Books like The Fifties by David Halberstam

Bill Bryson chronicles the iconic summer of 1927, when booming markets, technological breakthroughs, and cultural milestones set America on a new worldwide stage.

Explore the creation and enduring appeal of America’s television family, seeing how The Simpsons moved from a single episode to a global cultural icon, and learning which writers, animators, and voice actors keep the humor fresh week after week.

Analyzes the American traditions of cutting loose and engaging in mischief to take breaks from work and sobriety, describing the activities of earlier centuries while sharing stories about the entertainments of the modern world.

This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South--and the brutality used to enforce it. It is the story of how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the twentieth century. Drawing on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews, veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen--first black reporters, then liberal southern editors, then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast media--revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.--From publisher description.

"In Donuts, Edge walks us though the donut's inception as Dutch fare, the Salvation Army's wartime donuts, the invention of the donut machine, the 1950s donut-shop craze, the Krispy Kreme revolution, the appropriation by other ethnicities, and the fanatical chefs that take donuts to a new art form. Nothing encourages our sweet-tooth cravings like the donut. It is honest. It is satisfying. It is a national symbol that has survived the low carb-diet dogma and the death of the local donut shop, and it is making a comeback into the hearts of Americans." -- publisher website (October 2006).

"A journey through the 1949 pennant race, in which two legendary rivals, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, battled down to a winner-take-all final game of the season"--Page [2] of dust jacket.

An in-depth look at the complexities of postwar America, focusing on race, class, gender, foreign policy, and economic and social reform.

The Children traces the courageous journey of eight Black students who, through Reverend James Lawson's nonviolence workshops, joined the civil rights movement of the 1960s and helped transform American society.

With his typical wit and keen analysis, O'Rourke looks at the way the post-war generation somehow came of age by never quite growing up and somehow created a better society by turning society upside down.