The 40s: The Story of a Decade

The 40s: The Story of a Decade
Ed. by Henry Finder with Giles Harvey

The 1940s were the before-and-after decade of the twentieth-century, and in this compilation of stories drawn from the pages of The New Yorker magazine the main fault line is evident: the Second World War. Before WW2 the New Yorker was not known as a heavyweight magazine, but under the stress of events and with a stable of writers constituting a who’s who of great essayists, critics, poets and short story writers, all under the editorship of Harold Ross, it was during these years that the magazine came of age. A collection of great writing and contemporary perspectives on the important events, fashions, art, and literature of the period, The 40s is a fascinating anthology filled with terrific material, much of which has remained surprisingly relevant into our own time.