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Author: Lawrence Buell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674726324
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 582
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Book Description
The idea of "the great American novel" continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to take in the whole sweep of national fiction, Lawrence Buell reanimates this supposedly antiquated idea, demonstrating that its history is a key to the dynamics of national literature and national identity itself. The dream of the G.A.N., as Henry James nicknamed it, crystallized soon after the Civil War. In fresh, in-depth readings of selected contenders from the 1850s onward in conversation with hundreds of other novels, Buell delineates four "scripts" for G.A.N. candidates. One, illustrated by The Scarlet Letter, is the adaptation of the novel's story-line by later writers, often in ways that are contrary to the original author's own design. Other aspirants, including The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man, engage the American Dream of remarkable transformation from humble origins. A third script, seen in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved, is the family saga that grapples with racial and other social divisions. Finally,mega-novels from Moby-Dick to Gravity's Rainbow feature assemblages of characters who dramatize in microcosm the promise and pitfalls of democracy. The canvas of the great American novel is in constant motion, reflecting revolutions in fictional fashion, the changing face of authorship, and the inseparability of high culture from popular. As Buell reveals, the elusive G.A.N. showcases the myth of the United States as a nation perpetually under construction.
Author: Lawrence Buell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674726324
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Get Book Here
Book Description
The idea of "the great American novel" continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to take in the whole sweep of national fiction, Lawrence Buell reanimates this supposedly antiquated idea, demonstrating that its history is a key to the dynamics of national literature and national identity itself. The dream of the G.A.N., as Henry James nicknamed it, crystallized soon after the Civil War. In fresh, in-depth readings of selected contenders from the 1850s onward in conversation with hundreds of other novels, Buell delineates four "scripts" for G.A.N. candidates. One, illustrated by The Scarlet Letter, is the adaptation of the novel's story-line by later writers, often in ways that are contrary to the original author's own design. Other aspirants, including The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man, engage the American Dream of remarkable transformation from humble origins. A third script, seen in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved, is the family saga that grapples with racial and other social divisions. Finally,mega-novels from Moby-Dick to Gravity's Rainbow feature assemblages of characters who dramatize in microcosm the promise and pitfalls of democracy. The canvas of the great American novel is in constant motion, reflecting revolutions in fictional fashion, the changing face of authorship, and the inseparability of high culture from popular. As Buell reveals, the elusive G.A.N. showcases the myth of the United States as a nation perpetually under construction.
Author: JAY. HIRSCH
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780679721604
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Mark Robert Rank PhD
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199703302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
The United States has been epitomized as a land of opportunity, where hard work and skill can bring personal success and economic well-being. The American Dream has captured the imagination of people from all walks of life, and to many, it represents the heart and soul of the country. But there is another, darker side to the bargain that America strikes with its people -- it is the price we pay for our individual pursuit of the American Dream. That price can be found in the economic hardship present in the lives of millions of Americans. In Chasing the American Dream, leading social scientists Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Kirk A. Foster provide a new and innovative look into a curious dynamic -- the tension between the promise of economic opportunities and rewards and the amount of turmoil that Americans encounter in their quest for those rewards. The authors explore questions such as: -What percentage of Americans achieve affluence, and how much income mobility do we actually have? -Are most Americans able to own a home, and at what age? -How is it that nearly 80 percent of us will experience significant economic insecurity at some point between ages 25 and 60? -How can access to the American Dream be increased? Combining personal interviews with dozens of Americans and a longitudinal study covering 40 years of income data, the authors tell the story of the American Dream and reveal a number of surprises. The risk of economic vulnerability has increased substantially over the past four decades, and the American Dream is becoming harder to reach and harder to keep. Yet for most Americans, the Dream lies not in wealth, but in economic security, pursuing one's passions, and looking toward the future. Chasing the American Dream provides us with a new understanding into the dynamics that shape our fortunes and a deeper insight into the importance of the American Dream for the future of the country.
Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
From bestselling historian H. W. Brands, an incisive chronicle of the events and trends that guided-and sometimes misguided-our nation from the A-bomb to the iPhone. For a brief, bright moment in 1945, America stood at its apex, looking back on victory not only against the Axis powers but against the Great Depression, and looking ahead to seemingly limitless power and promise. What we've done with that power and promise over the past six decades is a vitally important and fascinating topic that has rarely been tackled in one volume, and never by a historian of H. W. Brands's stature. As American Dreams opens, Brands shows us a country dramatically different from our own-more unequal in social terms but more equal economically, more religious and rural but also more liberal and more wholeheartedly engaged with the rest of the world. As he traces the changes we have gone through as a nation, he reveals the great themes and dreams that have driven America-the rising focus on individual rights and pleasures, the growing distance between our global goals and those of the rest of the world, and the inexorable dissolution of a shared sense of what it means to be American. In Brands's adroit hands, these trends unfold through a character-driven narrative that sheds brilliant light on the obvious highs and lows-from Watergate to the Berlin Wall, from Apollo 11 to 9/11, from My Lai to shock and awe. But he also chronicles the surprising impact of less celebrated events and trends. Through his eyes, we realize the sweeping significance of the immigration reforms of the 1960s, which gradually transformed American society. We come to grasp the vast impact of abandoning the gold standard in 1971, which enabled both globalization and the current financial crisis. We ponder the unnerving results of CNN's debut in 1979, which sped up the news cycle and permanently changed our foreign policy by putting its effects live on our TV screens. Blending political and cultural history with his keen sense of the spirit of the times, Brands captures the national experience through the last six decades and reveals the still-unfolding legacy of dreams born out of a global cataclysm.
Author: Sarah Churchwell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379
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Book Description
A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases -- the "American dream" and "America First" -- that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.
Author: Jerome Charyn
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814715505
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
On history of American cinema
Author: Shing Yin Khor
Publisher: Zest Books
ISBN: 1942186371
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
As a child growing up in Malaysia, Shing Yin Khor had two very different ideas of what “America” meant. The first looked a lot like Hollywood, full of beautiful people and sunlight and freeways. The second looked more like The Grapes of Wrath - a nightmare landscape filled with impoverished people, broken-down cars, barren landscapes, and broken dreams. Those contrasting ideas have stuck with Shing ever since, even now that she lives and works in LA. The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 is Shing’s attempt to find what she can of both of these Americas on a solo journey (small adventure-dog included) across the entire expanse of that iconic road, beginning in Santa Monica and ending up Chicago. And what begins as a road trip ends up as something more like a pilgrimage in search of an American landscape that seems forever shifting, forever out of place.
Author: Ian Brown
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 1984858297
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
A powerful, moving collection of 170 portraits of Americans and their handwritten statements about what the American dream means to them. Shot by one photographer over twelve years, fifty states, and eighty thousand miles, American Dreams is a poignant, defining look at people from every walk of life and a remarkable exploration of what it means to be an American. Long fascinated by the idea of the “American Dream,” Canadian photographer Ian Brown set out to document, in photographs and words, what that dream means to Americans of all ages, races, identities, classes, religions, and ideologies. Over the course of twelve years, Brown traveled more than eighty thousand miles in an old truck, visiting all fifty states and connecting with hundreds of Americans. He knocked on people's doors; met them at town halls, diners, and factories; and approached them on main streets in small towns. He shot their portraits and asked them to write down their own American dreams. Their dreams and stories—which range from hopeful, moving, and optimistic to defiant, bitter, and heartbreaking—offer a fascinating, unparalleled perspective of the striking diversity and deep nuance of the American experience.
Author: James Truslow Adams
Publisher: Simon Publications
ISBN: 9781931541336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
A beautifully written story of America's historical heritage, by one of the country's greatest historians.
Author: Susie Yang
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982100613
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
“A truly addictive read” (Glamour) about how a young woman’s crush on a privileged former classmate becomes a story of love, lies, and dark obsession, offering stark insights into the immigrant experience, as it hurtles to its electrifying ending in this “twisty, unputdownable, psychological thriller” (People). Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar—but you’d never know it by looking at her. Raised outside of Boston, Ivy’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen—and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, and her dream instantly evaporates. Years later, Ivy has grown into a poised yet restless young woman, haunted by her conflicting feelings about her upbringing and her family. Back in Boston, when Ivy bumps into Sylvia Speyer, Gideon’s sister, a reconnection with Gideon seems not only inevitable—it feels like fate. Slowly, Ivy sinks her claws into Gideon and the entire Speyer clan by attending fancy dinners, and weekend getaways to the cape. But just as Ivy is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from her past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build. Filled with surprising twists and a nuanced exploration of class and race, White Ivy is a “highly entertaining,” (The Washington Post) “propulsive debut” (San Francisco Chronicle) that offers a glimpse into the dark side of a woman who yearns for success at any cost.
