The 1950s saw a major shift in the lifestyles of many in Britain. Employment levels rose to new heights, white consumer goods appeared in shop windows for the first time, television replaced the radio in many homes, rock 'n' roll was born, the National Health Service provided free healthcare to the nation, families went on holiday, and the new Queen was crowned — bringing in a glorious new Elizabethan age. Including interviews with former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock and footballers Bobby Charlton, Wilf McGuinness and Terry Venables, Recollections of the 1950s will appeal to all who grew up in this post-war decade. With chapters on schooldays, television and radio, trips to the seaside, music and fashion, these wonderful stories are sure to jog the memories of all who remember this exciting era.

WHEN PAT STEWART POSED ON THE RAILINGS OF BLACKPOOL PROMENADE ON A BLUSTERY DAY, LITTLE DID SHE KNOW THE RESULTING PHOTOGRAPH WOULD BECOME AN ICONIC IMAGE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. IT WAS ALSO ONE THAT WOULD FOLLOW HER THROUGHOUT HER FIFTY-SIX YEARS IN SHOW BUSINESS. Pat was born to dance. From pulling on a pair of ballet shoes at three, she became a prestigious Tiller Girl at seventeen, and high-kicked her way from Blackpool Pier to the best (and worst) clubs in the West End. After her mother picked peas in a field to put her only daughter on the stage, Pat went on to perform with and befriend some of the greatest stars of our time, including Laurel and Hardy, The Beverley Sisters, Morecambe and Wise and many others. Finally retiring from performing herself, she went on to become a showbiz agent, in the process meeting the notorious Kray twins. This is the memoir of a lady who has led an extraordinary life. From being stranded in Africa and dancing for her supper, to suffering from stage fright live on the Benny Hill TV show – Pat has seen it all. Her remarkable story gives a unique insight into what happened behind the scenes when the final curtain fell.

As one of the first post-WWII Baby Boomers, Jim Chambers' childhood and early teenage years were in the 1950s, a remarkable decade for the United States that saw enormous political, technological, and cultural changes. Although many books have covered the headline-making events of the era in great detail, few of these books give the reader a real feel for what daily life was like for Americans living in that decade, especially for kids growing up then. The author remembers the little nuts and bolts things of daily life for families during the fascinating decade known as the Fabulous Fifties. "Recollections" perfectly blends paying homage to the little day-to-day rituals with a larger scale examination of social issues and mores of the times, and it's equally entertaining on either level. "Recollections" is a warm, lovingly honest, and fascinating portrait of America in the mid-20th Century.

Chronicles the events and societal trends that created disturbance and conflict after World War II, discussing school integration, migration into the cities, the civil rights movement, and the breakdown of traditional values.

In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.

Individuals decide, in the present, how to recall the past, and, in the process, imbue the past with meaning that has evolved over time and is relevant in the present." "Tracing the changing meanings of the term over time, considering its connection to memory, analyzing its relationship with identity, and exploring the way in which nostalgia is used personally and collectively constitute the main thrust of the book."--Jacket.

The narrative approach is a relevant and enriching technique for uncovering, describing and interpreting the meaning of experience. This collection explores the challenges of performing narrative work in an academic setting, writing about it in an ethical and revealing fashion, and drawing meaningful conclusions. This stellar collection of scholars examine such topics as: how the larger construct of `personality' can read out of a life story; the development of multicultural identity as a dynamic process; the transition away from delinquent behaviour; the importance of cultural continuity for understanding loneliness in elderly refugees; race relations and how it relates to the meaning of the decade in which the interviewee

Martin H. Levinson lived in Brooklyn from his birth in 1946 to 1962, the height of the baby boom following World War II. He grew up two blocks from Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and attended Erasmus Hall High School, which boasts alums such as Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, and chess-wiz Bobby Fischer. The author's personal recollections of his middle-class childhood in Brooklyn during the 1950s alternate with chapters detailing seminal cultural events of that era including the advent of television, fast-food restaurants, big cars with fins; desegregation and the white flight to the suburbs; rock and roll, beatniks, hula hoops, The Kinsey Reports, the Cold War, McCarthyism, Playboy, and much more. Part memoir, part social history, Brooklyn Boomer offers a captivating portrait of Brooklyn and America in the mid-twentieth Century.