My Pilgrim's Progress: Media Studies (Hardcover)

In his distinctively opinionated and wry voice, George Trow tells us "how 1950 got to be 1997." He takes the earlier year as the moment the Old World gave way to the New: Winston Churchill had just been named Man of the Half-Century by Time magazine, and George Bernard Shaw and William Randolph Hearst were both still alive. But before long the world these powerful men represented would disappear. The "Deepest Roosevelt Aesthetic" would give way to the extraordinary/ordinary qualities of the Eisenhower era, which in turn would vanish into the maelstroms of the 1960s. Taking the New York Times of February 1950 as his point of departure, Trow shows how and why these changes came to pass, and what our society has lost in the process.

With My Pilgrim's Progress, Trow once again proves himself to be an inimitable, invaluable guide through our lives and times.