The 50s: the story of a decade

Part one. American scenes / a note by Elizabeth Kolbert. Success (on Jackie Robinson, V salesman) / John Graham and Rex Lardner

Fallout (on radioactive debris) / Daniel Lang

Ahab and nemesis (on Rocky Marciano vs. Archie Moore) / A.J. Liebling

Mr. Hunter's grave (on a Staten Island cemetery) / Joseph Mitchell

The cherubs are rumbling (on juvenile gangs) / Walter Bernstein

Part two. Artists & entertainers / a note by Rebecca Mead. The perfect glow (on Oscar Hammerstein II) / (Philip Hamburger

Throw the little old lady down the stairs! (on John Huston and the making of The red badge of courage) / Lillian Ross

Humility, concentration, and gusto (on Marianne Moore) / Winthrop Sargeant

The duke in his domain (on Marlon Brando in Kyoto) / Truman Capote

A woman entering a taxi in the rain (on Richard Avedon) / Winthrop Sargeant

Part three. Shifting grounds / a note by Jill Lepore. The foolingh things of the world (on Dorothy Day) / Dwight MacDonald

Notes and comment (on the case against Senator McCarthy) / E.B. White

The psychosemanticist will see you now, Mr. Thurber (on fifties jargon) / James Thurber

A meeting in Atlanta (on the NAACP assembly) / Bernard Taper

Letter from Chicago (on the Democratic Convention) / Richard H. Rovere

Letter from San Francisco (on the Republican Convention) / Richard Rovere

Letter from Washington (on Eisenhower and Little Rock) / Richard H. Rovere

Part four. Far-flung / a note by Evan Osnos. No one but the Glosters (on a Korean War battle) / E.J. Kahn, Jr.

The seventeenth of June (on an uprising in East Germany) / Joseph Wechsberg

The old boys (on Chiang Kai-Shek) / Emily Hahn

Letters from Paris (on the Algerian War) / Janet Flanner

Letter from Gaza (on refugees in the Strip) / A. J. Liebling

Cuban interlude (on Cuba and its rebels) / Norman Lewis

Part Five. Takes / a note by Malcolm Gladwell. Characters. Ernest Hemingway / Lillian Ross

Jackson Pollock / Berton Roueché

Toots Shor / John Bainbridge

Harold Ross / E.B. White

Sylvester Weaver / Thomas Whiteside

Emily Post / Geoffrey T. Hellman

Frank Lloyd Wright / Geoffrey T. Hellman

Bobby Fischer / Bernard Taper

Mort Sahl / Whitney Balliett

Leonard Bernstein / Robert Rice

Lorraine Hansberry / Lillian Ross. Computers. I.B.M.s new brain / John Brooks

The Nim machine / Rex Lardner

Data processing systems / John Brooks

Election results via Univac / Philip Hamburger

The perceptron simulator / Harding Mason

Curious developments. The home freezer / Brendan Gill

Jazz class at Columbia / Whitney Balliett

Vaccinating against polio / John McNulty

Marketing Miltown / Thomas Whiteside

Rock 'n' roll's young enthusiasts / Dwight MacDonald

The push-button phone / Harriet Ben Exra

The arrival of videotape / Louis P. Forster

The quiz-show scandals / John Updike

Part six. The critics / a note by Adam Gopnik. Books. The vision of the innocent (on The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger / S.N. Behrman

Green on Doting (on Henry Green) / V. S. Pritchett

Black man's burden (on Invisible man by Ralph Ellison) / Anthony West

The book-of-the-millenium club (on Mortimer Adler's great books set) / Dwight MacDonald

Doctor life and his guardian angel (on Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak) / Edmund Wilson. The current cinema. Good tough stuff (on On the waterfront) / John McCarten

No sanctuary (on The 400 blows) / John McCarten

The theatre. Bouquets, brickbats, and obituaries (on Guys and dolls) / Wolcott Gibbs

Something to remember us by (on Cat on a hot tin roof) / Wolcott Gibbs

Beep the meem (on Marcel Marceau) / Wolcott Gibbs

Shaw with music (on My fair lady) / Wolcott Gibbs

Points west (on A raisin in the sun) / Kenneth Tynan

Cornucopia (on Gypsy) / Kenneth Tynan

Television. Peeping Funt (on Candid camera) / Philip Hamburger

Bananas in general (on TV comedians) / John Lardner

Thoughts on Radio-Televese (on on-the-air language) / John Lardner

Art & architecture. Extremeists (on Jackson Pollock et al.) / Robert M. Coates

Styles and personalities (on an Abstract expressionism show) / Robert M. Coates

The mud wasps of Manhattan (on tall buildings gone wrong) / Lewis Mumford

The roaring traffic's boom (on a congested metropolis) / Lewis Mumford

The lesson of the master (on the Seagram building) / Lewis Mumford

Music. Jazz records (on Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk) / Whitney Balliett

Man with a manner (on Glenn Gould at Carnegie Hall) / Winthrop Sargeant

Jazz records (on Coleman Hawkins) / Whitney Balliett

Part seven. Poetry / a note by Paul Muldoon. Boys at the window / Richard Wilbur

Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze / Theodore Roethke

Love for a hand / Karl Shapiro

The artist / William Carlos Williams

Living in sin / Adrienne Cecile Rich

Questions of travel / Elizabeth Bishop

Sparrows / Hayden Carruth

First things first / W.H. Auden

Voices from the other world / James Merrill

Mussel hunter at Rock Harbor / Sylvia Plath

Just how low can a highbrow go when a highbrow lowers his brow? / Ogden Nash

The arctic ox / Marianne Moore

The goodnight / Louis Simpson

Lying awake / W. D. Snodgrass

The road back / Anne Sexton

Part eight. Fiction / a note by Jonathan Franzen. Taste / Roald Dahl

No place for you, my love / Eudora Welty

The other Paris / Mavis Gallant

Six feet of the country / Nadine Gordimer

Pnin / Vladimir Nabokov

The state of grace / Harold Brodkey

The country husband / John Cheever

The happiest I've been / John Updike

Defender of the faith / Philip Roth.