A child of the 1950s is how I think of myself. I was born in 1948, but my earliest memories are from 1951. The 1950s were the most important of my formative years, and today I feel a great affinity to the spirit of the 1950s. That decade in the United States had some deplorable traits … But for the most part I regard its values and practices as admirable, and I believe that the life I have lived owes much to these values and practices.
Growing up at the time I did, it was inevitable that I took for granted the values and world view of 1950s America. In the late 1960s, along with a great many college students, I vociferously rejected some of these values, and I regarded myself as part of the so-called counterculture. But in recent decades it has become clear to me that it is the culture of the 1950s, with all its faults, that I find congenial and identify with.
Title by Frederik Nebeker
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Heir to All the Ages
How lucky we are to have access to the incredible richness of human culture! I have drawn on it mainly in three ways: books, movies, and travel. Books have always meant much to me. The knowledge, thoughts, perceptions, insights, experiences, and feelings that are captured in books—I marvel at the treasure. Movies, too, have for more than a hundred years captured life in the most varied settings. And through travel we experience cultures in other parts of the world and see in art and architecture something of the rich past of these places.A World Transformed
The world I was born into was a different world from that of today. Our daily lives, our work, our possessions, our entertainment, our technologies, our world view, our attitudes about how to live—all have changed. I have tried to recapture what I experienced throughout my life, both the setting I found myself in and the thoughts and feelings I had. Through it all I feel that in many way I am a child of the 1950s.