Excerpt:
The Fifties in America were a contradictory time. This was a vibrant and wholesome era, characterized by malt shops, sock hops, beatniks and the hula hoop, hot cars and cool jazz. At the same time, however, the nation was plagued by racial injustice, anti-Communist paranoia and the dread of nuclear war. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 taught Americans an unforgettable lesson about the power of humanity's terrible new weapons, and this frightening awareness increased their concern about the spread of Communism.
Annotation:
1950's America: politics, pop culture, and technology broken down by year.