. In 1960 it attracted ten million. The city entered the fifties as a regional destination where prosperous postwar Americans could enjoy vices largely forbidden elsewhere, and it emerged in the sixties as a national hotspot, the glitzy resort city that lights up the American West today. Becoming America’s Playground chronicles the vice and the toil that gave Las Vegas its worldwide reputation in those transformative years. Las Vegas’s rise was no happy accident. After World War II, vacationing Americans traveled the country in record numbers, making tourism a top industry in such states as California and Florida. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce saw its chance and developed a plan to capitalize on the town’s burgeoning reputation for leisure. Las Vegas pinned its hopes for the future on Americans’ need for escape. Transforming a vice city financed largely by the mob into a family vacation spot was not easy. Hotel and casino publicists closely monitored media representations of the city and took every opportunity to stage images of good, clean fun for the public—posing even the atomic bomb tests conducted just miles away as an attraction. The racism and sexism common in the rest of the nation in the era prevailed in Las Vegas too. The wild success of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack performances at the Sands Hotel in 1960 demonstrated the city’s slow progress toward equality. Women couldn’t work as dealers in Las Vegas until the 1970s, yet they found more opportunities for well-paying jobs there than many American women could find elsewhere. Gragg shows how a place like the Las Vegas Strip—with its glitz and vast wealth and its wildly public consumption of vice—rose to prominence in the 1950s, a decade of Cold War anxiety and civil rights conflict. Becoming America’s Playground brings this pivotal decade in Las Vegas into sharp focus for the first time.
Download or read book It Came From the 1950s written by Darryl Jones and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eclectic and insightful collection of essays predicated on the hypothesis that popular cultural documents provide unique insights into the concerns, anxieties and desires of their times. 1950s popular culture is analysed by leading scholars and critics such as Christopher Frayling, Mark Jancovich, Kim Newman and David J. Skal.
Download or read book The 1950s Decade in Photos written by Jim Corrigan and published by Enslow Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the important world, national, and cultural developments of the decade 1950-1959.
Download or read book The Feminine Mystique written by Betty Friedan and published by Penguin Classics. This book was released on 2010 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Betty Friedan produced The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she could not have realized how the discovery and debate of her contemporaries' general malaise would shake up society. Victims of a false belief system, these women were following strict social convention by loyally conforming to the pretty image of the magazines, and found themselves forced to seek meaning in their lives only through a family and a home. Friedan's controversial book about these women - and every woman - would ultimately set Second Wave feminism in motion and begin the battle for equality. This groundbreaking and life-changing work remains just as powerful, important and true as it was forty-five years ago, and is essential reading both as a historical document and as a study of women living in a man's world. 'One of the most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century.' New York Times 'Feminism ...... began with the work of a single person: Friedan.' Nicholas Lemann With a new Introduction by Lionel Shriver
Download or read book Let s Rock written by Richard Aquila and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rock & roll was one of the most important cultural developments in post–World War II America, yet its origins are shrouded in myth and legend. Let’s Rock! reclaims the lost history of rock & roll. Based on years of research, as well as interviews with Bo Diddley, Pat Boone, and other rock & roll pioneers, the book offers new information and fresh perspectives about Elvis, the rise of rock & roll, and 1950s America. Rock & roll is intertwined with the rise of a post–World War II youth culture, the emergence of African Americans in society, the growth of consumer culture, technological change, the expansion of mass media, and the rise of a Cold War culture that endorsed traditional values to guard against communism. Richard Aquila’s book demonstrates that early rock & roll was not as rebellious as common wisdom has it. The new sound reflected the conservatism and conformity of the 1950s as much as it did the era’s conflict. Rock & roll supported centrist politics, traditional values, and mainstream attitudes toward race, gender, class, and ethnicity. The musical evidence proves that most teenagers of the 1950s were not that different from their parents and grandparents when it came to basic beliefs, interests, and pastimes. Young and old alike were preoccupied by the same concerns, tensions, and insecurities. Rock & roll continues to permeate the fabric of modern life, and understanding the music’s origins reminds us of the common history we all share. Music lovers who grew up during rock & roll’s early years as well as those who have come to it more recently will find Let’s Rock an exciting historical and musical adventure.
Download or read book The 1950s American Home written by Diane Boucher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern living began with the homes of the 1950s. Casting aside the privations of the Second World War, American architects embraced the must-have mod-cons: they wrapped fitted kitchens around fridges, washing machines, dishwashers and electric ovens, gave televisions pride of place in the living room, and built integrated garages for enormous space-age cars. So why was this change so radical? In what ways did life change for people moving into these swanky new homes, and why has the legacy of the 1950s home endured for so long? Diane Boucher answers these questions and more in this colorful introduction to the homes that embody the golden age of modern design.
Download or read book Mothers and More written by Eugenia Kaledin and published by Boston : Twayne Publishers. This book was released on 1984 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the lives, work, and consciousness of American women during the Eisenhower Era.
Download or read book America in the 1950s for Kids The English Reading Tree written by Keith Goodman and published by English Reading Tree. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introducing: America in the 1950s for KidsThe English Reading Tree Book 54 This book is aimed at children aged eight and over and is part of the English Reading Tree Series (number 54). It is a perfect tool to get young learners into the habit of reading. This nostalgic look at America in the 1950s will take children on a journey through key events, trivia, and culture. From the War in Korea to Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, this is a must read for young and curious minds. America in the 1950s for Kids has been written to entertain and educate. It is packed with information and trivia and has images that bring the topic alive. There is a quiz at the beginning and end to test how much has been learned. What people are saying about the English Reading TreeGoodreads Excellent books that not only improve reading ability but educate. Post Online Very well presented and I particularly enjoyed the quiz at the end. Island EBooks Simple, easy to read and full of interesting facts. What more can a parent ask? Online Review With less emphasis on pictures and more emphasis on reading and developing initial reading vocabulary, this series will capture most kid's imagination and encourage them to read more. The large print makes the reading more inviting. Parental assistance will be needed to help with new words or the meaning.
Download or read book The Fifties written by Douglas T. Miller and published by VNR AG. This book was released on 1977 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the social, cultural, and political history of the United States during the decade of the 1950's.
Download or read book American Cars of the 1950s written by David Newhardt, Robert Genat and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book As Seen on TV written by Karal Ann Marling and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America in the 1950s: the world was not so much a stage as a setpiece for TV, the new national phenomenon. It was a time when how things looked--and how we looked--mattered, a decade of design that comes to vibrant life in As Seen on TV. From the painting-by-numbers fad to the public fascination with the First Lady's apparel to the television sensation of Elvis Presley to the sculptural refinement of the automobile, Marling explores what Americans saw and what they looked for with a gaze newly trained by TV. A study in style, in material culture, in art history at eye level, this book shows us as never before those artful everyday objects that stood for American life in the 1950s, as seen on TV.
Download or read book The 1950s written by William H. Young and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-04-30 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have the 1950s been overly romanticized? Beneath the calm, conformist exterior, new ideas and attitudes were percolating. This was the decade of McCarthyism, Levittowns, and men in gray flannel suits, but the 1950s also saw bold architectural styles, the rise of paperback novels and the Beat writers, Cinema Scope and film noir, television variety shows, the Golden Age of the automobile, subliminal advertising, fast food, Frisbees, and silly putty. Meanwhile, teens attained a more prominent role in American culture with hot rods, rock 'n' roll, preppies and greasers, and—gasp—juvenile delinquency. At the same time, a new technological threat, the atom bomb, lurked beneath the surface of the postwar decade. This volume presents a nuanced look at a surprisingly complex time in American popular culture.
