The American Moment
1 total work
"A valuable contribution to the preservation of historical memory... In nine witty and crisply written chapters, Whitfield carries us from the late 1940s to the early 1960s... For those who lived through the 1950s, the book will bring back painful and perhaps embarrassing memories; for those who did not, it offers a timely reminder of what can happen to a society that demonizes its enemies, uncritically celebrates its own virtues, and insists onintellectual conformity as a test of cultural acceptance."--Paul Boyer, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
"A lively and well-documented account of how the Cold War both produced and was sustained by super-patriotism, intolerance and suspicion, and how these pathologies infected all aspects of American life in the 1950s-entertainment, churches, schools. Older readers will remember and still be amazed; younger ones will find this a readable introduction to a bizarre aspect of the American past."--Foreign Affairs.