About this item
In a fascinating and beautifully written series of character portraits, The Fifties invokes the accidental radicals--people motivated not by politics but by their own most intimate conflicts--who sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Among many others, we meet the legal pathfinder Pauli Murray, who was tortured by both her mixed-race heritage and her in between sexuality. Through years of hard work and self-examination, she turned her demons into historic victories. Ruth Bader Ginsberg credited her for the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, but that was only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s, a time when the US, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany viewed gay people as subversives and mentally ill.
About the Author
James R. Gaines is an American journalist, author, and international publishing consultant who is best known as a magazine editor. He was the chief editor of Time, Life, and People magazines between 1987 and 1996 and subsequently the corporate editor of Time Inc. Gaines is a graduate of the McBurney School in New York City and the University of Michigan. His career in magazine journalism started at the Saturday Review, followed by Newsweek and People, where he was named managing editor in 1987. He was both managing editor and publisher of Life, the first time that one person held both the chief editorial and publishing jobs at a Time-Life magazine. His reinvention of Life as a weekly news magazine for the first Persian Gulf War won widespread acclaim and led to his appointment to the editorship of Time, making him the first person ever to run three Time-Life magazines. All three won important journalistic awards during his tenure and undertook important extensions: a television show and books program at People, network specials and custom publishing at Life, and at Time a classroom edition called Time for Kids and Time Online. In his first assignment as a publishing consultant, he founded a brand extension in the men's luxury category for American Express Publishing titled Travel & Leisure/Golf. Based in Paris, he has since advised publishers in Europe and the Middle East as well as the United States. He has four children, three of which reside with him in Paris. Gaines is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Historical Association, the Society of Eighteenth Century Historians, the Overseas Press Club, and the International Federation of the Periodical Press.
