The Fifties

by David Halberstam

“I was,” he later noted, “an unctuous repulsively good little boy. My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel bitter things. It gave me no normal, healthy way to be a bastard.”

“He has more elbows than an octopus,” said

MacArthur was supremely confident; if the Chinese decided to enter the war, he would deal them such a crushing blow that it “would rock Asia and perhaps turn back Communism.” Modesty was never his strong point.

Arthur MacArthur,” one of his aides noted, “was the most flamboyantly egotistical man I had ever seen, until I met his son”).

His needs and those of the Japanese dovetailed perfectly—the Japanese needed to worship the man who had conquered them, and he needed to be worshiped.

“And what to do with Mr. Prima Donna, Brass Hat, Five Star MacArthur. He’s worse than the Cabots and the Lodges—they at least talked with one another before they told God what to do. Mac tells God right off. It is a very great pity that we have to have

The Model T was simple, boxy, functional. A buyer could choose a car in any color he wanted, Ford boasted, as long as it was black.

word was put out that the staff was to be very nice to kids, because kids came equipped with parents.

That was to be his trademark in the early days, and from it came his nickname, Gadge, is a diminutive of Gadget.

Cronkite noted, “Mr. Harriman, being impartial, we don’t know whether Mr. Dulles can’t write or you can’t read.”

In the thirties a majority of states, twenty-six of forty-eight, still had laws prohibiting the employment of married women.

The ideal fifties women were to strive for was articulated by McCall’s in 1954: togetherness.