Problem
In the 1950s critics launched adevastating attack on the consumer culture for fostering a docile, standardized nation. Wherever they looked- toward a woman's place in the home or antiseptic one-class suburb or hte comatose campus-America seemed ... routinized. One writer described the United States as "The Packaged Society, for we are al items in a national supermarket-categorized, processed, labeled, priced, and readied for merchandising.
William E. Leuchtenburg, historian, ATroubled Feast: American Society Since1945, 1973 The Truman- Eisenhower period si regarded asconservative and backward looking. . But what this view obscures is the extent to which, without anyone realizing it, the preconditions for social change and reform were being established. .. . Before Selma therewas Montgomery. . . . before het hippies were the Beats. . . . Withal, ti had been a time of hope, a time of growth, and, in its best moments, even a time of glory."
William L. O'Neill, historian, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960, 1986
Using the excerpts above, answer (1), (2), and (3).
1. Briefly describe one major difference between Leuchtenburg's and O'Neill's historical interpretations of the 1950s.
2. Briefly explain one specific historical event or developmentthat is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts that could be used to support Leuchtenburg's interpretation of the 1950s.
3. Briefly explain one specific historical event or development that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts that could be used to support O'Neill's interpretation of the 1950s.