This hugely ambitious volume seeks to convey the diversity and, in the words of its editor, “the sheer intensity of creative drive” of post‐war cultural discourses in the US. An introduction by Hendin, an English professor and Tiro A. Segno professor of Italian American studies at New York University, is followed by 15 contributed essays. These cover subjects as diverse as the Fifties, the Beats, literary representation of the Vietnam War, the Downtown New York art scene, post‐war popular music, drama, film, and Black, Jewish, Irish, Italian and emergent ethnic (Native and Asian American, Hispanic) literatures. Each piece is followed by a bibliography of references and further reading. With the exception of Marvin J. Taylor, a librarian, the contributors are academics, and are predominantly based at universities in New York. The writers approach chosen topics from their own individual perspectives.
Unfortunately, this individuality of approach makes for a very variable collection of essays in terms of length and depth of analysis. In a context where each essay necessarily serves as a representative survey, this can be problematic. For example, while the culture of the 1950s and African‐American literature are well‐covered in substantial studies, the pieces on music, post‐modern fiction and film seem by comparison, frustratingly brief. I would have thought it difficult not to mention Lynch, Tarantino or the Coen Brothers in any study of modern American cinema, but Leonard Quart and Albert Auster somehow manage that feat here. Some pieces, such as Mary Jo Bona's on gay and lesbian literature or Regina Weinrich's on the Beats, take the form of broadly (no pun intended) straight histories, complete with navigation‐aid subheadings for the browser, whereas others seem densely polemical. It is regrettable that Pat C. Hoy's reflective literary portrait of the Vietnam War does not include any reference to the major and recurrent cinematic representations of this conflict. Similarly, one could quibble that the totality of post‐war Irish American literature amounts to more than the political fictions and women's poetry discussed here.
A degree of unevenness also applies to the bibliographies. These not only vary greatly in length – the sizeable bibliography for Sterling Lecater Bland's piece on African American writings contrasts hugely with that for Daniel Fuchs's on Jewish fiction – but are also inconsistent, in that some omit the primary works discussed in the text and only list secondary critical material. Citation of quoted works is similarly variable. For example, John Bell gives page references for printed editions of all the plays quoted in his essay on American drama, while Pat C. Hoy, although quoting at length from various novels, does not.
The book concludes with a 30‐page index that is quite comprehensive and easy to use, primary works being printed in italic type. One could also wish for a year‐by‐year chronology of key cultural events. This is a surprising omission, one which arguably might have brought a degree of unity to a volume that, in celebrating diversity, actually presents a disparate assemblage of fascinating (sometimes outstanding) essays rather than a coherent whole. It is a useful introduction for the undergraduate or for those new to American literatures and culture, but too uneven and in places a little too superficial to be of much value to the more advanced researcher.
