7 Books That Capture NYC In The 1950s

New York City serves as the perfect backdrop for the protagonist Holden Caulfield’s misadventures, a place where you can feel totally alone and isolated while surrounded by millions of people after being expelled from boarding school. While the book was written for adults, it is often required reading in high schools, and remains a favorite with teenagers due to its depiction of teenage angst and loneliness. Caulfield’s adventures include skating with his romantic interest Sally at Rockefeller Center, a solo trip to the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall, and visits to numerous city bars. The New York Times mapped out Caulfield’s footsteps in 2010.

Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY, USA +1 212 465 6741

Published in 2014, but set largely in 1950s New York, All That Is served as underappreciated writer James Salter’s epitaph. The book follows Philip Bowman, a World War II Navy veteran who has returned to New York to success in the publishing industry. Despite his professional achievements, Bowman remains unlucky in love, moving through a string of unsuccessful relationships. For those unfamiliar with Salter’s exquisite writing, All That Is will be a heart wrenching journey through evocative prose. Those familiar with Salter’s oevre may find that All That Is falters at parts, with elements of the story even drawing on Salter’s own experiences as told in his memoir Burning the Days. Salter himself was born and raised in New York, and attended Horace Mann School and West Point before going on to spend a decade in the Air Force. He returned to New York after leaving the military, and lived his later years in the Hamptons. He died in June 2015.

The novel, published in 2009, follows Eilis Lacey, an Irish woman who emigrates to New York to leave a jobless life in her home country. While the rumors she heard of an abundance of jobs in New York turns out to be true—she finds work in a department store—Lacey is at first disappointed with her new, surprisingly boring life. However, she falls in love with an Italian immigrant, passes a night course in bookkeeping, and they begin to develop their own American dream.

Members of an infantry platoon, including Major Bennet Marco and Sergeant Raymond Shaw, are captured during the Korean War and brainwashed to believe that Sergeant Shaw saved their lives in combat, for which he is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. No members of the platoon are aware that anything is wrong, until Maj Marco begins to have nightmares of Shaw murdering two members of the platoon under observation by Chinese and Soviet officials. Once he learns that another member of the platoon has had the same nightmares, he discovers that Shaw is a sleeper agent, handled by his Communist mother and re-programmed to assassinate a presidential candidate during the national convention at (the original) Madison Square Garden in order to stage a coup d’état. An intervention by Marco—a meeting with Shaw at the Central Park Zoo right before the convention—leads Shaw to make a different choice.

Madison Square Garden, 4 Pennsylvania Plaza, New York, NY, USA +1 212 465 6741

Central Park Zoo, 64th Street and Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, USA +1 212 439 6500
By Anna G, The Fearless Flashpacker

Anna G, the Fearless Flashpacker, is a New Yorker currently on an extended vacation to California, where she has lived since 2010. She travels the world only with carry-on luggage and a stuffed camel named Humps. Follow her travels at www.fearlessflashpacker.com.