The Victory Album: Reflections on the Good Life after the Good War

In these essays, a combination of personal remembrance and broad-stroke cultural history, Philip Beidler addresses the culture and politics of post– WWII America: the national blindness toward the Holocaust and a rising China, the canker of McCarthyism, ascendant cultures of hard smoking and heavy drinking, the worship of cars and film idols, and the chronic fear of an always-possible nuclear apocalypse. In lively, driving prose, he recalls veiled episodes in the history of the Korean War, the civil rights movement, and the struggle for women’ s liberation. On these subjects and many others, Beidler draws from his own experience and a penetrating grasp of American social history, offering deep, pointed, and comprehensive perspectives on iconic moments in American history.