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Louis Menand traces art and thought in America. He starts at the end of World War II. He ends with the Vietnam War. He shows how ideas moved between Europe and America. Social change helped shape that flow. So did money and new tools. Freedom is a key theme in public and private life. This history of culture and ideas tracks a shift. It shows how America's culture won more respect.

The book follows those who write, think, make art and music. It contrasts Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan with life in Paris. There, it turns to Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In Memphis, Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley make music. They make it for young Americans. At Black Mountain College, Merce Cunningham and John Cage meet.

Menand looks at French existentialism. He looks at structuralism and poststructuralism, too. In art, he explores abstract expressionism and pop art. He traces the bond between Allen Ginsberg and Lionel Trilling. He looks at James Baldwin’s role in civil rights. Susan Sontag takes on New York’s thinkers. Films mark the rise of New Hollywood. These include Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. Easy Rider is one, too. George Orwell and John Lennon also appear. So do Betty Friedan, Malcolm X and Jack Kerouac.

Menand teaches English at Harvard. He writes for The New Yorker. He has also taught at Princeton, Columbia and CUNY. The New York Review of Books has run his essays. So has The New Republic. His book The Metaphysical Club won two prizes. One was the Pulitzer Prize for History. The other was the Francis Parkman Prize. In 2016, Barack Obama gave him the National Humanities Medal. This edition is a translation of The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War.