Inventing American Tradition

Inventing American Tradition PDF Author: Jack David Eller
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
What really happened on the first Thanksgiving? How did a British drinking song become the US national anthem? And what makes Superman so darned American? Every tradition, even the noblest and most cherished, has a history, none more so than in the United States—a nation born with relative indifference, if not hostility, to the past. Most Americans would be surprised to learn just how recent (and controversial) the origins of their traditions are, as well as how those origins are often related to such divisive forces as the trauma of the Civil War or fears for American identity stemming from immigration and socialism. In pithy, entertaining chapters, Inventing American Tradition explores a set of beloved traditions spanning political symbols, holidays, lifestyles, and fictional characters—everything from the anthem to the American flag, blue jeans, and Mickey Mouse. Shedding light on the individuals who created these traditions and their motivations for promoting them, Jack David Eller reveals the murky, conflicted, confused, and contradictory history of emblems and institutions we very often take to be the bedrock of America. What emerges from this sideways take on our most celebrated Americanisms is the realization that all traditions are invented by particular people at particular times for particular reasons, and that the process of “traditioning” is forever ongoing—especially in the land of the free.

Inventing American Tradition

Inventing American Tradition PDF Author: Jack David Eller
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
What really happened on the first Thanksgiving? How did a British drinking song become the US national anthem? And what makes Superman so darned American? Every tradition, even the noblest and most cherished, has a history, none more so than in the United States—a nation born with relative indifference, if not hostility, to the past. Most Americans would be surprised to learn just how recent (and controversial) the origins of their traditions are, as well as how those origins are often related to such divisive forces as the trauma of the Civil War or fears for American identity stemming from immigration and socialism. In pithy, entertaining chapters, Inventing American Tradition explores a set of beloved traditions spanning political symbols, holidays, lifestyles, and fictional characters—everything from the anthem to the American flag, blue jeans, and Mickey Mouse. Shedding light on the individuals who created these traditions and their motivations for promoting them, Jack David Eller reveals the murky, conflicted, confused, and contradictory history of emblems and institutions we very often take to be the bedrock of America. What emerges from this sideways take on our most celebrated Americanisms is the realization that all traditions are invented by particular people at particular times for particular reasons, and that the process of “traditioning” is forever ongoing—especially in the land of the free.

The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts

The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts PDF Author: John Michael Vlach
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820312339
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Included in the examples are works from the Charleston and Old Slave Mart museums and the ironwork of Philip Simmons.

Congress and the American Tradition

Congress and the American Tradition PDF Author: James Burnham
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412820165
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This book is organized into three distinct parts: "The American System of Government," "The Present Position of Congress," and "The Future of Congress," which discusses democracy and liberty, and ultimately asks, "Can Congress survive?"

Selling Tradition

Selling Tradition PDF Author: Jane S. Becker
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807847152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Examining one of this century's most prominent "folk revivals"--the reemergence of Southern Appalachian handicraft traditions in the 1930s--Jane Becker unravels the complex network of individuals and groups that helped to redefine Appalachian craft production in the context of a national cultural identity. 37 illustrations.

American Tradition in Literature

American Tradition in Literature PDF Author: George Perkins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780075546627
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 4000

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Book Description


Divorce

Divorce PDF Author: Glenda Riley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803289697
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
According to Glenda Riley, “the historical conflict between anti-divorce and pro-divorce factions has prevented the development of effective, beneficial divorce laws, procedures, and policies. Today we still lack processes that move spouses out of unworkable marriages in a constructive fashion and get them back into the mainstream of life in a stable, productive condition.” Her pioneering historical overview offers proposals for dealing with a subject that now pertains to nearly half of all marriages.

Civilizing Torture

Civilizing Torture PDF Author: W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize Finalist Silver Gavel Award Finalist “A sobering history of how American communities and institutions have relied on torture in various forms since before the United States was founded.” —Los Angeles Times “That Americans as a people and a nation-state are violent is indisputable. That we are also torturers, domestically and internationally, is not so well established. The myth that we are not torturers will persist, but Civilizing Torture will remain a powerful antidote in confronting it.” —Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell “Remarkable...A searing analysis of America’s past that helps make sense of its bewildering present.” —David Garland, author of Peculiar Institution Most Americans believe that a civilized state does not torture, but that belief has repeatedly been challenged in moments of crisis at home and abroad. From the Indian wars to Vietnam, from police interrogation to the War on Terror, US institutions have proven far more amenable to torture than the nation’s commitment to liberty would suggest. Civilizing Torture traces the history of debates about the efficacy of torture and reveals a recurring struggle to decide what limits to impose on the power of the state. At a time of escalating rhetoric aimed at cleansing the nation of the undeserving and an erosion of limits on military power, the debate over torture remains critical and unresolved.

The American Tradition

The American Tradition PDF Author: Robert P. Green
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780675009607
Category : Hisory
Languages : en
Pages : 832

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Book Description


The American Political Tradition

The American Political Tradition PDF Author: Richard Hofstadter
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307809668
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics," Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Like only a handful of American historians before him—Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard are examples—Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.

Campus

Campus PDF Author: Paul Venable Turner
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262700320
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Winner, Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, Society of Architectural Historians. Campus is an exciting guide to a distinctive type of architectural planning, one that has reflected changing educational ideals from Colonial times to the present, and - as the embodiment of the ideal community - has often expressed utopian social visions of America. Organized chronologically, Campus looks at new patterns of open planning at Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale; the ambitious scale and dramatic setting of schools such as the University of Virginia; the park-like campuses of the land-grant colleges that represented a democratic reaction against elitist traditions; the Beaux-Arts campuses of Columbia University and the universities of California and Minnesota; the enclosed Gothic quadrangle at Universities like Princeton; and at the more recent flexible and dynamic campus plans that are a response to new educational needs. Among the architects and planners whose work is examined are Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Alexander Jackson Davis, Frederick Law Olmsted, Ralph Adams Cram, Cope & Stewardson, Charles Z. Klauder, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, William Turnbull, and Charles Moore. Paul Venable Turner is Professor of Architectural History at Stanford University. An Architectural History Foundation Book.