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First Published:
Oct 2006, 288 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2007, 224 pages
Book Reviewed by:
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This article relates to The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
While many in the USA experienced an unprecedented economic boom in the
1950s, what was happening elsewhere?
Europe: The division of Europe into West and East persisted.
The foundations for the European Community were laid. Rationing continued
in some Western countries (e.g. in Britain up until 1953), but post-war
reconstruction was booming, due to the Marshall Plan (a four year plan
instigated in 1947 during which about $13 billion of economic and technical
assistance was given by the USA to certain European countries. At
the end of the four years, the economies of every participating country except
Germany had exceeded their pre-war levels.
The Middle East: The increasing importance of oil gave an economic boost
to many Middle Eastern countries, but the ruling elite were the main ones to
benefit. The fledgling state of Israel spent most of the decade in a
'state of austerity' as it tried to accommodate the approx. 250,000 Holocaust
survivors who flocked to Israel, and many of the 800,000 or so Jewish refugees
that were expelled from Arab countries, in response to the approx. 700,000 Arab
refugees created by the founding of Israel.
Africa: Many countries achieved independence as the European colonists
started to withdraw, but government corruption was rife, as were border conflicts, disease and famine.
Asia: In China, Mao Tse-Tung led the revolution against the Nationalist
government, instigating his "Great Leap Forward", which was a leading cause of
the "Three Years of Natural Disasters", at the end of the decade, during which
about 38 million people died from widespread famine. The Korean War came and went. The First Indochina War in Vietnam ended with the defeat of the
USA backed French and the partitioning of Vietnam into North and South, but American involvement in the region continued, eventually leading to the Second Indochina War ("Vietnam War").
The Caribbean: Castro overthrew the corrupt Batista regime; Haiti gained a new dictator.
The Soviet Union: Stalin died, democratic uprisings were suppressed in Poland and Hungry. Cold War tensions increased. Sputnik was launched.
Australia became a formal military ally of the USA. Mass immigration from Europe continued.
Filed under People, Eras & Events
This "beyond the book article" relates to The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. It originally ran in October 2006 and has been updated for the
September 2007 paperback edition.
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