The fifties /

The 1950s were the first televised decade, and much of our imagery about it is cyclical: Lucy and Ricki Ricardo live on in immortal syndication; clips of Joe McCarthy are aired whenever a congressional inquest runs amok; anniversary shows recall the pioneers of the civil-rights movement (Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King); and the decade's movie, music, and political personalities appear on the screen as often as our present stars. In this engaging look at fuzzy-screen images, Halberstam profiles such diverse trendsetters and the social contexts of their successes; each minibiography stands independently. If such figures as SAC commander Curtis LeMay and McDonald's king Ray Kroc share nothing in common, each in his own sphere effected a revolutionary change that belies the perceived placidity of the age and set the framework for the decade to follow. Halberstam tells the stories of the people involved in retail trade, tract housing, the automobile industry, birth control, and presidential politics; he offers vignettes from the cold war, theater, and literature. Linking it all, in primitive but formative ways, was the TV camera. In the role of popular chronicler and scold, Halberstam so paces his chosen, 30-odd public issues (with the conspicuous exception of the interstate-highway program) that interest never flags. A potential chart-topper that shows that Halberstam refuses to rest on the laurels of The Best and the Brightest. (Reviewed May 15, 1993)0679415599Gilbert Taylor

The Fifties were more than just a mid-point decade in a century; they were to be the crucible in which the rest of the 20th century was forged. Halberstam ( The Next Century , LJ 1/92) here touches every thread in the warp and woof of the national fabric. This is the true drama of history: President Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur, the Eisenhower years, Senator Joe McCarthy's red-baiting, the early U.S. involvement in Indochina, the H-bomb, the purging of atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Supreme Court ordering the integration of schools, troops in Little Rock to enforce it, the Montgomery bus boycott, the rise of Martin Luther King, Russia's sputnik launch, and Castro's revolutionary Cuba. Halberstam also explores major social and cultural changes--the advent of national television, fast-food restaurants, the flight to the suburbs, huge cars with fins, the phenomenon of Elvis Presley, the contraceptive pill, and much more. A superb book; recommended for all libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/93.-- Chet Hagan, Berks Cty. P.L. System, Pa. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 8 Up-Based on Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstam's book, this excellent social history provides a personal look at life in the 1950's in the United States. Rich and clear narration that connects the images is provided primarily by Edward Herrmann and sporadically by reporter Halberstam himself. Black-and-white and color newsreels, pertinent television news footage, clear graphics, period music, representative family photos, home movies and major motion picture film clips from the decade are carefully interwoven. This is generally a realistic historical exposition, not a romantic retrospective. The first video begins with the death of FDR and Truman's ending of the war after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fears about Russian communism, atomic warfare, alien invasions and keeping life safe for (white) Americans were counterbalanced with the dream of owning one's own home, helping create the baby boom, allowing the color line to be broken in sports, and acquiring a TV. Selling the American Way is a humorous look at the new consumerist lifestyle. Drive-in churches, TV dinners, motivational research, the beginnings of TV ads, and fascination with the Yankee Clipper took our attention away from the United Fruit Company's exploitation of Guatemala, the beginning of American involvement in Vietnam, and other international issues. The third video covers the dominance of traditional life and women's role in it. Credit cards were introduced, fashion magazines flourished, "Dear Abbey" made its debut, big corporations got bigger, etc. A Burning Desire looks at public repression and private liberties. Here Halberstam chronicles the rise of Hugh Heffner, the glamour of Marilyn Monroe, America's fascination with the Kinsey Report and Margaret Sanger's push for artificial birth control. The fifth segment looks at popular art and artists such as Elvis, B.B. King, 45rpm records, Dizzy Gillespie, Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac, Beatniks, et al. The final part states that memories of the 50's are of pleasing white experiences, not of blacks beginning the fight for civil rights and the massive migration from the south to Detroit and Chicago to escape southern discrimination. Southern racism became a national story when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, Medgar Edgars was shot, Martin Luther King, Jr. began preaching and Little Rock (Arkansas) High School was integrated. A must purchase for school libraries for group or individual use.-Scott Johnson, Meridian Community College, MS (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, and The Reckoning, Halberstam proved that he can master intimidating subjects with aplomb--and in this massive tome on a convulsive decade in American life, he meets with equal success. Such a sprawling panorama can't be depicted coherently without selective use of material, and some of Halberstam's omissions are open to question. While rightly lingering over McCarthyism and the development of the atomic bomb, he skims over Communism's advances in Eastern Europe and China in the late 40's, leaving an inadequate sense of why Americans yielded so readily to national-security hysteria during the period. Halberstam also fails to explain fully America's role in reviving the postwar economies of Japan and Western Europe. And why is there nothing on the advances that put air travel in reach of the average American? Nevertheless, Halberstam keeps his narrative tightly focused by concentrating on the era's human instruments of change, including some famous (Eisenhower, Elvis, Brando, Kerouac, Milton Berle, et al.) and others more obscure (Kemmons Wilson and Dick and Mac McDonald, founders of, respectively, Holiday Inn and McDonald's). In this often ``mean time'' of redbaiting, change still managed to burst out, with the invention of the Pill, the moves by Japan and Germany to undercut GM's preeminence in the auto industry, and the assault on legalized segregation. Halberstam finds at the heart of this decade of social, political, and economic innovation a deep split between an acceptance of change and a yearning for earlier and simpler times, and he examines thoroughly how TV altered various aspects of American life--its recreation habits, its advertising, and, inevitably, its politics, through the medium's coverage of the Little Rock crisis and the JFK-Nixon debates. Compulsively readable, with familiar events and people grown fresh in the telling. (Thirty-two pages of photographs--not seen) (First Serial to American Heritage)