The Internet is Full of Knowledge, part 53 million

[ashnistrike]

There is still no inspiration quite as inspiring as a story request from an actual person.  In related news, I'd be grateful for suggestions about any of the following:

1) Sources on Japanese American food just post World War II--either descriptive or actual recipes.  So far I've got this NPR piece on Weenie Royale, which is pretty cool even if it doesn't sound particularly tasty.  Cookbooks for modern Japanese American food are easy to find--anything prior to the general introduction of sushi in the US, not so much.

2) Sources, either fiction or non-fiction, for mood in the US in response to the start of the Cold War.  I have a pretty good handle on what it felt like after everyone got used to it (as much as one can get used to the looming shadow of nuclear war), but could use a better idea of the balance between post-war techno-optimism and oh-god-what's-that-thing-on-the-horizon in the late 40s.

3) When did commercial cross-continent air travel actually start to be a thing?  That is, at one point did it switch from one-offs for ridiculously rich people to regular flight schedules available to the merely well-to-do? Thank you, Wikipedia--looking up the actual airports I want to use gives me the information I need.  (As opposed to searching for general histories of air travel, which did not.)

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I have what I thought of as an "old" American Japanese cookbook -- turns out it's from 1980. Which I guess kind of counts as old, but not nearly enough so for your purposes.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Probably not, unless any of the recipes are listed as "this is something my mother loved when she was a child," or "this is my grandfather's secret sauce."

Research, feh. I'm just going to make them eat hot dog sushi the whole story.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Alas, 50s cookbooks are exactly the sort of thing that gets culled on a regular basis. I have asked the Japanophile reference librarian who's living in my house, but as yet she has found no bites.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I find fiction set in a period is useless, but actual contemporary fiction can be brilliant for the kind of things historians don't bother with. However, while I'm deeply overstocked on UK and Canada of this period, I have no US recommendations earlier than '63. Try old romance novels and detective stories in the library.

On non-fiction I can recommend Manchester's bio of MacArthur, which cuts right through it, and Jan Morris's _Manhattan '45_ though that's the wrong coast, And it's worth looking at the last volume of Orwell's essays, because he was writing for a left wing US magazine and there's feedback, as well as his perspective on that was happening there.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Those are good suggestions--thanks! The point about period fiction is good, although--maybe because I've been looking up bad pulp titles to stick in a fictional bookstore--I'm less than sanguine about my ability to find the good stuff. I will have to do some digging.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I find standard ordinary not special romance novels written for romance readers tends to be very good for what ordinary people aspire to and worry about and useful kinds of details of food and clothes. You could try my favourite Kathleen Thompson Norris, though she's mostly 30s and WWII and her post war stuff gets very odd, but you could try it anyway.