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. |
