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A Seminal Decade
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11122 |
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BOOK WORLD
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10 / 1993 |
2,197 Words |
| Author
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Robert L. Spaeth
Robert L. Spaeth is professor of liberal studies and
codirector of the Christian Humanism project at St. John's
University, Collegeville, Minnesota. He is coauthor (with R.W.
Franklin) of Virgil Michel: American Catholic (Liturgical
Press, 1988) and the author of Exhortations on Liberal
Education: A Dean Speaks His Mind (St. John's University,
1988); The Church and a Catholic's Conscience (Harper & Row,
1985) and No Easy Answers: Christians Debate Nuclear Arms
(Harper and Row, 1983). |
THE FIFTIES
David Halberstam
New York: Villard Books, 1993
800 pp., $27.50
Were it not for the tumultuous and destructive 1960s, the 1950s would not have been inaccurately and unjustly labeled bland and complacent. The facts differ greatly from the myth. Bursting the bubble of the reputation given the 1950s by those who came of age in the 1960s constitutes one of the main values of David Halberstam's fat new book, The Fifties.
Halberstam, a liberal journalist who tackles big assignments and big questions, comes with impressive credentials. As he writes in a concluding author's note, he is "a child of the fifties"--high-school diploma in 1951, college degree in 1955. Since then he has been a distinguished reporter on the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War and the author of ambitious volumes such as The Best and the Brightest and The Powers That Be. His diligence and comprehensive writing have earned him major literary prizes, including the Pulitzer.
For Halberstam to dispel the prevailing smoke screen about the untroubled 1950s, it is not necessary to make point-by-point comparisons with the wilder but less influential 1960s. It is sufficient to describe the people and events of the decade from 1950 to 1959 and allow the reader to see how our world today grew from that creative era.
In politics, it was the decade of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, of Joseph McCarthy and the civil rights movement. In technology, it was the time of the H-bomb and the mushrooming growth of television; in foreign affairs, there were the coups in Iran and Guatemala and the Soviet capture of a U-2 spy plane. In popular culture, it was the era of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Mickey Spillane; in commerce, of Levittown, McDonald's, and Holiday Inns; and in science, of the birth-control pill.
Other authors might generate a different list of highlights of the 1950s, but Halberstam chooses to chronicle only those events and personalities that had mass influence or attracted mass attention. One at first grows discouraged with his emphasis on the lowest common denominator. For example, the singers chosen for extended comment include Elvis and Ricky Nelson. The featured actors are Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Marilyn. In science, the focus is on the Kinsey reports and the Pill. Halberstam's standards seem low.
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