| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940–1960. By Judith E. Smith. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. xvi, 444 pp. $39.50, ISBN 0-231-12170-9.)

Visions of Belonging is an analysis of novels, plays, television dramas, and motion pictures in the United States from the 1940s through the early 1960s. In her analysis Judith E. Smith relates some of the most popular of these vehicles to the prevailing social climate. Explicitly leftist or progressive work predominated in the Great Depression years, while more inclusive and nostalgic works sought to promote unity in support of the Allied effort in World War II. The postwar period experienced three very different social climates. At first there was a continuing commitment to antifascism, inclusiveness, and democracy, but, by the end of the 1940s and more or less coinciding with the fall of the Nationalists in China, the country saw the rise of anticommunism, which severely limited the range of expression of American authors and playwrights. While blacklisting in motion picture and television production kept many writers, directors, and actors from working in the 1950s, a continuing commitment to full civil rights and democracy found expression among African Americans both through organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League and through African American media such as the Chicago Defender and Paul Robeson's Freedom magazine.

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