The 40s: The Story of a Decade

This captivating anthology gathers historic New Yorker pieces from a decade of trauma and upheaval—as well as the years when The New Yorker came of age, with pieces by Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Joseph Mitchell, Vladimir Nabokov, and George Orwell, alongside original reflections on the 1940s by some of today’s finest writers.
 
In this enthralling book, contributions from the great writers who graced The New Yorker’s pages are placed in historical context by the magazine’s current writers. Included in this volume are seminal profiles of the decade’s most fascinating figures: Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Here are classics in reporting: John Hersey’s account of the heroism of a young naval lieutenant named John F. Kennedy; Rebecca West’s harrowing visit to a lynching trial in… Keep Reading