On the time of its time, The Recking Nitions Read

[Mark Kohut]

2000 essay by David Halberstam presenting his book on the 50s...

still telephone party lines........since America was not damged at home
during WW 2, Americans got more affluent while most of Europe had to get back to 

where they had been.....so "America's level of optimism increased stunningly 
fast"

Halberstam said he thought of the 50s in black & white; the Sixties were 
color....

Class divisions that carried thru decades might have begun: Student deferments 
from the
'police action' of Korea vs. HS only grads --heavily blue-collar who went to 
war.

"America was still a Calvinist society. [The Pill was 15year in the future, in 
popular use...] "The economic,
social and technological forces which would soon assault that Calvinism were 
just beginning."

"Big companies dominated the landscape. The WASP establishment dominated the 
business and
government foreign policy worlds...." 

"Gender lines were sharply drawn...the culture was infinitely more predictable 
and infinitely more settled." 


"Life was also significantly less threatening, particularly for those in the 
ruling majority and those who actually 

exercised power..(Life for those who were outsiders in 1950 was harder; their 
nerves were 'jangled' but they simply 

did not know it.".) "