My Pilgrim's Progress: Media Studies, 1950-1998

When his classic Within the Context of No Context was first published, George W. S. Trow parsed television's overwhelming dominance over America's consciousness. In My Pilgrim's Progress, he returns with a provocative tour of politics and the media to show "how 1950 got to be 1998."

The son of a tabloid journalist, Trow was raised in the "Deepest Roosevelt Aesthetic," and found himself seduced by the ordinaryness of the Eisenhower era. It was a time when the Old World was giving way to the New. Perusing The New York Times of February 1950, he gives us America at the peak of its power, with its politicians and celebrities (and the nearly hesitant advent of television) and the fresh terror of the H-bomb. At turns a cultural history, a eulogy, and a provocative commentary on contemporary America, My Pilgrim's Progress confirms Trow's place as one of our most brilliant and incisive social critics.