The 40s: The Story of a Decade Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
Including contributions by W. H. Auden • Elizabeth Bishop • John Cheever • Janet Flanner • John Hersey • Langston Hughes • Shirley Jackson • A. J. Liebling • William Maxwell • Carson McCullers • Joseph Mitchell • Vladimir Nabokov • Ogden Nash • John O’Hara • George Orwell • V. S. Pritchett • Lillian Ross • Stephen Spender • Lionel Trilling • Rebecca West • E. B. White • Williams Carlos Williams • Edmund Wilson
 
And featuring new perspectives by Joan Acocella • Hilton Als • Dan Chiasson • David Denby • Jill Lepore • Louis Menand • Susan Orlean • George Packer • David Remnick • Alex Ross • Peter Schjeldahl • Zadie Smith • Judith Thurman

The 1940s are the watershed decade of the twentieth century, a time of trauma and upheaval but also of innovation and profound and lasting cultural change. This is the era of Fat Man and Little Boy, of FDR and Stalin, but also of Casablanca and Citizen Kane, zoot suits and Christian Dior, Duke Ellington and Edith Piaf.
 
The 1940s were when The New Yorker came of age. A magazine that was best known for its humor and wry social observation would extend itself, offering the first in-depth reporting from Hiroshima and introducing American readers to the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. In this enthralling book, masterly contributions from the pantheon of great writers who graced The New Yorker’s pages throughout the decade are placed in history by the magazine’s current writers.
 
Included in this volume are seminal profiles of the decade’s most fascinating figures: Albert Einstein, Marshal Pétain, Thomas Mann, Le Corbusier, Walt Disney, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Here are classics in reporting: John Hersey’s account of the heroism of a young naval lieutenant named John F. Kennedy; A. J. Liebling’s unforgettable depictions of the Fall of France and D Day; Rebecca West’s harrowing visit to a lynching trial in South Carolina; Lillian Ross’s sly, funny dispatch on the Miss America Pageant; and Joseph Mitchell’s imperishable portrait of New York’s foremost dive bar, McSorley’s.
 
This volume also provides vital, seldom-reprinted criticism. Once again, we are able to witness the era’s major figures wrestling with one another’s work as it appeared—George Orwell on Graham Greene, W. H. Auden on T. S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling on Orwell. Here are The New Yorker’s original takes on The Great Dictator and The Grapes of Wrath, and opening-night reviews of Death of a Salesman and South Pacific.
 
Perhaps no contribution the magazine made to 1940s American culture was more lasting than its fiction and poetry. Included here is an extraordinary selection of short stories by such writers as Shirley Jackson (whose masterpiece “The Lottery” stirred outrage when it appeared in the magazine in 1948) and John Cheever (of whose now-classic story “The Enormous Radio” New Yorker editor Harold Ross said: “It will turn out to be a memorable one, or I am a fish.”) Also represented are the great poets of the decade, from Louise Bogan and William Carlos Williams to Theodore Roethke and Langston Hughes.
 
To complete the panorama, today’s New Yorker staff, including David Remnick, George Packer, and Alex Ross, look back on the decade through contemporary eyes. Whether it’s Louis Menand on postwar cosmopolitanism or Zadie Smith on the decade’s breakthroughs in fiction, these new contributions are illuminating, learned, and, above all, entertaining.


From the Hardcover edition.

The 40s: The Story of a Decade by The New Yorker Magazine

From reader reviews:

Wendy Miller:

As people who live in the particular modest era should be update about what going on or information even knowledge to make these keep up with the era and that is always change and progress. Some of you maybe will probably update themselves by looking at books. It is a good choice for yourself but the problems coming to an individual is you don't know what kind you should start with. This The 40s: The Story of a Decade is our recommendation to make you keep up with the world. Why, since this book serves what you want and need in this era.

Judy Bowen:

Nowadays reading books are more than want or need but also become a life style. This reading routine give you lot of advantages. Associate programs you got of course the knowledge your information inside the book that improve your knowledge and information. The knowledge you get based on what kind of reserve you read, if you want get more knowledge just go with education and learning books but if you want experience happy read one with theme for entertaining like comic or novel. The actual The 40s: The Story of a Decade is kind of reserve which is giving the reader capricious experience.

Jason Norfleet:

Do you have something that you like such as book? The guide lovers usually prefer to select book like comic, short story and the biggest an example may be novel. Now, why not attempting The 40s: The Story of a Decade that give your entertainment preference will be satisfied through reading this book. Reading habit all over the world can be said as the way for people to know world better then how they react towards the world. It can't be claimed constantly that reading addiction only for the geeky particular person but for all of you who wants to be success person. So , for all you who want to start looking at as your good habit, you could pick The 40s: The Story of a Decade become your starter.

Helen Noyola:

This The 40s: The Story of a Decade is completely new way for you who has interest to look for some information mainly because it relief your hunger of knowledge. Getting deeper you in it getting knowledge more you know or else you who still having tiny amount of digest in reading this The 40s: The Story of a Decade can be the light food to suit your needs because the information inside this book is easy to get by anyone. These books acquire itself in the form which is reachable by anyone, yep I mean in the e-book web form. People who think that in publication form make them feel drowsy even dizzy this publication is the answer. So you cannot find any in reading a reserve especially this one. You can find actually looking for. It should be here for anyone. So , don't miss it! Just read this e-book kind for your better life as well as knowledge.