Research Catalog

Title

America in the Fifties / Andrew J. Dunar ; with a foreword by John Robert Greene.

Author

Dunar, Andrew J.

Publication

Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 351 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"The 1950s evoke images of prosperity, suburbia, a smiling President Eisenhower, cars with elaborate tail fins, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and the 'golden age' of television--seemingly a simpler time in which the idealized family life of situation comedies had at least some basis in reality. A closer examination, however, recalls more threatening images: the hysteria of McCarthyism, the shadow of the atomic bomb, war in Korea, the Soviet threat manifested in the launch of Sputnik and the bombast of Nikita Khrushchev, and clashes over the integration of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama, and a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Andrew J. Dunar successfully shows how the issues confronting America in the late twentieth century have roots in the fifties, some apparent at the time, others only in retrospect: civil rights, environmentalism, the counterculture, and 'movements' on behalf of women, Chicanos, and Native Americans. The rise of the 'Beats, ' the continuing development of jazz, the emergence of rock 'n' roll, and the art of Jackson Pollock reveal the decade to be less conformist than commonly portrayed. While the cold war rivalry with the Soviet Union generated the most concern, Dunar skillfully illustrates how the rise of Nasser in Egypt, Castro in Cuba, and Communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, and China signaled new regional challenges to American power."--Page 4 of cover.

Series Statement

America in the twentieth century

Uniform Title

America in the twentieth century.

Alternative Title

• America in the 50s
• America in the Nineteen fifties
• America in the 1950s

Subjects

• United States
• History
• United States > History > 1953-1961
• Nineteen fifties
• 1945-1961
• United States > History > 1945-1953

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Origins : postwar America and the roots of the Fifties -- Fair deal to farewell : the domestic tribulations of Truman's second term -- The Korean War -- Liking Ike : domestic politics in Eisenhower's first term, 1953-1956 -- The uneasy mantle of a major power : foreign policy, 1953-1956 -- People of plenty : the transformation of American society -- Other Americans : the rights and plights of citizens -- The tube and the big screen : television and movies -- The nonconformist fifties : the arts and popular culture during the Cold War -- Foreign policy at the dawn of the Space Age, 1957-1960 -- The end of the Ike age.

Call Number

E813

ISBN

• 0815631030
• 9780815631033
• 0815631286
• 9780815631286

LCCN

2006024107

OCLC

70830936

Author

Dunar, Andrew J.

Title

America in the Fifties / Andrew J. Dunar ; with a foreword by John Robert Greene.

Imprint

Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2006.

Edition

1st ed.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

America in the twentieth century

America in the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Connect to:

Table of contents

Table of contents only

Chronological Term

1945-1961

Other Form:

Online version: Dunar, Andrew J. America in the fifties. 1st ed. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2006 (OCoLC)608092215

Online version: Dunar, Andrew J. America in the fifties. 1st ed. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2006 (OCoLC)608901126

Research Call Number

*R-USLHG E813 .D86 2006