Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall from Grace - Softcover

Beers, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 015600531X ISBN 13: 9780156005319

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1997

Synopsis

Beer’s “important...fascinating” book(Los Angeles Times) shows how suburban California came to epitomize the american Dream-until its affluent complacency was shattered by downsizing, anxiety, and distrust.

About this title

Review:

In this affecting memoir of his childhood in a "blue sky" family--the aerospace community of California, specifically those working for Lockheed--David Beers mourns the passing of an era of limitless possibility and exploding prosperity. Combining poignant family reminiscence, interviews, and brief essays on culture and technology, this book paints a convincing and elegiac portrait of life in 1950s and 1960s America. Beers's father, Hal, a former aviator turned Lockheed engineer, is at the center of the book, and the author's deep ambivalence toward him mirrors his ambivalence toward the values surrounding his "blue sky" upbringing.

About the Author:

David Beers is founding editor of The Tyee. He was senior editor at Mother Jones magazine before moving to Vancouver in 1991. Since then, he has won national awards for his journalism in Canada and the United States, writing for The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, National Geographic and many other publications. During a three years stint at the Vancouver Sun he edited the “Fate of the Strait” environmental series, recipient of Canada’s National Newspaper Award for Special Projects; invented and edited the cultural section Mix; served as Chief Features Editor and wrote a weekly essay on social and political issues.

He is author of Blue Sky Dream, a memoir of growing up in Cold War California suburbia. He is a founding member of IMPACS, a Vancouver non-profit firm providing media help to non-profit groups, former vice chair of the Vancouver City Planning Commission, and a lecturer at the UBC School of Journalism.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 015600531X
• ISBN 13: 9780156005319
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288