Way We Were: New England Then New England Now

by Daniel Okrent

Photographs document everyday life in New England during the late forties and early fifties, and are accompanied by comments on how things have changed since then

Genres: History

179 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Daniel Okrent's 40-year career has encompassed nearly every form of mass media. In book publishing, he was an editor at Knopf, Viking, and Harcourt. In magazines, he founded the award-winning New England Monthly and was chief editor of the monthly Life. In newspapers, he was the first public editor of the New York Times. On television, he has appeared as an expert commentator on many network shows, and talked more than any other talking head in Ken Burns's Baseball. In film, he was featured in the documentaries Wordplay and Silly Little Game, appeared in a speaking role in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, and had what he calls "a mumbling role" in Lasse Hallstrom's The Hoax. Online, he headed Time Inc.'s internet efforts in the late 1990's, and has recently given in to the dubious charms of Facebook.

But all that, he says, was either preparation for (or distraction from) what he most wanted to do: write books. Beginning with Nine Innings in 1985, and proceeding through the 2010 publication of Last Call, Okrent has been (wrote novelist Kevin Baker in Publishers Weekly) "one of our most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction over the past 25 years." In addition to the books featured on this site, he was also co-author with Steve Wulf of Baseball Anecdotes (Oxford University Press, 1987), and author of The Way We Were: New England Then, New England Now (Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), currently out-of-print.

Reviews

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great photographs of new England life during the beginning of social security

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable and borderline nostalgic view of New England towns based on the photos taken for Esso Fuel mostly back in the 50's. Esso gave the photographers lots of space so lots of the photos don't even reference Esso. In the late 80's, Okrent revisits the towns and relations to people in the photos and what has happened in the interluding years to social and economic trends. He writes of many of the trends we continue to lament these days like the pace of life, dislocation and separation from family, and the difficulty of running a family business against the box store. Okrent is careful not to paint all the changes as negative and talk about how things were better back then. Yet, he does clearly share concerns of where we are going.