God's Country: America in the Fifties

Often remembered nostalgically as a happy, simpler time, the 1950s were in fact an ""exciting, paradoxical and seminal age'' that gave rise to the Cold War, TV, the youth culture, space travel, and other aspects of today's society, notes Oakley, professor of American history in North Carolina. Based on secondary sources, his popular history of the period is vivid and clear-eyed, if sometimes so bloated with factsTruman's favorite foods, price ranges of carsas to try the reader's patience. There are few original insights, but readers seeking a detailed and balanced narrative of the decade's events (the Red Scare, the economic boom, the rise of suburbia, the Beats, etc.) and people (including the contemporary views on Truman and Eisenhower) will find this appealing. (May 26)