Joel Dinerstein. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America

Joel Dinerstein wastes no time in The Origins of Cool in Postwar America. From the outset he makes clear that “cool” was central to the making of American life after World War II. Cool was a moral code and an emotional disposition, a new mythos of American culture. He contends that cool was “authenticity, independence, integrity and nonconformity . . . a resistant mode of being in the world” (4–5). This sprawling, deeply researched account offers multiple entry points into cool’s many lives in the arts and the everyday. Ranging over two decades, three continents, diverse characters, and many genres, Dinerstein gives us a definitive account of an indefinite concept. His work does not reject previous scholarship but supersedes it by scope. Well-versed in contemporary scholarship, the author also evokes an older myth-and-symbol school of American studies without that literature’s crippling silences and blindness. Anyone working in postwar U.S. history should read this book

Aesthetics · Art · Independence (probability theory · Linguistics · Literature · Mythology · Nonconformity · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Symbol (formal · The arts · World War II · Classics · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies