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Author: The New Yorker Magazine
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 786
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Book Description
This engrossing anthology assembles classic New Yorker pieces from a complex era enshrined in the popular imagination as the decade of poodle skirts and Cold War paranoia—featuring contributions from Philip Roth, John Updike, Nadine Gordimer, and Adrienne Rich, along with fresh analysis of the 1950s by some of today’s finest writers. The New Yorker was there in real time, chronicling the tensions and innovations that lay beneath the era’s placid surface. In this thrilling volume, classic works of reportage, criticism, and fiction are complemented by new contributions from the magazine’s present all-star lineup of writers. The magazine’s commitment to overseas reporting flourished in the 1950s, leading to important dispatches from East Berlin, the Gaza Strip, and Cuba during the rise of Castro. Closer to home, the fight to break barriers and establish a new American identity led to both illuminating coverage, as in a portrait of Thurgood Marshall at an NAACP meeting in Atlanta, and trenchant commentary, as in E. B. White’s blistering critique of Senator Joe McCarthy. The arts scene is recalled in critical writing rarely reprinted, including Wolcott Gibbs on My Fair Lady, Anthony West on Invisible Man, and Philip Hamburger on Candid Camera. Also featured are great early works from Philip Roth and Nadine Gordimer, as well as startling poems by Theodore Roethke and Anne Sexton, among others. Completing the panoply are insightful and entertaining new pieces by present-day New Yorker contributors examining the 1950s through contemporary eyes. The result is a vital portrait of American culture as only one magazine in the world could do it. Including contributions by Elizabeth Bishop • Truman Capote • John Cheever • Roald Dahl • Janet Flanner • Nadine Gordimer • A. J. Liebling • Dwight Macdonald • Joseph Mitchell • Marianne Moore • Vladimir Nabokov • Sylvia Plath • V. S. Pritchett • Adrienne Rich • Lillian Ross • Philip Roth • Anne Sexton • James Thurber • John Updike • Eudora Welty • E. B. White • Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Jonathan Franzen • Malcolm Gladwell • Adam Gopnik • Elizabeth Kolbert • Jill Lepore • Rebecca Mead • Paul Muldoon • Evan Osnos • David Remnick Praise for The 50s “Superb: a gift that keeps on giving.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[A] magnificent anthology.”—Literary Review
Author: The New Yorker Magazine
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 786
Get Book
Book Description
This engrossing anthology assembles classic New Yorker pieces from a complex era enshrined in the popular imagination as the decade of poodle skirts and Cold War paranoia—featuring contributions from Philip Roth, John Updike, Nadine Gordimer, and Adrienne Rich, along with fresh analysis of the 1950s by some of today’s finest writers. The New Yorker was there in real time, chronicling the tensions and innovations that lay beneath the era’s placid surface. In this thrilling volume, classic works of reportage, criticism, and fiction are complemented by new contributions from the magazine’s present all-star lineup of writers. The magazine’s commitment to overseas reporting flourished in the 1950s, leading to important dispatches from East Berlin, the Gaza Strip, and Cuba during the rise of Castro. Closer to home, the fight to break barriers and establish a new American identity led to both illuminating coverage, as in a portrait of Thurgood Marshall at an NAACP meeting in Atlanta, and trenchant commentary, as in E. B. White’s blistering critique of Senator Joe McCarthy. The arts scene is recalled in critical writing rarely reprinted, including Wolcott Gibbs on My Fair Lady, Anthony West on Invisible Man, and Philip Hamburger on Candid Camera. Also featured are great early works from Philip Roth and Nadine Gordimer, as well as startling poems by Theodore Roethke and Anne Sexton, among others. Completing the panoply are insightful and entertaining new pieces by present-day New Yorker contributors examining the 1950s through contemporary eyes. The result is a vital portrait of American culture as only one magazine in the world could do it. Including contributions by Elizabeth Bishop • Truman Capote • John Cheever • Roald Dahl • Janet Flanner • Nadine Gordimer • A. J. Liebling • Dwight Macdonald • Joseph Mitchell • Marianne Moore • Vladimir Nabokov • Sylvia Plath • V. S. Pritchett • Adrienne Rich • Lillian Ross • Philip Roth • Anne Sexton • James Thurber • John Updike • Eudora Welty • E. B. White • Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Jonathan Franzen • Malcolm Gladwell • Adam Gopnik • Elizabeth Kolbert • Jill Lepore • Rebecca Mead • Paul Muldoon • Evan Osnos • David Remnick Praise for The 50s “Superb: a gift that keeps on giving.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[A] magnificent anthology.”—Literary Review
Author: Karal Ann Marling
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674735293
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
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.
Author: Darryl Jones
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230337236
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
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.
Author: Abigail McEwen
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
ISBN: 9781941701331
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Radical political shifts that raged throughout Cuba in the 1950s coincided with the development of Cuban geometric abstraction and, notably, the formation of Los Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters). The decade was marked by widespread turmoil and corruption following the 1952 military coup and by rising nationalist sentiments. At the same time, Havana was undergoing rapid urbanization and quickly becoming an international city. Against this vibrant backdrop, artists sought a new visual language in which art, specifically abstract art, could function as political and social practice. Concrete Cuba marks one of the first major presentations outside of Cuba to focus exclusively on the origins of concretism in the country. It includes important works from the late 1940s through the early 1960s by the twelve artists who were at different times associated with the short-lived group: Pedro Álvarez, Wifredo Arcay, Mario Carreño, Salvador Corratgé, Sandú Darié, Luis Martínez Pedro, Alberto Menocal, José M. Mijares, Pedro de Oraá, José Ángel Rosabal, Loló Soldevilla, and Rafael Soriano. Many of the group’s members had traveled widely in the preceding years and corresponded with those at the forefront of European and South American abstract movements. Produced on the occasion of the major exhibition at David Zwirner, Concrete Cuba is the first in-depth catalogue on the subject to be published in English; the show offered a “wonderful taste of a very complicated history,” according to Roberta Smith of The New York Times. With an extensive plate section, which includes works from the exhibition and a selection of important pieces from the permanent collection of Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, this volume provides readers with a rich visual experience of this crucial period in modernism’s history. The catalogue also features an extensively researched illustrated chronology, compiled by Susanna Temkin, which tracks the development of the period artistically and politically from 1939 through 1964. New scholarship by Abigail McEwen offers an interpretative framework for this group of artists, and a deeper understanding of the forces behind the development of this movement. Also included is a conversation between Lucas Zwirner and Pedro de Oraá, one of the central members of Los Diez.
Author: Kathryn Ferry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0747811601
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 109
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Book Description
The 1950s was the first great age of the modern kitchen. Labour-saving appliances, bright colours and the novelty of fitted units moved the kitchen from dankness into light, where it became the domain of the happy housewife and the heart of the home. New space-age material Formica, decorated with fashionable patterns, topped sleek cupboards that contained new classic wares such as Pyrex and 'Homemaker' crockery, and the ingredients for 1950s staples: semolina, coronation chicken and spotted dick. Electricity entered the kitchens of millions, and nowhere in the home was modern technology and modern design more evident. Bold colour, clean lines and stainless steel were keynotes of the decade. This book – a celebration of cooking, eating and living in the 1950s kitchen – is a feast of nostalgia, and a mine of inspiration for anyone wanting to recreate that '50s look in their own home.
Author: Mark Jancovich
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719036231
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
This re-assessment of 1950s American horror films relates them to the cultural debates of the period and to other examples of the horror genre: novels and comics.
Author: Martin Halliwell
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748628908
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
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.
Author: Nancy Hendricks
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 144086442X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
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.
Author: Alan J. Levine
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 141281197X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187
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Book Description
For many, especially those on the political left, the 1950s are the "bad old days." The widely accepted list of what was allegedly wrong with that decade includes the Cold War, McCarthyism, racial segregation, self-satisfied prosperity, and empty materialism. The 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, with commonly accepted people paralyzed with fear of war, Communism, or McCarthyism, or all three. Alan J. Levine, shows that the commonly accepted picture of the 1950s is flawed. It distorts a critical period of American history. That distortion seems to be dictated by an ideological agenda, including an emotional obsession with a sentimentalized version of the 1960s that in turn requires maintaining a particular, misleading view of the post-World War II era that preceded it. Levine argues that a critical view of the 1950s is embedded in an unwillingness to realistically evaluate the evolution of American society since the 1960s. Many--and not only liberals and those further to the left--desperately desire to avoid seeing, or admitting, just how badly many things have gone in the United States since the 1960s. Bad Old Days shows that the conventional 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, the postwar period of the late 1940s and 1950s was an era of unprecedented progress and prosperity. This era was then derailed by catastrophic political and economic misjudgments and a drastic shift in the national ethos that contributed nothing, or less than nothing, to a better world.
Author: Jacqueline Jones
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874137545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
Wedged between two dramatically different extended families, she tries to make sense of the social signifiers that crosscut even this tiny village in New Castle County - differences between blacks and whites, men and women, Presbyterians and Methodists, migrants from Appalachia and migrants from New England, and members of the business class and working class.".
