LEADER 00000cam a22006977i 4500
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008 210520s2021 us ac|||||||||001 0|eng|c
020 9780374158453|qhardcover
041 eng
082 04 306.09730904|223/swe
084 Mqa|2kssb/8 (machine generated)
092 0 306|bengelska
100 1 Menand, Louis|4aut
245 14 The free world :|bart and thought in the Cold War /|cLouis
Menand
250 First edition
264 1 New York :|bFarrar, Straus and Giroux,|c2021
264 4 |c©2021
300 xiv, 857 pages|billustrations, portraits|c24 cm
336 text|btxt|2rdacontent
336 still image|bsti|2rdacontent
337 unmediated|bn|2rdamedia
338 volume|bnc|2rdacarrier
504 Includes bibliographical references (pages 729-813) and
index
520 In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The
Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual
and cultural history of the postwar years. The Cold War
was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas,
in the broadest sense—economic and political, artistic and
personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer
Prize–winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the
story of American culture in the pivotal years from the
end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing
economic, technological, and social forces put their mark
on creations of the mind. How did elitism and an anti-
totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way
to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling
experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal
of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-
communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-
creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight
familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New
Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s
Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de
Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at
North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis
studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new
music for the American teenager. He examines the post war
vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-
structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop
art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling,
James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Right
spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York
Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise
of the New Hollywood. Stressing the rich flow of ideas
across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a
vital role in promoting and influencing American art and
entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American
government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the
end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised
culture had become respected and adored. With
unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that
happened. -- Provided by publisher
520 "A history of the thinkers, writers, and artists who
shaped intellectual culture in Cold War Europe and
America"--|cProvided by publisher
520 Menand analyzes the economic, demographic, and
technological forces that drove social and cultural change
in US during the twenty years following the end of the
Second World War. Introducing us to the personalities at
the center of this transformation-- artists and thinkers
both in the US and abroad-- he shows how they exerted a
powerful influence on postwar art and thought. It was an
exciting period of creative innovation and intellectual
debate, and it gave birth to the United States we know
today. -- adapted from jacket
648 7 1900-talet|2sao
650 0 Popular culture|zUnited States|xHistory|y20th century
650 0 Political culture|zUnited States|xHistory|y20th century
650 0 Cold War|xSocial aspects
650 7 Intellektuellt liv|2sao
650 7 Kalla kriget|xsociala aspekter|2sao
650 7 Populärkultur|xhistoria|2sao
650 7 Politisk kultur|xhistoria|2sao
651 0 United States|xCivilization|y1945-
651 0 United States|xIntellectual life|y20th century
651 7 Förenta staterna|2sao
655 7 Instructional and educational works.|2lcgft
