Boomers: The Cold-War Generation Grows Up (24 page)

The world of preteen and teenage girls of the era received massive coverage in
Seventeen
and
Glamour
, both of which explored attitudes about relationships, popularity, school issues, and career prospects. Equivalent sources for a male Boomer perspective are more difficult to find. Boys' attitudes about adolescence must often be filtered through indirect sources, such as the enormously popular DC and Marvel comic books and satire magazines such as
Mad
and
Cracked
, with proper allowance for the nature of these publications.

While contemporary periodicals proved invaluable to the research for this book, some fifty contemporary and later books added greater perspective. A number of excellent general histories of the fifties and sixties were written between the early 1970s and the early 1990s. Works on the earlier decade include Douglas Miller and Marion Novak,
The Fifties the Way They Really Were
(New York, 1977); J. Ronald Oakley,
God's Country: America in the Fifties
(New York, 1986); William L. O'Neill,
American High: The Years of Confidence
(New York, 1986); and the magisterial David Halberstam work,
The Fifties
(New York, 1993), which is a necessity for gaining a full appreciation of the decade. Works on the 1960s include William L. O'Neill,
Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960's
(Chicago, 1971); David Faber,
The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s
(New York, 1974); and Joseph Peter,
An Oral History of the 1960s
(New York, 1974).

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).

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

music

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

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.