These works offer some contrasts with the longer-term perspective from the twenty-first century, including Stuart Kallen, The 1950s (San Diego, 2000); Mark Lytle, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York, 2006); Karen Mannus Smith and Tim Koster, The Time It Was (Saddle River, N.J., 2008); and Michael Kazin, America Divided (New York, 2008). These authors generally view the 1950s as less conservative and the 1960s as less radical than their earlier predecessors.
Chapters on the emergence of Boomer families and 1950s home life begin with reference to Dr. Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York, 1946). I believe it is difficult to overestimate Spock’s influence on early postwar child-rearing. Lynn White, Educating Our Daughters (New York, 1950) provides another valuable contemporary insight into the experience of parenthood while Thomas Hine, Populuxe: The Life and Look of America in the 1950s and 1960s (New York, 1986) is a lavishly illustrated view of home life in the era. More recent works on this topic include Stephanie Coontz, Marriage: A History (New York, 2005) and Peter Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York, 2003). Steve Gillon, Boomer Nation (New York, 2004) provides interesting demographic aspects in a work that concentrates on the emergence of the Boomer generation as adults.
Chronicles of the teenage experiences of Boomers and their older siblings cover a wide spectrum of publication dates. Contemporary accounts include James Herlihy, Blue Denim (New York, 1959) and Enid Haupt, The Seventeen Book of Young Living (New York, 1957); more recent treatments include Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York, 1999) and Kate Burns, The American Teenager (Farmington, Mich., 2003).
The impact of school overcrowding, the cold war, and Sputnik on American schools and children was a major feature of contemporary books. These include Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools (Boston, 1953); Rudolf Flesch, Why Johnny Can’t Read (New York, 1955); and the less shrill and more prescriptive James Conant, The American High School Today (New York, 1959). Two excellent perspectives on the impact of Sputnik on the Boomer experiences are Paul Dickson, Sputnik: Shock of the Century (New York, 2000) and Homer Hickam, Jr., The Rocket Boys (New York, 1999). Joel Spring, The Sorting Machine (New York, 1976) chronicles the broader topic of utilizing Boomer children as an asset in cold-war policymaking.
The popular culture of the Boomers is a well-chronicled element of the postwar narrative. Joel Whitburn, The Top Ten Single Charts of Billboard Magazine: 1955–2000 (Menominee, Wisc., 2001) is an invaluable guide to the type of music that Boomers and their older siblings found exciting during the period. Glenn Altschuler, All Shook Up: How Rock and Roll Changed America (New York, 2003) and Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll (New York, 1986) explain the cultural impact of the new music on teenagers. Thomas Doherty, Teenagers and Teenpics (Boston, 1986) and Karal Ann Martling, As Seen on T.V.: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, Mass., 1994) evaluates the impact of film and television on Boomers from the perspective of a later time while Robert Shayon, Television and Our Children (New York, 1951) views the topic from the early days of the postwar culture.
The drama of challenging the Establishment in the civil rights and student activism movements has received substantial coverage. The emotionally wrenching saga of the integration of Little Rock Central High School is chronicled in Melba Banks, Warriors Don’t Cry (New York, 1984). Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer offer a wider lens on the movement in Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1991), which in turn complements Robert Weisbrot’s Freedom Bound (New York, 1990).
The New Left on the college campus receives extensive treatment in James Simon Kunen, The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary (New York, 1968) and Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York, 1987). Conservative culture in confrontation is a major element of John Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties (New York, 1997) and Mary Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties (New York, 1995). An excellent, balanced narrative of student activism is Kenneth Heineman, Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels (Chicago, 2001).
Narratives of the Boomer experience in the crucial year of 1968 include Jules Witcover, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting America in 1968 (New York, 1998) and Mark Kurlansky, 1968—The Year That Rocked the World (New York, 2004). The cultural transition from the end of the sixties to the dawn of a new decade is a major topic of Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (New York, 1969) and Michael Doyle, Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s (New York, 2002).
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below
ABC
Aldrin, Buzz
American Bandstand
Animal House
Apollo XI
Armstrong, Neil
“Atomic Age”
Barbie
Beach Boys
Beatles
Beatlemania
Berlin Wall
Bevel, Reverend James
The Brady Bunch
Camelot
Camelot
CBS
Checker, Chubby
Childhood disease
China
Civil Rights
act
movement
Civil War
Clark, Dick
Cold War
College students
Columbia University
Comic books
Como, Perry
show
Connor, Eugene “Bull”
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cub Scouts
Divorce
rates
Dodd, Jimmy
Dylan, Bob
Eisenhower, Dwight
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
Elementary School Journal
Francke, Max
Freed, Alan
Free Speech Movement
Gender: and discrimination
relationships
roles
G.I. Joe
Girl Scouts
and cookies
Grant Park
Great Depression
“Great Society”
Haley, Bill
Head Start
Higher Education Act
Hitchcock, Alfred
Hitler, Adolf
Howdy Doody Show
In loco parentis
Jagger, Mick
Johnson, Lyndon
Kennedy, Caroline
Kennedy, Jacqueline
Kennedy, John F.
Kennedy, John, Jr.
Kennedy, Robert
Kerr, Clark
Khrushchev, Nikita
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Kinks
Lennon, John
Lerner, Max
Levittowns
Lewis, John
Life magazine
Little League
Mad magazine
Mao’s Cultural Revolution
Marriage
Mattel Corporation
McCarthy, Eugene
McCartney, Paul
Mickey Mouse Club
Motion pictures
Movies
comedy
horror
science fiction
NBC
Nelson, Ricky
New Frontier
Nixon, Richard
Normandy invasion
North Carolina A&T College
Pacific War
Pearl Harbor
Plastic
“age of”
Presley, Elvis
Radio
programs
Rock-and-roll
mus
ic
Rolling Stones
Roosevelt, Franklin
Salk, Jonas
Savio, Mario
Schools: American
Serviceman’s Readjustment Act
Seventeen magazine
Sit-ins
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
Spock, Benjamin
“Spock babies”
Sputnik
launch
Star Trek
Suburban
community
development
living
models
Sullivan, Ed
Technology
Teenagers
preteen
Television stations
Thirties
Tobacco
Truman, Harry
Twenties
United States
Vietnam War
Villanova University
Watergate
Westerns
TV
Woodstock
World’s Fair
World War I
World War II
films
post-
pre-
veterans
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Victor Brooks was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1947 and later studied the history of education at La Salle University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received an Ed.D. He is now professor of education at Villanova University. Mr. Brooks is the author of ten books, including The Fredericksburg Campaign, nominated for the Virginia Literary Prize; The Normandy Campaign: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris; and Hell Is Upon Us: D-Day in the Pacific. He has three sons and lives in Norristown, Pennsylvania.