"Middle school readers will find out about the important world, national, and cultural developments of the decade 1950-1959"--Provided by publisher.

Presents a journalistic overview of the first decade of the twentieth century in newspaper-style articles.

Against the backdrop of post-World War II Australia, Sarah Adams is a nurse who becomes involved in the affairs of the wealthy Bligh family. It is dealing with themes such as anti-Semitism, sexuality, and social class.

"When it's announced that 1958 will be the last year debutantes are to be presented at court, thousands of eager mothers and hopeful daughters flood the palace with letters seeking the year's most coveted invitation: a chance for their daughters to curtsey to the young Queen Elizabeth and officially come out into society. In an effort to appease her traditional mother, aspiring university student Lily Nichols agrees to become a debutante and do the...

"Freddy Otash is the man in the know and the man to know in Tinseltown. He operates with two simple rules--he'll do anything but murder, and he'll never work with commies. Freddy is a corrupt L.A. cop on the skids. He executed a cop killer named Horvath and it gores him. So Captain "Whiskey" Bill Parker cans him. Now, Freddy dons an array of new hats--sleazoid private eye, shakedown artist, matchmaker for Rock Hudson, pimp for President John F. Kennedy--and,...

Maryellen strives to invent a flying machine, become famous, and get her sister's wedding off the ground.

"Set in 1954, this compelling historical novel tells the story of a young girl's struggles and triumphs in the aftermath of World War II. The war is over, but the threat of communism and the Cold War loom over the United States. In Detroit, Michigan, twelve-year-old Marjorie Campbell struggles with the ups and downs of family life, dealing with her veteran father's unpredictable outbursts, keeping her mother's stash of banned library books a secret,...

A narrative history of how American home cooking changed in the 1950s--from "anti-cooking" marketing to Julia Child. In this surprising history, Laura Shapiro recounts the prepackaged dreams that bombarded American kitchens during the fifties. Faced with convincing homemakers that foxhole food could make it in the dining room, the food industry put forth the marketing notion that cooking was hard; opening cans, on the other hand, wasn't. But women...

For a small-town girl with a big dream in 1955, there is no address more glamorous than New York's Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives in its vaunted halls to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate Dolly comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. Vivian, a brash, redheaded British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel's rules, rounds out the unlikely trio of friends....

His life radically changed by an encounter with Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, journalist Daniel Quinn embarks on a turbulent journey marked by such historical events as the Albany race riots, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy.