2.10 Thinking Like A Historian

I read an article in the textbook about the suburban landscape of Cold War America. This piece of writing discussed what the culture in America was like at the time of the Cold War. This mainly focused on the development of larger towns and cities, and showed how this could cause people to lose their individuality and lead to the blending of cultures. The opposite effect was allowing for more individuality in more populated areas also being common. One of the writers mentioned in this textbook article states that "bigness has all the advantages in smaller settlements". This shows that her opinion is that big cities most often allow for a larger amount of diversity between groups of people. These larger areas of people also prevents them for being defined by their wealth, class, or social status, which was much more common in areas which were known to be more rural. Another topic that was discussed in this article was the postwar housing market. It became much more effective and cost-efficient after the cold war. In comparison to other American industries, the housing industry was one of the most well thought out at the time period. The Cold War spanned from the late 1940s to early 1990s, making it a very important and somewhat long period of time in American history.

This image shows how advertisements in America were used in a political way at the time of the Cold War.