My Life In The Golden Age Of America

The son of a celebrated Hollywood director emerges from his father's shadow to claim his own place as a visionary force in American culture. George Stevens, Jr. tells an intimate and moving tale of his relationship with his Oscar-winning father and his own distinguished career in Hollywood and Washington. Fascinating people, priceless stories and a behind-the-scenes view of some of America's major cultural and political events grace this riveting memoir. George Stevens, Jr. grew up in Hollywood and worked on film classics with his father and writes vividly of his experience on the sets of A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1958). He explores how the magnitude of his father's talent and achievements left him questioning his own creative path. The younger Stevens began to forge his unique career when legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow recruited him to elevate the Motion Picture Service at the United States Information Agency in John F. Kennedy's Washington. Stevens' trailblazing efforts initiated what has been called the "golden era" of USIA filmmaking and a call to respect motion pictures as art. His appointment as founding director of the American Film Institute in 1967 placed him at the forefront of culture and politics, safeguarding thousands of endangered films and training a new generation of filmmakers. Stevens' commitment to America's cultural heritage led to envisioning the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors and propelled a creative life of award-winning films and television programs that heightened attention to social justice, artistic achievement, and the American experience. Stevens provides a rare look at a pioneering American family spanning five generations in entertainment: from the San Francisco stage in the 19th century to silent screen comedies, Academy Award-winning films, Emmy Award-winning television programs and a Broadway play in the 21st century. He reveals the private side of the dazzling array of American presidents, first ladies, media moguls, and luminaries who cross his path, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Poitier, the Kennedys, Yo-Yo Ma, Cary Grant, James Dean, Bruce Springsteen, Barack and Michelle Obama, and many more. In My Place in the Sun, George Stevens, Jr. shares his lifelong passion for advancing the art of American film, enlightening audiences, and shining a spotlight on notable figures who inspire us. He provides an insightful look at Hollywood's Golden Age and an insider's account of Washington spanning six decades, bringing to life a sparkling era of American history and culture.

A lively portrait of mid-twentieth-century American book publishing—“A wonderful book, filled with anecdotal treasures” (The New York Times). According to Al Silverman, former publisher of Viking Press and president of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the golden age of book publishing began after World War II and lasted into the early 1980s. In this entertaining and affectionate industry biography, Silverman captures the passionate spirit of legendary houses such as Knopf; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Grove Press; and Harper & Row, and profiles larger-than-life executives and editors, including Alfred and Blanche Knopf, Bennett Cerf, Roger Straus, Seymour Lawrence, and Cass Canfield. More than one hundred and twenty publishing insiders share their behind-the-scenes stories about how some of the most famous books in American literary history—from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to The Silence of the Lambs—came into being and why they’re still being read today. A joyful tribute to the hard work and boundless energy of professionals who dedicate their careers to getting great books in front of enthusiastic readers, The Time of Their Lives will delight bibliophiles and anyone interested in this important and ever-evolving industry.

A giant in the field and at times a polarizing figure, F. Albert Cotton’s contributions to inorganic chemistry and the area of transitions metals are substantial and undeniable. In his own words, My Life in the Golden Age of Chemistry: More Fun than Fun describes the late chemist’s early life and college years in Philadelphia, his graduate training and research contributions at Harvard with Geoffrey Wilkinson, and his academic career from becoming the youngest ever full professor at MIT (aged 31) to his extensive time at Texas A&M. Professor Cotton’s autobiography offers his unique perspective on the advances he and his contemporaries achieved through one of the most prolific times in modern inorganic chemistry, in research on the then-emerging field of organometallic chemistry, metallocenes, multiple bonding between transition metal atoms, NMR and ESR spectroscopy, hapticity, and more. Working during a time of generous government funding of science and strong sponsorship for good research, Professor Cotton’s experience and observations provide insight into this prolific and exciting period of chemistry. Offers personal and often wry perspective from this prominent chemist and recipient of some of science’s highest honors: the U.S. National Medal of Science (1982), the Priestley Medal (the American Chemical Society's highest recognition, 1998), membership in the U. S. National Academy of Sciences and corresponding international bodies, and 29 honorary doctorates Details the background behind the development and emergence of groundbreaking research in organometallic chemistry and transition metals Provides beautifully-written and engaging insight into a "Golden Age of Chemistry" and the work of historically renowned chemists

Thanks to advances in technology, medicine, Social Security, and Medicare, old age for many Americans is characterized by comfortable retirement, good health, and fulfilling relationships. But there are also millions of people over 65 who struggle with poverty, chronic illness, unsafe housing, social isolation, and mistreatment by their caretakers. What accounts for these disparities among older adults? Sociologist Deborah Carr’s Golden Years? draws insights from multiple disciplines to illuminate the complex ways that socioeconomic status, race, and gender shape the nearly every aspect of older adults’ lives. By focusing on an often-invisible group of vulnerable elders, Golden Years? reveals that disadvantages accumulate across the life course and can diminish the well-being of many. Carr connects research in sociology, psychology, epidemiology, gerontology, and other fields to explore the well-being of older adults. On many indicators of physical health, such as propensity for heart disease or cancer, black seniors fare worse than whites due to lifetimes of exposure to stressors such as economic hardships and racial discrimination and diminished access to health care. In terms of mental health, Carr finds that older women are at higher risk of depression and anxiety than men, yet older men are especially vulnerable to suicide, a result of complex factors including the rigid masculinity expectations placed on this generation of men. Carr finds that older adults’ physical and mental health are also closely associated with their social networks and the neighborhoods in which they live. Even though strong relationships with spouses, families, and friends can moderate some of the health declines associated with aging, women—and especially women of color—are more likely than men to live alone and often cannot afford home health care services, a combination that can be isolating and even fatal. Finally, social inequalities affect the process of dying itself, with white and affluent seniors in a better position to convey their end-of-life preferences and use hospice or palliative care than their disadvantaged peers. Carr cautions that rising economic inequality, the lingering impact of the Great Recession, and escalating rates of obesity and opioid addiction, among other factors, may contribute to even greater disparities between the haves and the have-nots in future cohorts of older adults. She concludes that policies, such as income supplements for the poorest older adults, expanded paid family leave, and universal health care could ameliorate or even reverse some disparities. A comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of later-life inequalities, Golden Years? demonstrates the importance of increased awareness, strong public initiatives, and creative community-based programs in ensuring that all Americans have an opportunity to age well.

This book “My Life in a Changing America” is autobiographical and relates the episodes that changed my life. Rather than a time line of continuity, the book is divided into stories of events, people and unseen forces that were important at different times in the grand adventure of life and the pursuit of the American Dream. In my lifetime I was fortunate enough to go from growing up as a poor farm boy to traveling the world as an educator and a university professor. I have lived much of my life during the period of what might have been the Golden Age of America. As a youngster growing up in an isolated village in the middle of the peninsula that separates the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, I had naively believed that I was invulnerable to the fates of others around me. Now at age 88, I have come to the realization that the adventure of life is much like the trajectory of a shooting star flashing across the night sky. No matter how high it may fly nor how bright the trail it leaves behind, it soon vanishes into the unseen depths of space and time. . I have written this autobiography to leave a trace of my shooting star.

This book is a very important book for us Americans to possess because in this book, I provide the reader with invaluable information about how our America can experience a glorious golden age. As seemingly impossible it may appear to be, it is possible that America can experience a glorious golden age, but in order for this to materialize, a great deal of work needs to be done by each of Americans. If America was to experience a glorious golden age, each of us would be experiencing such a magnificent life in America. Right now, as it stands, we Americans must understand that we are only depriving ourselves from having such magnificent lives in America in which we are settling for what America has become.

A one-of-a-kind anthology of American essays on a wide range of subjects by a dazzling array of mid-century writers at the top of their form—from Normal Mailer to James Baldwin to Joan Didion—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America—racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them—proved fruitful topics for America's best minds. In The Golden Age of the American Essay, Phillip Lopate assembles a dazzling array of famous writers, critics, sociologists, theologians, historians, activists, theorists, humorists, poets, and novelists. Here are writers like James Agee, E. B. White, A. J. Liebling, Randall Jarrell, and Mary McCarthy, pivoting from the comic indignities of daily life to world peace, consumerism, and restaurants in Paris. Here is Norman Mailer on Jackie Kennedy, Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Here are Gore Vidal, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Joan Didion, and many more, in a treasury of brilliant writing that has stood the test of time.