Mary D. Shell: The Mid-Century Correspondence

Chronicled here are several years in the life of a married woman in her 20s, whose husband’s career as a junior executive will involve numerous transfers ; my sister recounted that she moved 10 times in 13 years. These letters find Mary and Ralph Shell in Durham, North Carolina; Dayton, Ohio; Norfolk, Virginia; St. Louis; Millburn, New Jersey; Omaha; Leawood, Kansas; and the Upper East Side of New York. They bring to life a vanished era in which dual-income households were still the exception, even for college-educated couples, and where many of the consumer goods and services one takes for granted in the 21st century were still small luxuries. But change is already in the wind; the 1950s, a decade that my sister considered to be intensely boring, has come to an end; a new and more exciting 1960s are underway with their space race, Kennedy administration, and even greater prosperity.–from the preface by Robert Decker.