Skip to content

Choose a Chapter | Purchase the eBook

1 The Collision Of Cultures
2 Britain And Its Colonies
3 Colonial Ways Of Life
4 The Imperial Perspective
5 From Empire To Independence
6 The American Revolution
7 Shaping A Federal Union
8 The Federalist Era
9 The Early Republic
10 Nationalism And Sectionalism
11 The Jacksonian Impulse
12 The Dynamics Of Growth
13 An American Renaissance: Religion, Romanticism, And Reform
14 Manifest Destiny
15 The Old South
16 The Crisis Of Union
17 The War Of The Union
18 Reconstruction: North And South
19 New Frontiers: South And West
20 Big Business And Organized Labor
21 The Emergence Of Urban America
22 Gilded-age Politics And Agrarian Revolt
23 An American Empire
24 The Progressive Era
25 America And The Great War
26 The Modern Temper
27 Republican Resurgence And Decline
28 New Deal America
29 From Isolation To Global War
30 The Second World War
31 The Fair Deal And Containment
32 Through The Picture Window: Society And Culture, 1945–1960
33 Conflict And Deadlock: The Eisenhower Years
34 New Frontiers: Politics And Social Change In The 1960s
35 Rebellion And Reaction In The 1960s And 1970s
36 A Conservative Insurgency
37 Triumph And Tragedy: America At The Turn Of The Century

Chapter 32: Through The Picture Window: Society And Culture, 1945–1960

Chapter Outline

Printer Friendly Page
  1. Postwar economy
    1. Growth and prosperity
      1. Military spending
      2. International trade dominance
      3. Technological innovation
      4. Baby boom and consumer demand
    2. GI Bill of Rights
      1. Economic measure
      2. Veterans Administration
      3. Benefits and effects
      4. Participants
    3. Consumer culture
      1. Television
        1. Popularity
        2. “Electronic hearth”
      2. Dispersion of affluence
        1. Labor and blacks
        2. Exceptions
      3. Marketing and packaging
      4. Credit cards
    4. Growth of suburbs
      1. Rural-to-urban migration
      2. Levittowns
      3. Automobiles and roads
      4. “White flight”
    5. African-American migration
      1. Reasons for moving
      2. Effects on northern cities
  2. Postwar conformity
    1. Corporate life
      1. White-collar jobs
      2. Large corporations
    2. Women and the cult of domesticity
    3. Religion
      1. Growth in church membership
        1. Religious revival
        2. Patriotism
        3. Marketing of religion
      2. Reverend Norman Vincent Peale and positive thinking
      3. Neo-orthodoxy
        1. Critical of religiosity
        2. Reinhold Niebuhr
    4. Critics of social conformity
      1. John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society
      2. The Crack in the Picture Window
      3. David Riesman and The Lonely Crowd
    5. Youth culture
      1. Consumerism at shopping malls
      2. Permissive parents
      3. Juvenile delinquency
      4. Mobility
    6. Rock ’n’ roll
      1. Origins
      2. Bridge between white and black music
      3. Elvis Presley
      4. Vehicle for youth revolt
      5. Controversial
  3. Alienation and liberation in the arts
    1. Drama
      1. Oppressiveness of mass culture
      2. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
    2. The novel
      1. The individual’s struggle for survival
      2. James Jones’s From Here to Eternity
      3. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
    3. Painting
      1. Edward Hopper and desolate loneliness
      2. Abstract expressionism
        1. Violent and chaotic modern society
        2. Jackson Pollock
        3. Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, et al.
    4. The Beats
      1. Liberation of self-expression
      2. Greenwich Village background
      3. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl
      4. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
      5. Anti-heroes
        1. James Dean and Marlon Brando
        2. Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce
        3. Bob Dylan

Section Menu

Organize

Learn

Connect

Multimedia

Norton Gradebook

Instructors now have an easy way to collect students’ online quizzes with the Norton Gradebook without flooding their inboxes with e-mails.

Students can track their online quiz scores by setting up their own Student Gradebook.