The Fifties

An Underground History

The Fifties
James R Gaines
Our Price:
NZ$ 49.99
Hardback
h229 x 152mm - 288pg
14 Apr 2022 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9781439101636
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
A bold and original argument that upends the myth of the Fifties as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements, from historian James R. Gaines. In a fascinating and beautifully written series of character portraits, The Fifties invokes the accidental radicals-people motivated not by politics but by their own most intimate conflicts-who sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Among many others, we meet the legal pathfinder Pauli Murray, who was tortured by both her mixed-race heritage and her "in between" sexuality. Through years of hard work and self-examination, she turned her demons into historic victories. Ruth Bader Ginsberg credited her for the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, but that was only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s, a time when the US, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany viewed gay people as subversives and mentally ill. And in perhaps the book' s unlikeliest pairing, we hear the prophetic voices of Silent Spring' s Rachel Carson and MIT' s preeminent mathematician, Norbert Wiener, who from their very different perspectives-she in the living world, he in the theoretical one-converged on the then-heretical idea that our mastery over the natural world carried the potential for disaster. Their legacy is the environmental movement. The Fifties is a dazzling and provocative work of history that transforms our understanding of a seemingly staid decade and honors the pioneers of gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmentalism. The book carries the powerful message that change actually begins not in mass movements and new legislation but in the lives of de-centered, often lonely individuals, who learn to fight for change in a daily struggle with themselves.
"Values we take for granted can seem obvious when we encounter them in historical figures, but Gaines makes the price of righteousness clear-these men and women. . . faced down brutal violence and ostracism both personal and professional. . . . [T]heir brilliance, their originality, their relentless courage created us. " -The New York Times "Describes the courage of his heroes and the price they paid for standing up and speaking out in hostile environments. . . Progress ' is always a figment until it is not,' Gaines reminds us, and those who help ' make it happen, make history. ' " - Star Tribune "Gaines has written an exciting and enlightening revisionist history of the 1950s showing how the brave pioneers of that supposedly sleepy decade launched the movements of the 1960s that continue to this day. Here are the inspiring tales of the unsung heroes who sowed the seeds of the gay rights, civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements. They were the true rebels, and their bravery shows us how real social change occurs. " - Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker "The Fifties is an enchanting, beautifully written book about heroes and the dark times to which they refused to surrender. We speak much too casually of heroes. These women and men of the ' 50s and thereafter, in all their complexity, deeply deserve the word, as Gaines' s moving treatment makes clear. " -Todd Gitlin, bestselling author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; Professor of Journalism and Sociology and Chair, Ph. D. Program in Communications, Columbia University "A history of the courageous men and women who roiled postwar complacency. . . Inspiring activists populate a useful revisionist history. " - Kirkus Review "Compassionate and insightful. . . Gaines provides essential historical context and vividly captures the resilience of these and other ' authentic rebels' who battled the FBI, McCarthyism, the medical industry, and the Ku Klux Klan ' in a time infamous for rewarding conformity and suppressing dissent. ' This revisionist history is packed with insights. " - Publishers Weekly "Enlightening, empowering, and intimate. "-BookPage "An engrossing deep dive into the personal histories of important figures. . . This work by Gaines follows in the footsteps of David Halberstam' s 1993 book of the same title and will be enjoyed by readers seeking solid historical research that is also an informative read. Recommended. "-Library Journal "[Gaines] has taken valiant steps to. . . painstakingly and persuasively show how the 10 individuals he profiles fought ' through the thicket of postwar repressions' to help build what would later come to be known as the gay rights, feminist, civil rights and environmental movements. . . An intrepid corrective. "-Shelf Awareness
James R. Gaines is the former managing editor of Time magazine and the author of several books, including Evening in the Palace of Reason, a study of Johann Sebastian Bach and the early Enlightenment, and For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions. He lives in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781439101636
Published: 14 Apr 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardback
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 476g
Pages: 288

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