Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age
Henriksen (history, Univ. of Hawaii) has written a savvy study of the transformation of American mass culture in the 1950s and 1960s. She focuses here on the domestic consequences of the atomic bomb and the shift from a culture of anxiety to one of rebellion. Her narrative moves from war studies to teenage delinquency and mental illness to film commentary and back again, with impressive agility. One of the book's best features is its understated, uncomplicated prose, which should make it accessible to a general audience. Another is its emphasis on "coarser" forms of popular culture. Henriksen writes, "It was in particular the new cultural products and genres?film noir and roman noir, science fiction films, pulp crime literature, beat poetry, rock'n'roll, and black humor?that illustrated the revolutionary and explosive cultural impact of the atomic bomb." She goes on to analyze these forms with considerable insight, applying her specific critiques to her larger argument. Recommended for academic cultural studies collections and larger public libraries.?Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.