From Library Journal
Henriksen (history, Univ. of Hawaii) has written a savvy study of the transformation of American mass culture in the 1950s and 1960s. She focuses here on the domestic consequences of the atomic bomb and the shift from a culture of anxiety to one of rebellion. Her narrative moves from war studies to teenage delinquency and mental illness to film commentary and back again, with impressive agility. One of the book's best features is its understated, uncomplicated prose, which should make it accessible to a general audience. Another is its emphasis on "coarser" forms of popular culture. Henriksen writes, "It was in particular the new cultural products and genres?film noir and roman noir, science fiction films, pulp crime literature, beat poetry, rock'n'roll, and black humor?that illustrated the revolutionary and explosive cultural impact of the atomic bomb." She goes on to analyze these forms with considerable insight, applying her specific critiques to her larger argument. Recommended for academic cultural studies collections and larger public libraries.?Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
Ms. Henriksen, an associate professor of history at the University of Hawaii, has done a lot of research for this volume, and she provides us with some illuminating asides about the bomb shelter craze of the '60s and the country's love-hate affair with technology. Her central arguments, however, vacillate between the obvious and the naive, the tired and the dubious.
