Midcentury Boy: My Suburban Childhood: From Ike to the Beatles

A memoir and family saga, Midcentury Boy is also a cultural and social meditation on post World War II America, told from a boy’s point of view. It was an era of unprecedented middle class prosperity and suburban growth that President John F. Kennedy called a “New Frontier.” For author David Hoppe, this frontier was located in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, a burgeoning suburb northwest of Chicago. He describes the history of the place — and the forces that shaped it, from the G.I Bill (not available to many African-American vets) to Sinatra’s poetry of loneliness; the Kinsey Report’s revelations about sexuality and the Beatles’ flipping the script for a new generation. Readers who grew up during the Baby Boom will find much to relate to here. They will also be challenged to think about what made their childhood prosperity possible and whether the seeds of its undoing were there from the start.