Outlines life in the United States in the 1950s, including the development of suburbia, advances in technology and entertainment, politics, the space race, and the Cold War.

1969. The very mention of this year summons indelible memories. Woodstock and Atlamont. Charles Manson and the Zodiac Killer. The televised events of the moon landing and Ted Kennedy's address after Chappaquiddick. The Amazin' Mets and Broadway Joe's Jets. The Stonewall Riots and the Days of Rage. Americans pushed new boundaries on stage, screen, and the printed page. The first punk and heavy metal albums hit the airwaves. Swinger culture became chic....

"A lively chronicle of the 1960s through the incredibly contentious and surprisingly close friendship of its two most colorful characters. Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley, Jr., were towering figures who argued publicly about every major issue of the 1960s: the counterculture, Vietnam, feminism, civil rights, the Cold War. Behind the scenes, the two were close friends and trusted confidantes who lived surprisingly parallel lives. In Buckley and...

"A history of the thinkers, writers, and artists who shaped intellectual culture in Cold War Europe and America"-- Menand analyzes the economic, demographic, and technological forces that drove social and cultural change in US during the twenty years following the end of the Second World War. Introducing us to the personalities at the center of this transformation -- artists and thinkers both in the US and abroad -- he shows how they exerted a powerful...

Examines how individualism and civic responsibility contribute to and detract from America's common good. In the Preface to this edition, the authors relate the arguments of the book both to the current realities of American society and the growing debate about the country's future.