Recommended Resources
The Fifties
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Altschuler, Glenn C. All Shook Up: How Rock ’n’ Roll Changed America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Halliwell, Martin. American Culture in the 1950s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
O’Neill, William L. American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960. New York: Free Press, 1986.
Castronovo, David. Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit: Books from the 1950s that Made American Culture. New York: Continuum, 2004.
May, Elaine Tyler. Pushing the Limits: American Women, 1940–1961. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Morris, Roger. Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990.
Young, William H. The 1950s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Super, John C., ed. The Fifties in America. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2005.
Riesman, David, et al. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
Whyte, William H. The Organization Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
Manis, Andrew Michael. A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.
Moreno, Barry. Encyclopedia of Ellis Island. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004.
Parmet, Herbert S. Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy. New York: Dial Press, 1980.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. New York: Harper Perennial Political Classics, 2009.
Matthews, Christopher. Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.
Holt, Rackham. Mary McLeod Bethune: A Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.
Hauser, Thomas. Muhammad Ali in Perspective. San Francisoco: HarperCollins, 1996.
Salzman, Jack, ed. New Essays on The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Rosenberg, Norman L. Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Carmichael, Stokely, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.
Chafe, William H., Raymond Gavins, Robert Korstad, et al., eds. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South. New York: New Press, 2001.
Parmet, Herbert S. Richard Nixon and His America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990.
Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.
Gellman, Irwin F. The Contender, Richard Nixon: The Congress Years, 1946–1952. New York: Free Press, 1999.
LeCompte, Tom. The Last Sure Thing: The Life and Times of Bobby Riggs. Easthampton, MA: Black Squirrel Publishing, 2003.
Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Court, Margaret, with Barbara Oldfield. Winning Faith: The Margaret Court Story. Sydney: Strand, 2000.
White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.