The 50s

Including contributions by Elizabeth BishopTruman CapoteJohn CheeverRoald DahlJanet FlannerNadine GordimerA. J. LieblingDwight MacdonaldJoseph MitchellMarianne MooreVladimir NabokovSylvia PlathV. S. PritchettAdrienne RichLillian RossPhilip RothAnne SextonJames ThurberJohn UpdikeEudora WeltyE. B. WhiteEdmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Jonathan FranzenMalcolm GladwellAdam GopnikElizabeth KolbertJill LeporeRebecca MeadPaul MuldoonEvan OsnosDavid Remnick The 1950s are enshrined in the popular imagination as the decade of poodle skirts and "I Like Ike." But this was also a complex time, in which the afterglow of Total Victory firmly gave way to Cold War paranoia. A sense of trepidation grew with the Suez Crisis and the H-bomb tests. At the same time, the fifties marked the cultural emergence of extraordinary new energies, like...