The New Yorker Book of the 40s: Story of a Decade

The New Yorker Book of the 40s: Story of a Decade

Summary

The cultural and political history of the watershed decade of the 20th century, as told by the New Yorker.

The 1940s were a decade of upheaval and innovation: they saw the Nuremberg Trials and Israeli statehood, Casablanca and Duke Ellington, smallpox and skyscrapers, FDR and Le Corbusier, zoot suits and Christian Dior. It was also the decade the New Yorker came of age. The same magazine offered its readers the first reporting from Hiroshima and introduced the world to Holden Caulfield, while counting John Hersey, Rebecca West, E.B. White, and Joseph Mitchell among its regular writers. In this volume, pieces by the pantheon of journalists, novelists and poets that graced the New Yorker's pages in the 1940s are complemented by all new contributions, as the magazine's present star lineup looks back at that tumultuous decade. Here is a book that will enthrall, inform and entertain any history fan in your life.

Reviews

  • Think of it as one of Alice’s Wonderland potions, to be sipped from occasionally when one is in need of a dose of the extraordinary.
    The Economist

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