1950s

Everything Began in the 1950s

David Macaray | Posted 05.09.2012

Read More: Movies From the Fifties, 1950s Women, Baby Boomers, The Beat Generation, The Fifties, 1950s Movies, 1950s Music, 1950s, Rock and Roll, Culture News

Portraying the '50s as intellectually stunted not only misses the point, it wildly misrepresents what really happened. Not only was the decade not an era of mindless conformity, it was the diametric opposite.

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Bandstand and the Headband

Lea Lane | Posted 04.20.2012

Read More: Miami Beach, Dick Clark, Entertainment, Connie Francis, American Bandstand, Bobby Darin, 1950s, Celebrities, Teenagers, TV News

I remember dressing the morning of the show, putting on my snappiest outfit, aware that the TV cameras would probably do head shots of the audience, as they often did in the smaller Philadelphia studio.

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Romney Says He Will "Restore" America... But, to What?

Paul Abrams | Posted 04.12.2012

Read More: Bill Clinton, Debt, 1960s, George HW Bush, Microsoft, Ronald Reagan, Tax Rates, Real Americans, Mitt Romney, Biotechnology Industry, 1950s, 1990s, 2000s, 1980s, Apple, Jimmy Carter, George W Bush, 1970s, Politics News

Mitt Romney, whose business experience enabled him to be 47th in the nation with respect to job growth when he was a one-term governor of Massachusetts, has told us that he is going to "restore" America.

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It's All Eddie Cochran's Fault!

Binky Philips | Posted 05.26.2012

Read More: Eddie Cochran, The Who, Summertime Blues, Binky Philips, 1950s, England's Music Scene, Guitar Playing, Gibson, Gretsch, Entertainment News

Eventually, just the way I discovered Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, through the Rolling Stones, I did the same with anyone The Who were covering. That led me to Eddie in late 1967. Hunting down his albums in New York back then was almost impossible.

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Woman (Of a Certain Age) Writes Great American (Erotic) Novel

Elizabeth Boleman-Herring | Posted 04.24.2012

Read More: Novels, Women, Erotica, Writing a Novel, 1950s, Books, Books News

Well, OK: "Great"? I know, I know: my readers, the novel's readers, will be the judge of that, I hear you saying. But, for me, it had to be that pa...

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Obesity Epidemic: Is Your Mother to Blame?

Nancy Wurtzel | Posted 04.17.2012

Read More: Melinda Southern, Humor, Weight Gain, Los Angeles Times, Motherhood, Weight Loss, Obesity, Mothers, Mothers and Daughters, Childhood Obesity, Obesity Epidemic, 1950s, Fifty News

And, tomorrow, when I eat a piece of double-layer spice cake with cream cheese frosting (just for example), I will curse my mother. She smoked like a fiend, fasted when pregnant with me and probably force-fed me formula from a bottle.

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Desegregation in Sports

Naomi Menezes | Posted 03.21.2012

Read More: Jackie Robinson, Baseball, Martin Luther King, Civil Rights, Pee Wee Reese, Race Relations, Desegregation, Desegregation in Sports, 1950s, High School News

Sometimes, sports can tell us the history of a time period better than a textbook can. We can look to the story of Jackie Robinson to really understand the oppression people faced in the 1950s.

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The 1950s Invade 2012

The Huffington Post | Mary Kate Sheridan | Posted 01.11.2012

Read More: Marilyn Monroe, 1950s Women, Video, Doris Day, Remembering the 1950s, Nostalgia 1950s, 50s, 1950s America Culture, Marilyn, Life in the 1950s, 1950s America, 1950s, Fifty News

The 1950s: the era of music legends, drive-thrus, iconic movie stars and what many would describe as a more wholesome way of life. While this oft-idea...

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Coffee Corretto

Rosie DeQuattro | Posted 02.22.2012

Read More: Christmas Memories, Italian-American, 1950's, Christmas Morning, Maxwell House Coffee, Sambuca, Fifty News

A sense-memory of Christmas as a kid hit me full-on this morning. It's Christmas morning and I'm an 11-year old, hanging around the catastrophe of discarded Christmas paper in the living room and taking it all in.

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Why The Christmas-Song Canon Has A Baby-Boomer Bias

www.theatlantic.com | Posted 12.21.2011

Read More: 1940s, Christmas Carols, Christmas Songs, Bob Hope, Christmas, Holiday Traditions, Tradition, 1950s, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Fifty News

Titled simply "Tradition," the popular web comic xkcd recently offered a theory about Christmas pop songs-specifically, the ones that never seem to go...

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Heroes and Anti-Heroes

Jerry Cimino | Posted 10.04.2011

Read More: The Greatest Generation, World War II, WWII Veterans, The Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, 1950s, Culture News

Why was I drawn to this group of nonconformists who never set out to change the world but who did so anyway because they followed their own individual passions?

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Lydia Corbett On Being Picasso's Muse

Telegraph | Lydia Corbett | Posted 09.25.2011

Read More: Picasso Painting, Art, Artist Muse, Pablo Picasso, The Telegraph, Lucian Freud Dead, Painting, Picasso, Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso Muse, UK Arts, 1950s, Muse, Arts News

There is a very special quality to the rapport between an artist and his muse. In the summer of 1954, I was Picasso's. He was 72 and already a very fa...

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Francis Bacon Painting Sells For $28.7M

AP | Posted 08.29.2011

Read More: Contemporary Artist, Oil Painting, Art Sales, Francis Bacon, United Kingdom, Art Auctions, England, Contemporary Art, Christie's, Painting, UK Arts, London, 1950s, Arts News

LONDON -- Christie's auction house says a painting by Francis Bacon has sold for 17.96 million pounds ($28.7 million) at a sale in London. Christie's...

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WATCH: 'Harvard Psychedelic Club'

Don Lattin | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Video, Aldous Huxley, Psychedelic Drugs, Alcoholics Anonymous, Psychedelic, Drugs, Harvard Psychedelic Club, Lsd, 1950s, Books News

Here's some rare footage of an experimental LSD session that I came across doing research for my next book, a group biography of British writer Aldou...

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PHOTOGRAPHY: Poet Allen Ginsberg's Photos At National Gallery

nytimes.com | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Photography, Ginsberg, Photography-Exhibit, Art Exhibits, Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, Allen Ginsberg, 1950s, Poetry, Art Exhibitions, Arts News

WASHINGTON -- The poet Allen Ginsberg, who died in 1997, adored life, feared death and craved fame. These obsessions seemed to have kept him, despite ...

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Choice Interpretation on Marriage Trends

Philip N. Cohen | Posted 11.17.2011

Read More: Marriage, Media, 1950s, Family, Demography, Healthy Living News

On the one hand, on the other hand. I make graphs to help me understand trends and patterns, not just to present what I've already decided is the sto...

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Off-Broadway's Wonderettes Closing Its Gym Doors

James Sims | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Off-Broadway, Musicals, 1950s, New York City, Theater, Musical Theater, New York News

The Marvelous Wonderettes has been playing to enthusiastic crowds since it settled in New York City following a run in Los Angeles -- where I first saw the show and fell in love.

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Why It's So Hard Not To Be Fat

Christina Pirello | Posted 11.17.2011

Read More: Fat, Weight Loss, Sugar, Pesticides, Fast Food, American Diet, Prevention-Magazine, Steroids, Weight Loss Tips, Herbicides, Fast Food Industry, Weight, 1950s, Papa-Johnss-Pizza, Salt, Wendy's, McDonald's, Marketing, Processed Food, Losing Weight, Food Marketing, 1950s-Housewife, Canned Foods, Growth Hormones, Weight Gain, Blackberry Addiction, Pollan Food, Food Labels, Weight Control, Michael Pollan, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Health, Real Food, Toxic Waste, Consumer Protection, Heart Attack, Healthy Living News

Fat, sugar and salt; the triple threat to our waistlines... and health. Mere decades ago, the food industry made a conscious choice to seduce the Amer...

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New York's Consumerism

Reverend Billy | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Texas Oil, Monetization, American Consumerism, Consumer Confidence, Consumerism, Corporate America, Michael Bloomberg, New York City Apartments, American Culture, Corporate Greed, Consumer Spending, 1950s, New York City, New York News

Consumerism is what they call a "totalizing system." It expands outward across the landscape and simultaneously into the individual's psyche. It must expand.

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Toward 2012

Daniel Pinchbeck | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Psychiatry, Mushrooms, 1960s, Materialism, The 60s, Prophets, Books, The New York Times, Dmt, Prophecy, Drugs, Johns Hopkins, Wall Street Journal, Mayan Calendar, Lsd, Oaxaca, Indigenous People, 1950s, Quetzalcoatl, 2012, Timothy Leary, Cnn, New York Times, Mexico Drugs, 60s Culture, Shamans, Mayans, Style News

What might our society gain from the legitimate use and study of psychedelics if their benefits, as well as risks, were well understood and articulated?

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Down That Revolutionary Road Towards Many Award Accolades

Brad Balfour | Posted 05.25.2011

In Revolutionary Road, audiences see the destruction of a relationship never really fated to be, somewhat thrown together by expectations they have for each other but are never realized.

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Digging Out of the '00ze

Eric Lurio | Posted 11.17.2011

Read More: Time, Decades, Recession, Global Warming, Culture, 1960s, Bush Administration, The Kennedy Administration, George W. Bush, 9/11, Roaring 20s, The '00ze, Stuck in the '00ze, 1950s, Tabloid Journalism, Healthy Living News

Names are important. Generally the naming of decades is a no brainer. The question is what to call the decade whose final year is about to begin.

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