Philadelphia in the ’50s: Barson’s Soda Shop at 60th and Cedar was the center of the universe, hanging out was the point, and the height of cool was to be kicked out of the Cedar Theatre for public displays of passion. In this engaging memoir of teenage life amid the transformations of post-World War II America, Leo Braudy reveals his younger self as a somewhat clueless narrator in the throes of deciphering the innuendo and subterfuge of a confusing world. Was rock ’n’ roll really a Communist plot? Was “juvenile delinquency” actually a threat to social order? Was “conformity” truly the era’s norm? Weaving a personal narrative through the wider social context of disillusionment and apocalyptic fears, Trying To Be Cool reveals the vibrant eclecticism of a decade too often dismissed as a period of conventionality.

Leo Braudy is the author of The Hollywood Sign, From Chivalry to Terrorism, The Frenzy of Renown, The World in a Frame, and other books. He is University Professor, Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature, and Professor of English and History at the University of Southern California.