Synopses & Reviews
We commonly think of the psychedelic sixties as an explosion of creative energy and freedom that arose in direct revolt against the social restraint and authoritarian hierarchy of the early Cold War years. Yet, as Fred Turner reveals in
The Democratic Surround, the decades that brought us the Korean War and communist witch hunts also witnessed an extraordinary turn toward explicitly democratic, open, and inclusive ideas of communication and with them new, flexible models of social order. Surprisingly, he shows that it was this turn that brought us the revolutionary multimedia and wild-eyed individualism of the 1960s counterculture.
In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and andrsquo;50s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember. Turner tracks the influential mid-century entwining of Bauhaus aesthetics with American social science and psychology. From the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the New Bauhaus in Chicago and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Turner shows how some of the most well-known artists and intellectuals of the forties developed new models of media, new theories of interpersonal and international collaboration, and new visions of an open, tolerant, and democratic self in direct contrast to the repression and conformity associated with the fascist and communist movements. He then shows how their work shaped some of the most significant media events of the Cold War, including Edward Steichenandrsquo;s Family of Man exhibition, the multimedia performances of John Cage, and, ultimately, the psychedelic Be-Ins of the sixties. Turner demonstrates that by the end of the 1950s this vision of the democratic self and the media built to promote it would actually become part of the mainstream, even shaping American propaganda efforts in Europe.
Overturning common misconceptions of these transformational years, The Democratic Surround shows just how much the artistic and social radicalism of the sixties owed to the liberal ideals of Cold War America, a democratic vision that still underlies our hopes for digital media today.
Review
“The photographic war-time propaganda of
Road to Victory or the post-war humanism of The
Family of Man usually don't come to mind when accounting for Happenings, Be-Ins, expanded cinema, or Andy Warhol’s
Exploding Plastic Inevitable, but they are tightly woven in the social fabric of Fred Turner's
The Democratic Surround.”
Douglas Kahn, author of Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts
Review
and#8220;The photographic wartime propaganda of Road to Victory or the post-war humanism of The Family of Man usually don't come to mind when accounting for Happenings, Be-Ins, expanded cinema, or Andy Warholand#8217;s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, but they are tightly woven in the social fabric of Fred Turnerand#8217;s The Democratic Surround. In what will surely be a controversial revision, Turner maps the attempts of social scientists, industrial designers, European expats, and others to mold democratic personalities as a bulwark against authoritarianism, forming a civil foundation upon which arose spatial media experiments of the arts and counterculture of the 1960s. From an Americana more associated with Aaron Copland comes the radical surround sound of John Cage; from image management of psyches, psychedelic media environments.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;The Democratic Surroundand#160;is a dazzling cultural history that demonstrates how American intellectuals, artists, and designers from the 1930s to the 1960s imagined new kinds of collective eventsand#8212;different from fascismand#8217;s crowdsand#8212;that were intended to promote a powerful experience of American democracy in action. Drawing parallels across a wide set of venuesand#8212;from MoMAand#8217;s Road to Victory and Family of Man shows of the mid-century period to the 1959 National Exhibition in Moscow to the Happenings of the sixties counterculture, Turner challenges us to think about the lines between information, entertainment, art, and propaganda. Along the way he shows how important the media have become to the design of collective experiences and forms of democratic citizenship. A brilliant argument from a gifted writer, this book not only informs but also surprises!and#8221;
Review
and#8220;This is the true story of how a small group of artists and anthropologists set out to create an alternative to fascism during World War IIand#8212;and ended up setting the stage for the consumer-driven, media-saturated world we inhabit today. A gripping, well-balanced, and surprising history.and#8221;
Review
“The Democratic Surround is a dazzling cultural history that demonstrates how American intellectuals, artists, and designers from the 1930s to the 1960s imagined new kinds of collective events—different from fascism’s crowds—that were intended to promote a powerful experience of American democracy in action. A brilliant argument from a gifted writer, this book not only informs but also surprises!” Lynn Spigel, author of TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Televisi
Review
and#8220;Turnerand#8217;s book offers an important look at how our technologies might, or might not, resonate with the democratic politics many of us hope to better exercise.and#8221;
Review
"This is an utterly original, unprecedented work of cultural history and commentary, a tour de force, based on an exhaustive array of sources, explicating American experience from World War II to the present. There are simplyand#160;no books on this period with this scope."
Review
"Outside the Gates of Eden looks at how American cultural landscapes have transformed and endured from the close of World War II to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Looking at diverse Cold War places and spaces--from suburban housing developments and atomic bomb testing sites toand#160;countercultural communes, Silicon Valley garages, and the virtual realms of computer gaming--Hales considers the significant impact that Cold War sensibilities, especially the persistent threat of nuclear devastation, have had on American understandings of self and national identity. Engaging, personal, and persuasive, Outside the Gatesand#160;of Eden neatly synthesizes the lived experiences of postwar atomic anxiety and their enormous repercussions today."
Review
and#8220;In his new book, Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now, Peter Bacon Hales, known for his Atomic Spaces,and#160;sets the American nightmare of nuclear war against the American dream of peaceful suburban prosperity. He juxtaposes sites such as Levittown, New York, and Yucca Flat, Nevada, also known as Doomand#160;Town, where nuclear weapons were tested on tract houses in 1953. His penetrating analyses of American places as well as television shows, films, video games, and advertisements will appeal to readers in both American history and cultural studies.and#8221;
Review
"In Outside the Gates of Eden Peter Hales offers a stunning reinterpretation of US cultural history after 1945. It explores the shadows and promises of a nuclear world marked by excessive dreams and paranoia, simulated perfection and scenarios of disaster."
Review
"Peter Bacon Hales's Outside the Gates of Edenand#160; is simply the best reading of post-World War II American culture weand#8217;ve had or are likely to get. Hales makes sense of the seemingly disparate elements of America, from Levittown to I Love Lucy, from Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix, from the Atom Bomb to Pong.and#160;Beginning with the impossible reality of the atom bomb and ending with our retreat into the simulations of The Sims, Hales alternates between brilliant close readings of primary texts and comprehensive cultural analysis.and#160;Writing with authority at the top of his form, Hales has given us a text that is exciting as cultural history and essential for our self-understanding."
Review
and#8220;The history of ideas is intellectual archeology, and Stanford professor Turner is a man with a well-whetted pickaxe and an arsenal of delicate brushes.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;What makes the book so fascinating as both an intellectual and cultural history is Turnerand#8217;s ability to juggle multiple disciplines and schools of thought, all the while showing how a diverse lot of thinkers were grappling with the same questions about democracy, personality, and technology.and#160; . . . [An] excellent and thought-provoking book.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;The creators of 1960s happenings claimed that they were using sights and music to undermine the fascist American state. However, as Turner demonstrates here, the legacy of happenings dates back to WWII, and they enjoyed significant governmental support. Looking at American concerns with the abuse of media by fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler, the author makes a convincing argument that leftist artists and social scientist developed a theory of multimedia installations what would use mass communication techniques to further the cause of democracy rather than undermine it. . . . This book represents a significant contribution to literature on mass media and its uses in the 20th century. Highly recommended.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;The Democratic Surround is the book Alexis de Tocqueville would have written if, instead of spending his time with the respectable menfolk of New England in the 1830s, he had been lucky enough to hang out with the psychedelic pioneers of the California of the 1960s. Once he got over the initial shock (and it should not have taken him long: Tocqueville had seen his share of radical enthusiasts), he would have realized that in a prosperous and populous America at the peak of its Cold War glory, the experience of participation in a democratic polity was increasingly dependent on the immersion of its citizens in alland#8212;enveloping media environments, tightly composed communicative architectures where they could receive a vivid impression of life in a diverse and egalitarian society. . . .The achievement of Turnerand#8217;s book is to reveal the technical and aesthetic mediationsand#8212;a heady combination of social-scientific ideas, multi-media formats, and new styles of artistic installation and performanceand#8212;that enabled this phenomenological recalibration of the American democratic experience.and#8221;
Synopsis
Outside the Gates of Edenand#160;(referring to a song by Bob Dylan) tells the story of how the United States has struggled over our sense of self, as individuals and as a nation and culture, ever since becoming a global power in WWII.and#160; The book explores an interwoven set of themes: the recurrent nightmare of atomic and environmental holocaust, the changing positions of women, men and children in the home and in the culture, the creative tensions between subculture and corporate-dominated culture, the secret languages of American life, and the interpenetration of the physical, imaginative and virtual worlds in a new American geography driven by media and entertainment. Overarching these narratives is a larger story:and#160; the continuing attempt of Americansand#151;individuals, families, social and cultural groups, and the biggest corporate and governmental institutionsand#151;to define and control the master narrative of American life and its larger meaning by occupying its spaces, real and mythic.
Synopsis
Exhilaration and anxiety, the yearning for community and the quest for identity: these shared, contradictory feelings course through
Outside the Gates of Eden, Peter Bacon Halesand#8217;s ambitious and intoxicating new history of America from the atomic age to the virtual age.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Born under the shadow of the bomb, with little security but the cold comfort of duck-and-cover, the postwar generations lived throughand#151;and ledand#151;some of the most momentous changes in all of American history. Hales explores those decades through perceptive accounts of a succession of resonant moments, spaces, and artifacts of everyday lifeand#151;drawing unexpected connections and tracing the intertwined undercurrents of promise and peril. From sharp analyses of newsreels of the first atomic bomb tests and the invention of a new ideal American life in Levittown; from the music emerging from the Brill Building and the Beach Boys, and a brilliant account of Bob Dylanand#8217;s transformations; from the painful failures of communes and the breathtaking utopian potential of the early days of the digital age, Hales reveals a nation, and a dream, in transition, as a new generation began to make its mark on the world it was inheriting.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Full of richly drawn set-pieces and countless stories of unforgettable moments, Outside the Gates of Eden is the most comprehensive account yet of the baby boomers, their parents, and their children, as seen through the places they built, the music and movies and shows they loved, and the battles they fought to define their nation, their culture, and their place in what remains a fragile and dangerous world.
Synopsis
Groovy Science paints a decidedly different picture of the sixties counterculture by uncovering an unabashed embrace of certain kinds of science and technology. While many rejected science and technology that struck them as hulking, depersonalized, or militarized, theirs was a rejection of Cold War-era missiles and mainframes, not science and technology per se. We see in these pages the long-running annual workshops on quantum physics at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California; aerospace engineers turning their knowledge of high-tech materials to the and#147;short boardand#8221; revolution in surfing; Timothy Learyand#8217;s championing of space colonization as the ultimate and#145;highand#8221;; and midwives redirecting their medical knowledge to launch a home-birth movement. Groovy Science gathers intriguing examples like these from across the physical, biological, and social sciences and charts commonalities across these many domains, highlighting shared trends and themes during one of the most colorful periods of recent American history. The result reveals a much more diverse picture of how Americans sought and found alternative forms of science that resonated with their social and political goals.
About the Author
Fred Turner is associate professor of communication at Stanford University. He previously taught at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to his academic career, he was a journalist for over ten years, writing for the Boston Phoenix, Boston Sunday Globe, and other publications.and#160;
Table of Contents
Introduction
and#160;
PART ONE
World War II and the Making of the Democratic Surround
and#160;
1and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Where Did All the Fascists Come From?
and#160;
2and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; World War II and the Question of National Characterand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
and#160;
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The New Language of Vision
and#160;
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The New Landscape of Sound
and#160;
and#160;
PART TWO
The Democratic Surround in the Cold War
and#160;
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Cold War and the Democratic Personality
and#160;
6and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Museum of Modern Art Makes the World a Familyand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
and#160;
7and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Therapeutic Nationalism
and#160;
8and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Coming of the Counterculture
and#160;
and#160;
Acknowledgments
and#160;
Notes
and#160;
Bibliography
and#160;
Index