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The Forties: Modern American Century (2014)

by The New Yorker(Favorite Author)

4.33 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Random House

review 1: This is a magnificent collection of pieces from The New Yorker during its most evolving era, before, during and after World War II. David Remnick offers an overview of the magazine's history and the role/influence of various editors and writers. Each of the seven sections is introduced by a working editor or writer and the seven include: The War, American Scenes,Postwar, Character Studies, The Critics, Poetry and Fiction.The War: the fall of France (Liebling), war thoughts (White), Survival and Hiroshima (Hersey), D-Day (Liebling and Lardner), letters on the London Blitz and the fall of Rome (Panter-Downes and Hamburger)American Scenes: EBWhite, Joseph Mitchell (McSorley's Old Ale House), Rebecca West on a lynching trial in SC, Richard Rovere on the 1948 presidential trai... moren ride and Lillian Ross on the Miss America PageantPostwar: EB White, and tight pieces on Greece (Wilson), the Nuremberg trials (West), the Monuments Men and Nazi art theft (Flanner), the Red Scare in Hollywood (Ross), and the North Atlantic Treaty Pact (Rovere) and the Berlin Airlift (Kahn)Character Studies: Walt Disney, Norman Mailer, Edith Piaf, Walter Winchell, Thomas Mann, Marshal Petain, Duke Ellington, Le Corbusier, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Sidney FranklinThe Critics: books, cinema, theater, art and architecture, music and fashion - Fadiman on Hemingway, Wilson on Sartre, Bogan on Lowell, Orwell on Greene, Auden on Eliot and Trilling on Orwell...as well as reviews of the likes of The Great Dictator, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Double Indemnity and The Bicycle Thief to name a few.O'Neill and Miller and South Pacific...Copland and Shostakovitch and Bernstein and Armstrong...feminine fashion...and wonderful poetry by White, Auden, Williams, Roethke, Jarrell, Aiken, Hughes, MacLeish, Nemerov, Bishop, Spender, Wilber and Bogan...and short stories by White, McCullers, Maxwell, Shaw, Cheever, Nabokov, Jackson and Pritchett.Nearly 700 pages of material bring an essential, important, fertile and horrific decade alive. Without cell phones or instant messaging, reporters and writers brought the world to those who read. And changed themselves, their magazine and their readers in a most modern way.
review 2: MODERN AMERICAN CENTURY: 40s , by The New Yorker is a massively wonderful collection of the best writing in and of the WWII era to be found just about anywhere. Broken down into seven parts going from the war itself through glimpses of life in the heartland, critical commentary on books, movies, poetry and novels, these collection features writing from John Hersey, Lillian Ross, W. H. Auden, Ogden Nash and many more important writers of their time commenting on their time. This is an insightful look into America, the one behind the façade of world policeman, the America that is both glittering neon lights and theater openings to main street, sitting on the front porch and talking with friends. This is a book that, if you were not part of the American culture but wanted to know more about it, you should pick up and read. The truths that flow from guys on the landing craft as it is approaching the beach at Normandy, our views on fashion during and after the war, our poetry and novels, all these that were true then still are true now, within our psyche. America had changed but the greater part, the best part, has not and this nearly 700-page collection shows just that. A magnificent read, both insightful and fun, I am glad I won this book through Goodreads. less

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