100 books like The Fifties

Populuxe was the first book I read that connected art, consumerism, and industrial design in clear, pointed, and witty language. Hine, an author as well as a critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, covers what he calls “America’s spending spree” decade (1954-1964), by showing the connections revealed by shoppers’ choice of cars, homes, furniture, and appliances. Populuxe resonated for me because Hine wielded the tools of the critic and the historian and explained the art and design influences to be found in dishwashers, tailfins, and Naughyde. My curiosity about why people buy certain products was piqued by Hine’s analysis and showed readers that not all essays on art and design need to drip with impenetrable prose or obtuse insights.

Randall Rothenberg, an advertising industry reporter for The New York Times, applied the Tracy Kidder Method of journalistic immersion in a process or profession to a single advertising campaign from start to finish. He chose wisely, focusing on the then up-and-coming Weiden + Kennedy—an ad agency riding the success of Nike’s “Bo Knows” commercials. His choice of product? Subaru of America, which, at the time, was the cellar-dweller of Japanese imports. Rothenberg effortlessly captures the high-stakes tension of the ad industry while not neglecting aspects of the industry that are more smoke and mirrors than research-grounded truths.

Rothenberg is exceptional at providing windows into advertising history as his story unfolds. Throughout the span of the campaign, he unsparingly documents inspiration, idiocy (W+K assigns a creative director who hates cars), and an intimate look at how advertising works.

Examining automobiles people buy offers, if not a window into their soul, then a peek into their personal values. Ingrassia, a Wall Street Journal automotive reporter, guides us down a freeway of history and consumerism that “begat the middle class, the suburbs, shopping malls, McDonald's, Taco Bell, drive-through banking and other things.” He traces our romance with tires, horsepower, and wood-trimmed interiors through 15 models ranging from the Model T to the Prius. As stories of the Corvette, Jeep, GTO, VW Beetle and VWMicrobus, the unfairly maligned Chevy Corvair, and others roll by, Ingrassia integrates how each successive model forever changed customer desires and the often-cramped minds of auto executives. His cruise-control writing style rewards us with a smooth journey among the cars of our dreams.

Bayley’s mastery of the language of design is apparent from his opening introduction to this collection of essays on American and European products. Bayley’s overview is not only essential for understanding design; it’s also a must-read for those who want to write about design. Bayley’s opinions are the gold standard, cemented by the certainty of judgment that comes so easily to British writers. He writes with reverence as well as an incisive point of view about the Eames chair, a Studebaker coupe, and dozens of other milestone products. Among the designer biographies: Wells Coates, Mies van der Rohe, and, yes, Raymond Loewy. It is the pre-eminent introduction to the field of industrial design. Once read, finding his other works (“Harley Earl,” “Ugly,” “Taste,” “Cars,” “Design A-Z,” “Sex,” “Woman as Design,” and other titles) becomes mandatory.

This groundbreaking and wonderfully written study of two “protest” leaders during the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States shows us what happens when truly hard times hit ordinary people, and what sort of leaders they then turn to. Brinkley brilliantly chronicles the rise of Louisiana politician Huey Long, the “Kingfish”, from obscurity in the poor Jim Crow south to becoming, by the time he was assassinated in 1935, the most significant political threat to the popular President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Long’s calls for wealth redistribution, contempt for traditional elites, and disregard for democratic institutions, make him an important historical example of so-called populist leadership, and of the power and appeal of populism in times of crisis.

Beginning with service as a military officer at the US embassy in Tripoli in 2009, Frederic Wehrey has had a long association with Libya.

This has enabled him to develop an unparalleled range of contacts inside and outside the country.

With a solid grounding in Libyan history, his analysis of socio-economic and political events has an authoritative freshness that few can equal.

In The Burning Shores, which focuses on Libya after the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime, he explores the missteps and turning points that led to the splintering of Libya, an outcome he rightly believes was not preordained.

This is an exceptional book; it is authoritative, informative, accessible, and will stand the test of time. 

Many people get involved with Africa through their concern for its’ poverty and with a genuine desire to help “develop” Africa. Ferguson’s analysis shows how counter-productive this is without an understanding of the ways in which African society differs from western society. Much social theory is generalizations based on interpretations of western development. These ideas are then projected into Africa on the basis that the more they are like us, the more developed they will be. I hope these five books help you un-learn this perspective and embrace the originality and genius of Africa.

This book also centers on a post-dictatorship period, looking not only at accountability for the thousands that were killed or disappeared during Argentina’s military junta, but also at the struggle for social and economic rights amid an economic crisis in the 1980s.

Adair centers her book on the Raúl Alfonsín presidency to look at the various challenges he faced, and the demands that citizens placed on his government to ensure basic needs. The book is also imminently readable and filled with moving anecdotes about citizens’ struggles during this period. 

Readers are spoiled for choice when it comes to investigative journalism and narrative non-fiction about contemporary India, but Siddhartha Deb’s collection of essays (titled after F. Scott Fitzgerald) stands out in a crowded field. Though a decade old, it has not lost any of its relevance or punch. Deb profiles a series of unforgettable figures, from a controversial upstart businessman to emigrant engineers, peasant revolutionaries, informal industrial workers, and a waitress who serves the rich and powerful. The book moves seamlessly from the city to the countryside, exposing both the aspirations and the frustrations of capitalism as it is really lived and felt by a wide cross-section of people across India. 

The title of this book is doubly surprising. Is North Korea enterprising? And North Korea “in the world economy”? Isn’t it the hermit kingdom? Hastings picks up a theme that was central to our work on the famine: that the socialist sector in North Korea has undergone a secular decline while households and entrepreneurs have constructed a complex market economy that is partially above ground, partly below it. But Hastings goes further, showing how that market economy is integrally tied to China. And the book has the added attraction of focusing attention on lucrative black markets that range from amphetamine to counterfeited one hundred dollar bills.