Salem Press

	The Fifties in America follows the publisher’s successful The Sixties in America. The Fifties, however, has expanded coverage with 640 entries that... prove important enough to make this a priority purchase.
Booklist (starred review)

	Overall this is a terrific set.
ARBA

	Your U.S. history teachers will be happy with this purchase. Highly recommended.
Gale

Fifties in America
Publisher's Note

The Fifties in America surveys the events and people of the United States and Canada from 1950 through 1959. Salem Press's second reference set on a twentieth century decade, this three-volume publication is modeled on Salem's popular The Sixties in America (1999). However, with its 640 alphabetically arranged essays, The Fifties in America is 20 percent larger than the 1960's set and goes beyond the latter's geographical scope by covering Canada in depth.

The 1950's
The 1950's are often portrayed as a quiet and comparatively uneventful era in North American history--a period of political and cultural conservatism and conformity when little of consequence happened. However, the decade was in fact a period of domestic political turbulence, mounting world tensions, and significant cultural change. Indeed, it may be fairly argued that the 1950's set in motion most of the changes for which the tumultuous 1960's were later to become famous.

While the decade of the 1940's had experienced the horrors, privations, and dislocations of world war, the 1950's experienced the more subtle horrors of the Cold War, with its concomitant nuclear arms race and rising fears of thermonuclear war, particularly after the Soviet Union was known to possess working nuclear weapons. Within the United States, the strains of the Cold War generated a kind of mass paranoia about communist subversion that gave rise to a second "Red Scare," making possible McCarthyism and a trend toward the suppression of civil liberties. The impact of Cold War fears on North America was both broad and deep. It influenced not only politics but also culture and can be seen in the films, television programs, and literature of the period.

Although the 1950's was an era of civil defense paranoia, bomb shelters, and loyalty oaths, it was also a time of positive changes in American social and economic history. Under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the U.S. Supreme Court assumed a more activist role in correcting past social wrongs. When the Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, it helped launch a social revolution that drew focus and force from the Civil Rights movement and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the Supreme Court's ruling on school desegregation, the lines were drawn for a new civil war that would be fought out during the 1960's.

Meanwhile, the United States and Canada were emerging from the hard times of the Great Depression and World War II into a period of economic growth that brought unprecedented prosperity to both nations. This prosperity was accompanied by the introduction of a vast array of new consumer goods and services, making North America what Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith would call the "affluent society." Canada and the United States enjoyed enormous agricultural surpluses. Construction industries boomed, and unprecedented numbers of North Americans were able to buy their own homes and enjoy previously undreamt luxuries. Among the most striking changes of the decade was a huge increase in the production of automobiles. After the stagnation in design and production that the automobile industry had endured during the war years, the industry responded with cars offering revolutionary changes in design, variety, and performance. Among the most memorable new models of the 1950's are the Chevrolet Corvette, the Ford Thunderbird, and the ill-fated Edsel--a car that helped to define the decade. New highways had to be built to accommodate increased motor travel, which also fostered new motel and fast-food restaurant industries.

Among the new consumer products that flooded North American markets were televisions, transistor radios, and long-playing records--all of which prompted revolutions in the entertainment industries and everyday life styles. Indeed, the 1950's might be justly described as the decade of television. Television's origins go back to the 1920's, but it was not until the 1950's that television broadcasting began to affect the ways that average people lived. In 1950, fewer than four million American households had television sets, and television had not even begun broadcasting in Canada. By the end of the decade, television was established as the dominant form of entertainment and a powerful force in the communication of culture and news in both countries. Television programming reflected postwar social values, while changing the way that North Americans lived. Television brought the immediacy of national and world events into homes, helped introduce new trends in music and culture, and gave the film industry its biggest scare in history. Competition from television prompted the film industry to make sweeping changes that led to greater use of color and special effects, experiments in 3-D projection, and new wide-screen formats.

One revolution for which the 1950's has always received full recognition is the emergence of rock and roll, an outgrowth of African American rhythm and blues music. Personified by the towering presence of Elvis Presley, rock and roll changed the face of popular music and became the musical voice of the youth movement that would take on more coherent forms during the 1960's.

The 1950's was also an era of new forms of fun that were expressed in such fads as hula hoops, poodle skirts, ducktail hairstyles, two-tone cars, outlandish automobile tail fins, and stunts such as telephone-booth stuffing. The first "flying saucer" sightings of the late 1940's occurred as the world was entering the nuclear bomb and space ages, making the 1950's an era obsessed with the possibilities of thermonuclear war and alien invasions. These concerns were expressed in such films as The Thing from Another World, The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Content of This Reference Work
The Fifties in America covers all these and many other topics in its 640 essays, which range from 300-word articles on individual personages, books, events, films, court cases, inventions, and other subjects, to 3,000-5,000-word overviews on such broad subjects as literature, economics, education, politics, medicine, science, and television. While many essays provide pre-1950's background material and discuss post-1950's developments, the focus of each essay is on the events of the 1950's.

Written with the needs of students and general readers in mind, the articles in this set pesent clear discussions of the topics, explaining terms and references that may be unfamiliar to readers. The essays are arranged in alphabetical order, with clear, concise titles followed by brief descriptors and italicized summaries of their subjects' significance. The essays are divided into a variety of easy-to-use formats: 175 overviews; 185 biographical pieces; 78 articles on events; 40 articles on books, plays, and magazines; 22 articles on individual films; 27 articles on television programs; 9 articles on individual court cases; 56 articles on government agencies and organizations of various types; 18 articles on laws and treaties; and 25 articles on individual products and inventions. A fuller list of subject categories can be found at the end of volume 3.

Ready-Reference Tools
Important dates and selected facts are highlighted in ready-reference top matter at the beginnings of articles on people, organizations, events, and artistic works. Within the texts of articles, boldfaced subheads such as "Impact" or "Subsequent Events" make finding information quick and easy. Cross-references at the end of each article will guide readers to additional entries on related subjects. Every article, regardless of length, also offers annotated bibliographical notes under the heading of "Further Readings," and readers will find an annotated general bibliography among the appendices at the end of the third volume.

No reference work on the 1950's would be complete without extensive visual elements, and this set contains more than 300 photographs of the decade's events and numerous maps, graphs, charts, and sidebars highlighting the decade's most interesting facts and trends. As an additional aid to readers, volume 3 contains a detailed index to photo subjects.

Other Search Tools
The Fifties in America also contains a number of useful tools to help readers find the subjects of interest. A complete list of all 640 essays appears at the beginning of each volume. A list of essays sorted under more than fifty categories appears at the end of volume 3, and the third volume contains a comprehensive index and personages index, as well as the photo index. On average, each essay topic is listed three times in the category list, under headings ranging from "African Americans" and "Art and architecture" to "Women's issues" and "Youth culture." The comprehensive index also has aspects of the category list, as it contains collective entries on such subjects as individual films, television programs, plays, novels, awards, and people.

Appendices
The third volume contains fifteen appendices that provide additional information about selected aspects of the decade in quickly accessible formats. The five drama appendices list the major films, Broadway plays, television shows, and major awards of the 1950's. The two literature appendices list the best-selling U.S. books and major literary award winners, and the music appendix lists the decade's most popular musicians and their hits. A sports appendix provides a quick look at the winners of the major sporting events of the 1950's. The two legislative appendices look at the U.S. Supreme Court and its major decisions and major legislation passed by Congress during the decade. Other appendices include a glossary of new words and slang from the 1950's, a detailed time line of the decade, an extensive annotated bibliography, and an annotated list of Web sources on 1950's subjects.

Acknowledgments
Publications such as The Fifties in America would not be possible without the generous contributions of a large team of scholars. The editors of Salem Press would therefore like to thank the 248 scholars who contributed articles and appendices to this set. The editors would also like to thank Professor John C. Super of West Virginia University for serving as the project's Editor and for bringing to the project his expertise on North American history.