Synopses & Reviews
The years immediately following the Second World War witnessed a dramatic transformation of America's working-class suburbs, driven by an unprecedented post-war prosperity and a burgeoning consumer culture. Chrome and neon were the new currency in this newly vital consumer culture, and no post-war consumer products trafficked more heavily in this currency than diners, bowling alleys, and trailer parks. Through these three distinctively American institutions, Andrew Hurley examines the struggle of Americans with modest means to attain the good life after two long decades of depression and war.
In the postwar years, diners, bowling alleys, and trailer parks were stripped of their hardscrabble origins and unsavory reputation and made over with chrome and neon, becoming physical manifestations of a newly urgent desire on the part of blue collar families to enter the middle class and to celebrate their arrival. And while they enlarged the boundaries of the middle class, they were also places where proprietors and customers determined who would be granted access to the new American Dream. Touted as a force for egalitarianism and inclusion, more often than not these institutions became battlegrounds where deep racial, ethnic, class, gender, and generational divides were revealed.
Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks tells the story of the humble origins, explosive growth, and gradual, sad decline of these erstwhile middle-class havens. It is a substantial cultural and social history that entertains as it opens a revealing window onto the larger history of postwar America.
Review
"It has a quirky charm." Wall Street Journal
Review
"Well-documented, tightly reasoned and balanced." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"A nifty bit of near-contemporary sociology that traces the effects good and bad, transient and enduring of the rampaging materialism that took root in the United States in the years after World War II....Perceptively unearths many previously buried meanings attached to the commercial artifacts mentioned in the title." New York Times
Synopsis
An entertaining and revealing history of diners, bowling alleys, and trailer parks charts the hopes, dreams, fears, and hidden divisions of America's postwar middle class. Through these three quintessentially American institutions, Hurley examines the struggle of blue-collar Americans to attain the good life after two long decades of depression and war. 30 halftones.
Synopsis
The years immediately following the Second World War witnessed a dramatic transformation of America's working-class suburbs, driven by an unprecedented post-war prosperity and a burgeoning consumer culture. Chrome and neon were the new currency in this newly vital consumer culture, and no post-war consumer products trafficked more heavily in this currency than diners, bowling alleys, and trailer parks. Through these three distinctively American institutions, Andrew Hurley examines the struggle of Americans with modest means to attain the good life after two long decades of depression and war. He tells the story of the humble origins, explosive growth, and gradual, sad decline of the diner, bowling alley, and trailer park in expert fashion. This is cultural and social history that knows how to entertain.
Synopsis
An entertaining and revealing history that charts the hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations of Americans as they pursued the good life in an age of affluence.
About the Author
Andrew Hurley is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980. He is also the editor of Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations and Credits - ix
Preface - xiii
Introduction: Remaking the American Dream - 1
Chapter 1 Diners - 21
Chapter 2 Bowling Alleys - 107
Chapter 3 Trailer Parks - 195
Conclusion: Giving Chase - 273
Epilogue - 327
Notes - 337
Index - 391