Boomers: The Cold-War Generation Grows Up Read online

  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

  Levitt, William

  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

  Soviet Union

  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.