In the american popular imagination, the 1950s and 1960s stand in stark juxtaposition. The conformity of the 1950s contrasts with the rebelliousness of the 1960s. Consumerism was undermined by the challenge of youthful antimaterialism. Repressed sexuality gave way to sexual liberation. Political centrism yielded to polarization. A homogeneous mass culture fragmented into balkanized cultures. Consensus broke down into irrepressible conflict. For conservatives, the 1950s serve as a symbolic “golden age,” an era that atavistic (and terribly forgetful) Americans evoke when pondering current economic, cultural, and social problems. For those on the Left, the 1950s remain the “dark ages” of repression, corporate domination, and racial and sexual subordination.

In one of the most famous paragraphs of our most famous autobiography, Henry Adams located the precise moment when “eighteenth century troglodytic Boston” joined industrial America: “the opening of the Boston and Albany Railroad; the appearance of the first Cunard Steamers in the bay; and the telegraphic messages which carried from Baltimore to Washington the news that Henry Clay and James K. Polk were nominated for the presidency. This was May, 1844.”