The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War Hardcover

A Must Read for All Creatives. An engrossing and impossibly wide-ranging and joyous plunge into the cross-currents of Western culture in the 1950s and 1960s. This book explains the fluid interchange of arts and ideas between the United States and Europe in the decades following World War II. It's not so much a history of culture being a reflection of cold war ideology, but a history of the culture that happened all around it. A starry cast of characters―from George Orwell and John Lennon to Betty Friedan and Malcolm X, Hannah Arendt, Pauline Kael and Jack Kerouac―bring personality to one of the most fascinating periods in western culture whose ideas of freedom are still felt profoundly today. By Louis Menand, professor of English at Harvard University, author of "The Metaphysical Club," which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in History. A longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. In 2016, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Standard Edition (April 20, 2021). Extensive notes, citations & references. Like new, pristine condition. 880 pages, weighing in at 2.56 pounds. This book informs our current arts and culture on so many levels, it's just ridiculous. Mind blown? Check.