Nicholas Brown

The 1950s in Australia are viewed with nostalgia and understood as a time of innocence, a break in the progress of history. The decade's undeniable prosperity has become synonymous with conservatism, and inertia, reinforced by ideological stalemate, is seen as its hallmark. This book offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of the 1950s in Australia.

Nicholas Brown presents the decade as a time of great change, brought about by an affluence that solved old problems while creating new ones. Society became increasingly complex, mass consumption reached new heights and Australia's role in the world was re-cast. This book looks at the ways in which those overseeing society responded to these post-war changes; in short, how they governed prosperity.

The book traces the cultural and institutional background of familiar Cold War controversies of the decade and examines many of its standard emblems such as that focus of domesticated womanhood, the suburban home. But other of the book's subjects are less familiar - Australian involvement in Papua New Guinea, post-war decentralisation campaigns, the development of higher education. In addition, Brown relates the public world of ideological conflict and political reaction to the concerns with personality formation and citizenship.

A history of ideas as well as cultural, intellectual and institutional history, Governing Prosperity is a major reassessment of the 1950s. It will be particularly important for its analysis of the significance of the decade in the development of Australian society.