We often think of the 1950s in America as a pleasant and placid decade, an era of conformity and good cheer, Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, Levittowns and shopping malls, gray flannel suits for men and domesticity for women. To some extent that's exactly the way it was. But under the surface something else was going on. It was also the decade of Emmett Till, the Little Rock Nine, Little Richard, Joseph McCarthy, air-raid drills, and Rebel Without a Cause. It was a far more complex decade than the sepia-toned images of memory might suggest.
Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of communication and history at American University, takes a close look at the Fifties, examining its politics, music, media, and race relations; the Cold War and its contradictions; the rise of suburbia and mass consumption; popular culture and the impact of television; and how the Fifties led to the Sixties. In the classic 1953 film The Wild One, when Marlon Brando’s character is asked "Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" he shoots back, "Whaddya got?" Steinhorn offers the answer in his exploration of this pivotal era.
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