Present Books During The Fifties
| Original Title: | The Fifties |
| ISBN: | 0679415599 (ISBN13: 9780679415596) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1157 |
David Halberstam
Hardcover | Pages: 800 pages Rating: 4.24 | 5121 Users | 443 Reviews

Define About Books The Fifties
| Title | : | The Fifties |
| Author | : | David Halberstam |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 800 pages |
| Published | : | June 1st 1993 by Villard/Random House (NY) (first published 1993) |
| Categories | : | History. Nonfiction. North American Hi.... American History. Politics |
Chronicle As Books The Fifties
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and " Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill.A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "From the Trade Paperback edition."
Rating About Books The Fifties
Ratings: 4.24 From 5121 Users | 443 ReviewsWeigh Up About Books The Fifties
So David Halberstam, a winner of The Norman Mailer Prize and the Pulitzer prize, was unable to keep from writing historical tomes without filling them with his own, subjective views on the world. That tells me something about those prizes, that's for certain.According to Halberstam, the movies of the fifties can be summed up in Brando's performance of A Streetcar Named Desire and James Dean's performance in Rebel Without a Cause. Considering the wide range of movies produced in that era thisThe 1950s is a seminal decade in the history of our nation. Some of the things that people believe about it are true, but by no means all. It was fun to read David Halberstam's book The Fifties, and it brought back a flood of memories. When I look back on the decade, what I remember most was my fear of thermonuclear war, which looked like a distinct possibility after Sputnik was launched in 1957 and Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 aircraft were downed by the Russians in 1959. I was in my middle
I seriously loved this book. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with having come of age in the fifties, but I found Halberstam's narrative to fulfill that secret desire that most of us have to be flies on the wall in the inner sanctums of government and power when and where the decisions are made that affect the course of history. He really does a good job of shining a microscope on all the major events, both cultural and political, that in many ways set the tone of my life and the life of

Halverstam, prolific and erudite, wrote a serious book coupled with a popular culture book in series through twenty-two volumes. The Fifties was his pop book published in '93 in between The Next Century and October, 1964. The Fifties, given its subtext, doesn't require the fiery drive or the coruscating words of his power / politics books, and instead takes us through an amble across a decade. Halberstam's goal is to illuminate an era that he grew up in, one where the world changed from bucolic
at some point deep within the book, the author questions as to why the decade of the 50s is now viewed as so noble and innocent to which he concludes (paraphrasing): "it's not that it actually WAS better or more noble, rather, all references to the 50s are always about its noble and innocent aspects" ... so too I came to find this book, for while it's cover (the up-close shot of a 50s auto tailfin) promised a look at the cultural and societal icons of the decade, it takes a much deeper look ...
Halberstam's epic masterpiece is a colossal historic narrative of the 50's that combines his usual incisive social commentary with sharp insight, weaving together seamlessly throughout. Always lively and analytical, The Fifties is arranged so well chronologically that it has a cinematic feel to it. It is easy for the reader to visualize the activity in each of the chapters - and it becomes addictive, compulsive reading after a short while. The main, or overarching theme, of the book that he
Everything I've ever read by David Halberstam has been rewarding and everything, except his early and probably most important book, The Best and the Brightest, has been a sheer pleasure. The Best and the Brightest reads most like an academic history. His other history books are more popular in their style, flowing like collections of short stories on a single theme.The Fifties interested me because that was Dad's decade. He was in his thirties, done with school, back from Europe with a


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