David Halberstam's "The Fifties" was published in 1993 by Villard Books, a division of Random House. My sister-in-law loaned it to me over a year ago but it took me a while to get around to reading it. I'd pick it up and check the length - 733 pages - and set it back down again. My wariness was unwarranted. I would recommend it without reservation. (There are plenty of reviews on-line.)
Other than music and sports, I've never given much thought to the 50's. There was obviously a war early on but the Korean conflict has never gotten the attention given to the wars of the decades before and after. I was only 4 when it started. Truman was finishing his second term as president and Ike would get 8 years. The book ends with the first Kennedy-Nixon debate.
When someone mentions the 1950's, what other names or events would be familiar to most readers?
I jotted down some names as I was reading - Tom Dewey, Dean Acheson (Truman's Secretary of State), Alger Hiss (perjury trial), the bomb boys - J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, General MacArthur, Joe McCarthy, Senator Estes Kefauver (organized crime hearings), Adlai Stevenson, J. Edgar Hoover, Dulles brothers, Allen (CIA) and John Foster (Ike's Secretary of State), Chief Justice Earl Warren, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Orval Faubus, Gary Powers (U2), Castro - Fidel, not the convertible.
A few other events besides the war included the decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education, United Fruit - South American adventures, and Little Rock.
If you're not into the more serious news, there are sections on GM's dominance and the Beetle, Leavitt houses, EJKorvettes, fast food - the McDonald brothers & Ray Kroc, Holiday Inn - I didn't know it was named after the movie starring Bing Crosby, Lucy - CBS didn't want Ricky, Brando-Williams-Kazan Streetcar, Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, the beat generation, Elvis, Sam Phillips, Alan Freed, Ed Sullivan, family tv sitcoms - the Nelson's etc., Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, Peyton Place, Betty Friedan, the pill, quiz show scandals, Bill Russell, etc.
Halberstam, who died in an auto accident in 2007, wrote over 20 books. The only other that I've read (over 20 years ago) may be his best known, "The Best and the Brightest" (1972). It's about how we got into the Vietnam quagmire. A more recent (2009) treatment of this subject can be found in Gordon Goldstein's "Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam".
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