America had just begun her recovery from World War II, when suddenly the Korean Conflict developed. The USSR became a major enemy in the Cold War.   Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to know that Communists had infiltrated the United States government at the highest levels.  Americans were feeling a sense of national anxiety.  Was America the greatest country in the world?  Was life in America the best it had ever been?  As the decade passed, literature reflected the conflict of self-satisfaction with 50's Happy Days and cultural self-doubt about conformity and the true worth of American values.

Authors like Norman Vincent Peale , The Power of Positive Thinking , or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen  -Life is Worth Living, indicate power of the individual to control his or her fate. The concern with conformity is reflected in David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd,  John Kenneth Galbraith  -The Affluent Society, William H. Whyte's  The Organization Man , Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged , and  Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. A new group of authors appeared on the scene in the form of the Beats, or the beat generation or some called them beatniks.  Best known of these are Jack Kerouac - Kerouac's works - On the Road, Dharma Bums, The Town and The City, Mexico City Blues (poetry), Lawrence Ferlinghetti  A Coney Island of the Mind  , Pictures of a Gone World, and Allen Ginsberg   Howl(Poetry). Gregory Corso , Neal Cassady , Michael McClure , Gary Snyder, William S. Burroughs were other beat authors giving voice to the anti-establishment movement.   Presenting another view of American life, African American authors like Chinua Achebe  - Things Fall Apart,