What A Year It Was! 1945

WHAT A YEAR IT WAS! 1945 is a beautiful 176-page hardcover cocktail table book packed with hundreds of original photos, magazine ads and consumer pricing. It is loaded with facts on new products and inventions, advances in science and medicine, hit songs and films, popular radio and television programs, Broadway plays, famous people, the latest look in fashion and, of course, sports winners. Laid out like a college yearbook with zany illustrations, WHAT A YEAR IT WAS! 1945 will instantly take you back in time for a lively, fun look at the people, places and events that shaped world history and changed our lives forever.

WHAT A YEAR IT WAS! 1945 is a nostalgic, entertaining look back at a year indelibly imprinted in history. It was a year of monumental triumphs and staggering tragedies.

Pearl Harbor was attacked and remote volcanic islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa became household words and the backdrop for some of the most heroic, bloody battles ever fought. We witnessed a world polarized by deadly enemies and at the same time unified in the unprecedented formation of an international fighting team--the Allied Forces. Unspeakable atrocities almost destroyed the European Jewish population and the atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At last the war was over.

The war and its effects were woven into the fabric of our daily lives, but we still listened to "Fibber McGee & Molly" and "Romance of Helen Trent" on the radio, went to the movies to see "The Lost Weekend" and "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" for 15, flocked to Broadway to see "Carousel," a new Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, and "The Glass Menagerie," an intense new drama by Tennessee Williams. Jackie Robinson became the first black player to be hired by organized baseball, and the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. Bebop was starting to become popular, and the country readied itself to make a dramatic transition from a wartime manufacturing economy to a peacetime consumer economy.

FDR died on the eve of Allied victory, Harry S. Truman became President and Bess Myerson was Miss America. Mia Farrow, Tom Selleck and Itzhak Perlman were born and Cary Grant and Gary Cooper were matinee idols. Women were out of the kitchens and America had a national pride and level of excellence not to be seen again, perhaps for the rest of this century.

What about you? Where were you in 1945? Was that the year you were born or got married, graduated high school or college, started your business or served in the war? Whatever personal meaning 1945 holds for you, WHAT A YEAR IT WAS! will bring a wistful smile to your face as you relive that very special time.