Free (ADE-DRM ePub) Outside the Gates of Eden [Post-WWII US Society Cultural History]

[ATDrake]

Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now by the late Peter Bacon Hales (Wikipedia), a former professor emeritus of art/architectural history at the University of Illinois in Chicago, is his accessibly-readable historical sociocultural examination of the US post-WWII, mostly through to the 1970s, free courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.

This is their featured Free Book of the Month selection for February, and looks very nifty indeed, going over not just the historical events and societal trends that occurred, but also taking an in-depth look at the underlying cultural shifts which effected them and were in turn affected by them.

Currently free through the month of February directly @ the university's website (ADE-DRM ePub available worldwide in exchange for your valid email address)

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because not only is it also a treat to get another quality freebie offered by the UCP, this is also one that happens to be rather Relevant To My Interests™, as I'm a sucker for edutaining-looking quasi-academic pop-history of sociocultural change stuff by an expert in the field.

Enjoy!

Description
Exhilaration and anxiety, the yearning for community and the quest for identity: these shared, contradictory feelings course through Outside the Gates of Eden, Peter Bacon Hales’s ambitious and intoxicating new history of America from the atomic age to the virtual age.

Born under the shadow of the bomb, with little security but the cold comfort of duck-and-cover, the postwar generations lived through—and led—some of the most momentous changes in all of American history. Hales explores those decades through perceptive accounts of a succession of resonant moments, spaces, and artifacts of everyday life—drawing unexpected connections and tracing the intertwined undercurrents of promise and peril. From sharp analyses of newsreels of the first atomic bomb tests and the invention of a new ideal American life in Levittown; from the music emerging from the Brill Building and the Beach Boys, and a brilliant account of Bob Dylan’s transformations; from the painful failures of communes and the breathtaking utopian potential of the early days of the digital age, Hales reveals a nation, and a dream, in transition, as a new generation began to make its mark on the world it was inheriting.

Full of richly drawn set-pieces and countless stories of unforgettable moments, Outside the Gates of Eden is the most comprehensive account yet of the baby boomers, their parents, and their children, as seen through the places they built, the music and movies and shows they loved, and the battles they fought to define their nation, their culture, and their place in what remains a fragile and dangerous world.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that today will be the last day to pick up the freebie if you're interested.