Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10)

by James T. Patterson

The early 1960s witnessed publication of extraordinarily provocative and influential books that questioned conventional notions about American society and culture. In 1961 Jane Jacobs brought out Death and Life of Great American Cities, which skewered the grandiose pretensions of urban planners, and Joseph Heller published Catch-22, an unsubtle but hilarious and disturbing novel about the inanities of the military in World War II. It sold some 10 million copies over the next thirty years, appealing especially to opponents of the Vietnam War. Two seminal books appeared in 1962. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring sounded an eloquent warning against pesticides and environmental pollution. Widely acclaimed, it spurred an ecological movement that gathered considerable force by the late 1960s. Michael Harrington's The Other America greatly dramatized the problem of poverty in the United States, adding to pressures for governmental action.4 In 1963 James Baldwin's prophetic The Fire Next Time alerted Americans to the likelihood of violent racial confrontation. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique also appeared in 1963. A huge seller, it helped to launch a renaissance of feminism.