1950s

The Great Crash, 1929

Book

Book written by John Kenneth Galbraith and published in 1955. It is an economic history of the lead-up to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The book argues that the 1929 stock market crash was precipitated by rampant speculation in the stock market, that the common denominator of all speculative episodes is the belief of participants that they can become rich without work and that the tendency towards recurrent speculative orgy serves no useful purpose, but rather is deeply damaging to an economy

Invisible Man

Novel

Novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity

The Ascent of Rum Doodle

Novel

Short 1956 novel by W. E. Bowman . It is a parody of the non-fictional chronicles of mountaineering expeditions that were popular during the 1950s, as many of the world’s highest peaks were climbed for the first time

Waiting for Godot

Play

Play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon , engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives

Lucky Jim

Novel

Novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz