The Fifties
by David Halberstam

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Book Reviews of The Fifties

Book Review: 50s: Ten Years That Nudged The World
Summary: 5 Stars

Many of the Sixties' major issues and catalysts dress rehearsed the previous decade, and Halberstam dedicates chapters to them. He addresses the sexual and feminist revolutions through detailed studies of the "Kinsey Report," the evolution of birth control, and circumstances leading to the Playboy magazine and Betty Freidan's "Feminist Mystique." The push for civil rights takes its stand in 1954's "Brown" decision, the 1956 bus boycott and, finally, the school desegration at Little Rock, all among the book's most well-written chapters.

Halberstam wisely weaves the political stories of the decade throughout the narrative, letting the reader breathe with interesting, more familiar stories from the arts (Tennessee Williams, Ricky Nelson, Marlon Brando, James Dean and, of course, Elvis Presley). It addresses the rise of new types of businesses from the ground-level (Holiday Inn, Korvettes, McDonald's) to the top and beyond. General Motors is coronated with deeply researched chapters on its car design, advertising, and competition before their 50s story ends with the failed Corvair.

Heroes and villains switch sides often. Robert Oppenheimer begins as hero whose nuclear research helped win WWII; he ends without job or honor in a Communist-hunting political maelstrom. Joe McCarthy begins as a patriot attacking Communist influence in government, and ends drunken and disgraced. Game show star Charles Van Doren begins as one of TV's first and most admired stars, and ends in obscurity amid one of its most-remembered scandals. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus begins as a centrist bringing blacks more fully into daily life, ending as a model of bigotry and political expediency. Only Dwight Eisenhower, president for most of the 1950s, keeps some of the prestige and honor he entered office with even as his cabinet and government seemed to do some of its finest, also most sinister, work around (sometimes without) him.

A recurring theme throughout the book finds new technologies and higher standards of living crashing against traditional, long-held American ideals. The rise of new appliances, housing, cars, places to go, and things to do conflict with people's need for self-expression and creativity, also to work ethic. Much of Halberstam's chapter on "The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit" addresses this conflict; those exploiting it (from publisher Hugh Hefner to scientist Werner von Braun to "Peyton Place" author Grace Metalious) were celebrated then and, to a lesser degree, now.

Halberstam leaves much unsaid even after 733 pages and 46 chapters. Nothing about the Dodgers and Giants baseball teams' moves to California, a seismic event in a sport then still America's pastime. Nothing about Frank Sinatra's years at Capitol Records (music generally regarded as art). Nothing about the election of Pope John XXIII, the rise of Billy Graham, or much about any religious figure except Dr. Martin Luther King. (The many anti-Catholic, anti-religious opinions quoted in "The Fifties" may reveal bias on its author's part; I hope not.)

Nonetheless, "The Fifties" remains one of the finer historical overviews available about that decade. It tells several related but disparate stories in orderly, compelling fashion, presenting an refreshingly unsentimental look at one of history's most distinctive time periods.

20th Century Books

• Books > Subjects > History > Americas > United States
• Historical Study > Reference