Although a great deal has been written about the 1950s, much less attention has been paid to the years immediately following World War II. Yet this era
was a wrenching time for most Americans. There was a sudden shifting of gears in the national life. The depression of the 1930s was expected to recur with the flood of veterans on the job market. Yet it was a time of prosperity and economic growth, although also a time of high nervous tension and social change. It was a skittish and unstable time, much like adolescence. These were the seed years of the sexual revolution, of the civil rights movement, of consumerism, of Communist witchhunts,
of the military industrial complex. In this book George H. Douglas deals with the rise of civil aviation, with split-level suburbia, the Kinsey Report, the new world of consumer products, and numerous other topics. |
| | "… Douglas, a professor of English at the
University of Illnois, paints a vivid portrait of what he views as a year that became 'a gateway to a new era of prosperity and affluence." -- Andrea Lynn, U of Ideas of General Interest, June 1998. |
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