Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Management of Innovation and Technology Book

I felt such a sense of nostalgia when I read this book, for a place and time I never experienced. It's the same feeling I get when I watch A Christmas Story or It's a Wonderful Life.
When you're little and you get sick, you always know there's a place for you on Mom's lap - there is a comfort in knowing that you will be taken care of.
I never experienced the 40s and 50s, but I sense from that time that the same secure feeling existed - a confidence in the greatness of America, and its ability to survive and thrive because of its wholesome values.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s,I was educated from a sense of disillusionment about this earlier time and about that mentality. Now, we tend to villainize the ignorance and the arrogance of the upper white middle class, that innate sense of American superiority, because of the gaping hypocrisies and all that it left neglected. We note, for instance, that America had internment camps at the same time that we were taking Germany to task about concentration camps.
This pursuit of debunking the popular myth of the wholesome, pure quality of the 40s and 50s isn't without foundation. But I found myself on board with Fannie Flagg's message - there was something special about the 40s and 50s, and the attitude of believing good things of America; there was something good about that time that we discarded somewhere.
Today's generation has followed the Cold War, Vietnam protests, the Monica Lewinsky scandal... and I think the sense of skepticism that has caused us to take the 40s and 50s to task is the same attitude that shapes the way we look at our country now, and at the government. Without hope. Without faith.
The 40s and 50s may have done a lot of things wrong, but I can't stop myself from being nostalgic - just for the hope. This was the time that engendered so many of the hallmarks of American tradition - baseball, apple pie, small town life, white Christmases. I am glad that Flagg wrote about some of these things.