Growing Up Silent in the 1950s: Not All Tail Fins and Rock 'n' Roll

by Judith Thompson Witmer

While most of the popular books written about the 1950s focus on the "pop" culture of the decade, Growing Up Silent considers the difficulties of growing up in a society that expected its youth to always "be good." This book is not a litany of regrets, but rather an investigation of the factors that created such a generation as we were -- a generation, despite the suppression, that history has shown to be responsible and productive.

Silent is well-researched and the author, Class of 1955, speaks with historical accuracy. Enlivening the books are reflections by members of the Silent Generation, through diaries, scrapbooks, interviews, and personal narratives from an era described as one with "unimaginable restrictions."