The Forties

Told largely in the words of people who lived through this extraordinary time, The Forties: Good Times Just Around the Corner is a vividly remembered account of the most important decade of the twentieth century. With original photographs and memorabilia of every kind, this is a book for anyone interested in our shared past, for anyone interested in history, and for anyone who wants to know how this country came to be as it is today.

From one of the greatest literary critics of the twentieth century, this installment of Edmund Wilson’s private notebooks covers the years of the 1940s, providing a rich lens into the writer’s life and the world at large. Wilson turned forty-five in 1940, and this volume The Forties: From Notebooks & Diaries of the Period shows the extent to which he was reappraising his life in the decade to follow - saying goodbye to the drifting of the 1920s and the Marxism of the 1930s. Published posthumously and edited by Leon Edel, The Forties includes observations on his increasingly complicated family matters and covers appreciatively writers like Andre Malraux, W. H. Auden, and Max Beerbohm, as well as entries from his research and travels. "We can see the beginnings of the masterly work of Wilson's later years, the studies of the American literary and mythic past on which his reputation will surely rest." Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post on The Forties

New Orleans in the Forties delightfully documents a time when, though the war raged in Europe, high school girls could still flirt on the streetcar with high school boys, and one made a trip to the movies to see Mary Martin, Lana Turner, or William Holden. The author recalls such youthful, frivolous events as slurping sodas and wolfing down cake at Woolworth's on Canal Street, spending Friday nights at O'Shaugnessy's Bowling Alley on Airline Highway, or frolicking at Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park. This volume in the series explores the many changes that New Orleanians and their city went through before, during, and after the trying times of World War II. Mrs. Widmer fondly remembers the forties as she examines the city socially, politically, and architecturally, and includes a look at popular fads, sports, and other entertainment that boomed during this period in history. She takes a look at the expanding suburbs of New Orleans, and the effects that the end of the war had on growth and development in areas such as Gentilly Woods and the lakefront. The book also surveys the fashions of the day, and discusses developments in science and technology, with particular attention given to television and its effect upon society.

Ann Sheridan, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Veronica Lake, Gene Tierney, and Maria Montez in gowns by Adrian, Travis Banton, Jean Louis, Edith Head, Oleg Cassini, Vera West, and other top Hollywood designers. A must for paper doll fans and lovers of costume design and film history. 16 plates.

In America in the Forties, Goldberg energetically argues that the decade of the 1940s was one of the most influential in American his­tory: a period marked by war, sacrifice, and profound social changes. With superb detail, Goldberg traces the entire decade from the first stirrings of war in a nation consumed by the Great Depression to the conflicts with Europe and Japan to the start of the Cold War and the dawn of the atomic age. Richly drawn portraits of the pe­riod's charismatic, brilliant, and often controversial leaders-Frank­lin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman-demonstrate their immense importance in shaping the era and, in turn, the course of American government, politics, and society. Goldberg chronicles U.S. heroic accomplishments during World War II and the early Cold War, showing how these military and diplomatic achievements helped lay the foundation for the country's current role in economic and military affairs worldwide. Combining an engrossing narrative with intelligent analysis, America in the Forties enriches our understanding of that pivotal era.

Photographs aspects of New York life in the forties from the old Metropolitan Opera House to the Lower East Side shops and the boardwalk on Coney Island