Film, Video The Forgotten Fifties: America's Decade from Look Magazine

Title

• The Forgotten Fifties: America's Decade from Look Magazine

Summary

• Author James Conaway discussed his new book, "The Forgotten Fifties: America's Decade from the Archives of Look Magazine." The more than 4 million images in the Look Magazine Photograph Collection (1937-1971) comprise the largest single collection in the holdings of the Library of Congress' Prints and Photographs Division. The 1950s was a transformative decade that included the Red Scare of Joseph McCarthy, the Korean War, "I Love Lucy," Brown v. Board of Education, the polio vaccine and Elvis Presley. For many Americans, the pages of Look defined the 1950s.

Event Date

• September 23, 2014

Notes

• -  James Conaway is a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University and the author of three novels, including "Nose," set in northern California's wine country. He is also the author of nine books of nonfiction, including "Vanishing America: In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes." Conaway's first novel, "The Big Easy," is based on his experiences as a police reporter in New Orleans; his second novel, "World's End," is a Louisiana coastal saga of politics and crime. He is the author of the Library's bicentennial history, "America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress, 1800-2000," published by Yale University Press in 2000.

Running Time

• 43 minutes 18 seconds

Online Format

• video
• image
• online text