Menand looks at postwar culture
BOOK REVIEW
“The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War” by Louis Menand Nonfiction, April 2021
by Keith Ullrich
LW contributor
PulitzerPrize-winningscholar and critic Louis Menand (“The Metaphysical Club”) returns with “TheFreeWorld:ArtandThought in the Cold War,” a far-reaching book about the culture of post-World War II America. Menand shows how rapid changes in economic, technological and social forces played vital roles in the cultural transformation.
It was a time when ideas, painting, film and poetry mattered. People cared and “believed in liberty . . . in authenticity, and thought it really meant something.” But Menand is not blind to the fact that this was also a time of continued racism and poverty, as well as when some Americans were persecuted (some even prosecuted) for their political views.
Well-written and full of wit and verve, Menand’s book takes us on an expansive tour into the lives and minds of American and European intellectuals, artists, musicians, writers and thinkers, discussing how collaborative energy and creativity dramatically transformed American culture in a brief 20-year period.
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