Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download American Culture in the 1950s PDF full book. Access full book title American Culture in the 1950s by Martin Halliwell. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Martin Halliwell Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 0748628908 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 336
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: Martin Halliwell Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 0748628908 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 336
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: Steven Belletto Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108307817 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
American Literature in Transition, 1950–1960 explores the under-recognized complexity and variety of 1950s American literature by focalizing discussions through a series of keywords and formats that encourage readers to draw fresh connections among literary form and concepts, institutions, cultures, and social phenomena important to the decade. The first section draws attention to the relationship between literature and cultural phenomena that were new to the 1950s. The second section demonstrates the range of subject positions important in the 1950s, but still not visible in many accounts of the era. The third section explores key literary schools or movements associated with the decade, and explains how and why they developed at this particular cultural moment. The final section focuses on specific forms or genres that grew to special prominence during the 1950s. Taken together, the chapters in the four sections not only encourage us to rethink familiar texts and figures in new lights, but they also propose new archives for future study of the decade.
Author: Richard Aquila Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1442269375 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
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.
Author: Herman Wouk Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1951. ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 512
Book Description
Each decade new readers discover the characters and curious activities aboard the U.S.S. "Caine in this classic tale of pathos, humor, and scope.
Author: Robin Talley Publisher: Harlequin ISBN: 1488095272 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 424
Book Description
“Suspenseful parallel lesbian love stories deftly illuminate important events in LGBTQ history” in the New York Times–bestselling author’s YA novel (Kirkus Reviews). In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real. Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires, and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity. In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times–bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.
Author: Melanie Crowder Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 052551676X Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
*"Deserves a standing ovation." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *" This is a terrific and realistic piece of historical fiction that is perfect for theater lovers and historical fiction fans." --SLC (starred review) *"The peppy first-person narrative keeps the story zipping along, and adroitly placed period details make the setting come alive in this bighearted, exuberant novel." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) An eighteen-year-old aspiring actress trades in starry Nebraska skies for the bright lights of 1950s Broadway in this show-stopping novel from award-winning author Melanie Crowder. Mazie has always longed to be on Broadway. But growing up in her small Nebraska town, that always seemed like an impossible dream. So when an opportunity presents itself to spend six weeks auditioning, Mazie jumps at the chance, leaving behind everything--and everyone--she's ever known. New York City is a shock to the senses: thrilling, but lonely. Auditions are brutal. Mazie's homesick and she misses the boyfriend whose heart she broke when she left. Nothing is as she expected. With money running out, and faced with too many rejections to count, Mazie is more determined than ever to land a role. But when she discovers that booking a job might mean losing sight of herself, everything Mazie always thought she wanted is called into question. Mazie is the story of a girl caught between two lives--and two loves--as she navigates who she is, what matters most, and the cost of following her dream. Praise for Mazie: "Entertaining and heartfelt."-- Booklist "Mazie’s authenticity makes this novel stand out. Recommended for all collections, especially where theater is popular."– School Library Journal
Author: William Darby Publisher: Popular Press ISBN: 9780879723903 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 412
Book Description
William Darby gives us a comprehensive and (mostly) sympathetic reading of over fifty novels and a few movies from the 1950s. He examines titles such as Mandingo, The Invisible Man, I the Jury, Catcher in the Rye, Battle Cry, The Caine Mutiny, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, The Manchurian Candidate, Hawaii, The Bramble Bush, Peyton Place, Ten North Frederick, A Stone for Danny Fisher, The Bad Seed, Not as a Stranger, The Blackboard Jungle, From Here to Eternity, and Compulsion.
Author: Fiona Davis Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101985003 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
Enter the lush world of 1950s New York City, where a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors live side by side in the glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success in this debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue. “Rich both in twists and period detail, this tale of big-city ambition is impossible to put down.”—People When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't belong—a notion the models do nothing to disabuse. Yet when Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she's introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin that's used there, the startling sounds of bebop, and even the possibility of romance. Over half a century later, the Barbizon's gone condo and most of its long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of Darby's involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid back in 1952 haunt the halls of the building as surely as the melancholy music that floats from the elderly woman's rent-controlled apartment. It's a combination too intoxicating for journalist Rose Lewin, Darby's upstairs neighbor, to resist—not to mention the perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life. Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.
Author: James Gilbert Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226293246 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
While the 1950s have been popularly portrayed-on television and in the movies and literature-as a conformist and conservative age, the decade is better understood as a revolutionary time for politics, economy, mass media, and family life. Magazines, films, newspapers, and television of the day scrutinized every aspect of this changing society, paying special attention to the lifestyles of the middle-class men and their families who were moving to the suburbs newly springing up outside American cities. Much of this attention focused on issues of masculinity, both to enforce accepted ideas and to understand serious departures from the norm. Neither a period of "male crisis" nor yet a time of free experimentation, the decade was marked by contradiction and a wide spectrum of role models. This was, in short, the age of Tennessee Williams as well as John Wayne. In Men in the Middle, James Gilbert uncovers a fascinating and extensive body of literature that confronts the problems and possibilities of expressing masculinity in the 1950s. Drawing on the biographies of men who explored manhood either in their writings or in their public personas, Gilbert examines the stories of several of the most important figures of the day-revivalist Billy Graham, playwright Tennessee Williams, sociologist David Riesman, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, Playboy literary editor Auguste Comte Spectorsky, and TV-sitcom dad Ozzie Nelson-and allows us to see beyond the inherited stereotypes of the time. Each of these stories, in Gilbert's hands, adds crucial dimensions to our understanding of masculinity the 1950s. No longer will this era be seen solely in terms of the conformist man in the gray flannel suit or the Marlboro Man.
Author: Martin Halliwell
Author: Martin Halliwell
Author: Steven Belletto
Author: Richard Aquila
Author: Herman Wouk
Author: Robin Talley
Author: Various
Author: Melanie Crowder
Author: William Darby
Author: Fiona Davis
Author: James Gilbert