The decade before brought World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, and the dawn of the atomic age. The decade after brought disaster in Vietnam and an explosive counterculture among young people in home.

But the 1950s? The Eisenhower era? Sandwiched in between some of the most dramatic periods in U.S. history, it's easy to think of the '50s as a bore, a time when very little happened in America.

But in reality, the '50s were anything but a simple sleepy interlude in our history. With American and Soviet forces stockpiling H-bombs in preparation for a nuclear showdown, President Eisenhower had to negotiate the tensest decade of the Cold War. Many of the social tensions that would later erupt in the 1960s—especially over race and civil rights—were already moving into the forefront of America's social consciousness.

And all the while, Americans were preoccupied with worry. Americans worried that the U.S. would be destroyed from within by hidden Soviet spies. A "Red Scare" swept the nation and had people looking under every bed for "commies" and "pinkos." 

At the same time, Americans tried to push the fear of nuclear annihilation to the back of our minds, distracting ourselves with new things to buy: cars, refrigerators, hula-hoops, provisions for our bomb shelters, Jell-O molds, you name it.

For those of us born in more recent decades, it's not hard to overlook the '50s. The era's reputation is pretty much Dullsville, U.S.A., after all. 

And if we do think about the '50s, we tend to view the decade through a lens heavily fogged with nostalgia (or its flipside: contempt) for the supposed social cohesion (or its flipside: conformity) of the era. This was a time, we tend to assume, of peace, prosperity, and apple-pie values. The good ol' days, in other words, and the calm before the storm of social chaos that swept over the country in the more contentious 1960s.

That's the image, one anyway, that's enshrined in our popular memory through cultural artifacts like the hopelessly sweet and corny TV programs Leave It to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show. America in the 1950s, it's easy to think, was just one great big Mayberry.

But the true story is more complex.

Yes, there really were elements of American culture and society in the 1950s that looked a lot like the placid middle-class utopia of Mayberry. But there were also all kinds of tumultuous historical currents swirling just beneath the decade's calm surface.

Rock and roll, after all, was an invention of the '50s, bringing with it many of the attitudes of teenage rebellion that remain so familiar today. And though we now tend to classify the Civil Rights Movement as a '60s phenomenon, the African-American freedom struggle had already done much to revolutionize American race relations long before the '50s were done and over with.

• It was during the '50s that the Beat poets let loose a radical literary howl against staid mainstream culture.
• And it was during the '50s that many radical technological innovations—starting with the computer—began to transform the way we live our lives.
• Dramatic changes in technology, transportation, culture, race relations, and social structures all came hot and heavy during the '50s, and all left their mark on our modern world.

The decade was, more than we usually imagine, a time of change.

And the man who led America through most of the era was one of our most paradoxical presidents. When he left the White House in 1961 after eight years in office, Dwight D. Eisenhower was considered by many political experts to be one of history's least accomplished—and perhaps even worst—presidents, but he was also one of the most popular with the public at large.

Later, many historians changed their views. Today, many have retrospectively come to see the man called "Ike" as a surprisingly astute leader. What was up with this grinning, bald-headed, golf-playing former general who led us through one of our most misunderstood decades?