The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War - Paperback

by Richard Lingeman (Author)

Richard Lingeman vividly recreates the momentous years between VJ Day in 1945 and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950--America's postwar period, the "age of anxiety" characterized by the onset of the Red Scare and a nascent resistance to the growing Cold War consensus.

The psychological hangover of World War II merged with burgeoning anti-communist paranoia and created a dark mood, a "postwar noir" phenomenon. The Noir Forties saw the arrival of McCarthyism and a bleak distortion of American political culture. Lingeman traces the attitudes, hopes and fears, prejudices, and collective dreams and nightmares of the times, as reflected in the media, popular culture, political movements, opinion polls, and psychological studies.

Richard Lingeman has created a memorable portrait of what the American people lived, dreamed, and thought during the period that became the crucible in which the destiny of the next forty years was settled.

Author Biography

Richard Lingeman is the longtime Senior Editor of the Nation, as well as a biographer, historian, and satirist. He began his career as an editor at Monocle magazine, and spent nine years at the New York Times Book Review as an editor and daily reviewer. He is the author of Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, and Double Lives: American Authors' Friendships, among other titles. He lives in New York City.