The 1940s

Montreal in the 1940s and '50s was Canada's largest, richest, most vibrant and colourful city. It was, at the end of those prosperous decades, "bursting at the seams" and still growing. William Weintraub, writing with insight and affection, brings the Montreal of his youth vividly, entertainingly and wittily to life. The Montreal he describes so well was a city with two communities, English and French, who lived separate lives. They met along the dividing line that was "the Main" -- St Lawrence Boulevard and the nearby streets, where gambling joints, bordellos and night clubs prospered, and where striptease artiste Lili St. Cyr became the toast of the town and gangsters raked in profits while the police looked the other way. It was the Montreal of the charismatic Mayor Camilien Houde within the repressive Quebec of Premier Maurice Duplessis. Weintraub also looks at what he calls the Third Solitude, Montreal's Jewish community, which brought not just smoked meat and delicatessens to the vibrant area around the Main but a lively community that has played a major part in shaping the city and from which sprang such writers as Mordecai Richler and Irving Layton. William Weintraub looks at all aspects of life in Montreal in what Mordecai Richler called "an engaging, evocative book about Montreal's prime-time".

Presents recipes ranging in difficulty with the science and technology-minded cook in mind, providing the science behind cooking, the physiology of taste, and the techniques of molecular gastronomy.

Take a stroll down Memory Lane with this wonderful collection of photographs of Britain in the 1940s, which evokes those Happy Days when everyone pulled together to defeat Hitler and kept smiling despite the hardship of the post-war years.

This captivating anthology gathers historic New Yorker pieces from a decade of trauma and upheaval—as well as the years when The New Yorker came of age, with pieces by Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Joseph Mitchell, Vladimir Nabokov, and George Orwell, alongside original reflections on the 1940s by some of today’s finest writers. In this enthralling book, contributions from the great writers who graced The New Yorker’s pages are placed in historical context by the magazine’s current writers. Included in this volume are seminal profiles of the decade’s most fascinating figures: Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Here are classics in reporting: John Hersey’s account of the heroism of a young naval lieutenant named John F. Kennedy; Rebecca West’s harrowing visit to a lynching trial in South Carolina; and Joseph Mitchell’s imperishable portrait of New York’s foremost dive bar, McSorley’s. This volume also provides vital, seldom-reprinted criticism, as well as an extraordinary selection of short stories by such writers as Shirley Jackson and John Cheever. Represented too are the great poets of the decade, from William Carlos Williams to Langston Hughes. To complete the panorama, today’s New Yorker staff look back on the decade through contemporary eyes. The 40s: The Story of a Decade is a rich and surprising cultural portrait that evokes the past while keeping it vibrantly present. Including contributions by W. H. Auden • Elizabeth Bishop • John Cheever • Janet Flanner • John Hersey • Langston Hughes • Shirley Jackson • A. J. Liebling • William Maxwell • Carson McCullers • Joseph Mitchell • Vladimir Nabokov • Ogden Nash • John O’Hara • George Orwell • V. S. Pritchett • Lillian Ross • Stephen Spender • Lionel Trilling • Rebecca West • E. B. White • Williams Carlos Williams • Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Joan Acocella • Hilton Als • Dan Chiasson • David Denby • Jill Lepore • Louis Menand • Susan Orlean • George Packer • David Remnick • Alex Ross • Peter Schjeldahl • Zadie Smith • Judith Thurman

The story, based on extensive individual interviews, of the women’s swing bands that toured extensively during World War II and after -- a kind of “League of their Own” for jazz.

Mythologized as the era of the “good war” and the “Greatest Generation,” the 1940s are frequently understood as a more heroic, uncomplicated time in American history. Yet just below the surface, a sense of dread, alienation, and the haunting specter of radical evil permeated American art and literature. Writers returned home from World War II and gave form to their disorienting experiences of violence and cruelty. They probed the darkness that the war opened up and confronted bigotry, existential guilt, ecological concerns, and fear about the nature and survival of the human race. In Facing the Abyss, George Hutchinson offers readings of individual works and the larger intellectual and cultural scene to reveal the 1940s as a period of profound and influential accomplishment. Facing the Abyss examines the relation of aesthetics to politics, the idea of universalism, and the connections among authors across racial, ethnic, and gender divisions. Modernist and avant-garde styles were absorbed into popular culture as writers and artists turned away from social realism to emphasize the process of artistic creation. Hutchinson explores a range of important writers, from Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy to Richard Wright and James Baldwin. African American and Jewish novelists critiqued racism and anti-Semitism, women writers pushed back on the misogyny unleashed during the war, and authors such as Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams reflected a new openness in the depiction of homosexuality. The decade also witnessed an awakening of American environmental and ecological consciousness. Hutchinson argues that despite the individualized experiences depicted in these works, a common belief in art’s ability to communicate the universal in particulars united the most important works of literature and art during the 1940s. Hutchinson’s capacious view of American literary and cultural history masterfully weaves together a wide range of creative and intellectual expression into a sweeping new narrative of this pivotal decade.

Outlines the important social, political, economic, cultural, and technological events that happened in the United States from 1940 to 1949.

Contains entries for individuals, institutions, and events, focusing mostly on the U.S. Entries cover topics in science, history, literature, theater and entertainment, and many other areas.