Product Description

Journey down a typical Main Street, sit back and learn about TV's first hit shows, or travel back to the show-room to examine the latest range on offer from Cadillac and other auto-manufacturers. Remembering the 40s is a fascinating and colourful mix of nostalgia, pop culture, and authoritative history that will appeal to a wide range of readers. The book examines every aspect of American life during the decade when the nation achieved superpowerdom. It focuses especially on the colourful affluent post-war years which saw the emergence of many key US institutions and products - from network television and the Top Twenty to microwave ovens and frozen food. The book includes features on topics of special interest from 'The New Look' to the rage for Hawaiian cuisine and style.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3319818 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Everyday life back then

Like the author of this book the Forties in the US fascinate me but there seems very few photobooks about the decade. Nick Freeth looks back on those years from a rather personal perspective so don't expect a comprehensive analyses, for that I would suggest Harold Evans 'American Century: People, Power and Politics' with good images and text.

The decade is not easy to cover in a general sense because the Second World War mostly overshadows the post-war years. Freeth, probably rightly, devotes eight pages to the military and then gets into the domestic and social life in America. Some of the chapter heads might give you an idea of the contents: On Main Street, A Place of Our Own, At Work and School, It's the Weekend or That's Entertainment. All the chapters have a mix of text and photos though the book is really visual. Someone has done some excellent picture research because I thought the choice of photos and graphics was rather good but unfortunately, in many cases, an interesting image (a colourful ad from a consumer weekly for example) is really too small to benefit the reader. Most of the photos are black and white with colour provided by printed graphic material.

The book's design is rather basic and in a way it looks a little like a forties publication (I wonder if this was deliberate?) and it does invite comparison with another book covering the same decade, Time-Life Books 'Decade of Triumph: The 40s' (Our American Century). The choice of photos and production is fine but at least half the pages are war oriented.

Both books though reveal how interesting the decade was but I especially like Nick Freeth's book because of the unusual photo selection.