The Origins of Cool in Postwar America

Abstract

“Cool is not a transhistorical concept,” Joel Dinerstein writes in his magisterial new book, “neither reducible to the clichés of a timeless or classic style nor to its contemporary sense of commodified rebellion” (p. 14). In this engrossing volume, he examines the development of “cool” as both an individual characteristic and a larger cultural category in the mid-twentieth century. Considering subjects from Humphrey Bogart to Lorraine Hansberry, this massive meditation deserves a place on the shelf of anyone interested in the cultural and social history of the United States. Dinerstein constructs a sophisticated examination of coolness as both process and product. This epic narrative extends from Paris coffeehouses to Hollywood movie studios, where an interlocking group of actors, musicians, and writers developed new conceptions of cool that reflected and redirected the effects of the seismic global changes of the postwar period. Dinerstein argues that coolness was a central and paradoxical mode in this tumultuous period, “a transitional mask of composure necessary for those rebels who realized that Western civilization had come to an end” (p. 28). He locates race and gender at the center of these transformations, exploring how African Americans provoked this variegated rebellion and spotlighting the shifting terrains of masculinity and femininity that coolness nurtured and expressed.

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