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Cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar Culture, from Cockpit to Playboy

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The book is a collection of essays that give us a frankly nostalgic look at American society during the Cold War. Now that the war is over, and the US won a largely bloodless victory, the passage of time has removed much (all?) of the tension and fears. All that is left is a safe nostalgia, burnished by the analysis offered in these essays.

So we see the changing sexual mores, epitomised by Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine, and extrapolated by its imitators like Penthouse. While the changing tastes in architecture and furniture are created and driven by Fuller, Eames and others. Much else is covered in the book. Mostly of the experiences of the middle and upper classes of American society. With relatively little coverage of the poverty and racial discrimination of the times.