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Author: Scott E. Casper
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469649047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 741
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Book Description
Nineteenth-century American authors, critics, and readers believed that biography had the power to shape individuals' characters and to help define the nation's identity. In an age predating radio and television, biography was not simply a genre of writing, says Scott Casper; it was the medium that allowed people to learn about public figures and peer into the lives of strangers. In this pioneering study, Casper examines how Americans wrote, published, and read biographies and how their conceptions of the genre changed over the course of a century. Campaign biographies, memoirs of pious women, patriotic narratives of eminent statesmen, "mug books" that collected the lives of ordinary midwestern farmers--all were labeled "biography," however disparate their contents and the contexts of their creation, publication, and dissemination. Analyzing debates over how these diverse biographies should be written and read, Casper reveals larger disputes over the meaning of character, the definition of American history, and the place of American literary practices in a transatlantic world of letters. As much a personal experience as a literary genre, biography helped Americans imagine their own lives as well as the ones about which they wrote and read.
Author: Scott E. Casper
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469649047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 741
Get Book
Book Description
Nineteenth-century American authors, critics, and readers believed that biography had the power to shape individuals' characters and to help define the nation's identity. In an age predating radio and television, biography was not simply a genre of writing, says Scott Casper; it was the medium that allowed people to learn about public figures and peer into the lives of strangers. In this pioneering study, Casper examines how Americans wrote, published, and read biographies and how their conceptions of the genre changed over the course of a century. Campaign biographies, memoirs of pious women, patriotic narratives of eminent statesmen, "mug books" that collected the lives of ordinary midwestern farmers--all were labeled "biography," however disparate their contents and the contexts of their creation, publication, and dissemination. Analyzing debates over how these diverse biographies should be written and read, Casper reveals larger disputes over the meaning of character, the definition of American history, and the place of American literary practices in a transatlantic world of letters. As much a personal experience as a literary genre, biography helped Americans imagine their own lives as well as the ones about which they wrote and read.
Author: Elliott J. Gorn
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780190280956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Now published by Oxford University Press, Constructing the American Past: A Source Book of a People's History, Eighth Edition, presents an innovative combination of case studies and primary source documents that allow students to discover, analyze, and construct history from the actors' perspective. Beginning with Christopher Columbus and his interaction with the Spanish crown in 1492, and ending in the Reconstruction-era United States, Constructing the American Past provides eyewitness accounts of historical events, legal documents that helped shape the lives of citizens, and excerpts from diaries that show history through an intimate perspective. The authors expand upon past scholarship and include new material regarding gender, race, and immigration in order to provide a more complete picture of the past.
Author: Linda E. Smeins
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780761989639
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
This work follows the evolution of the pattern book houses and how they represented the notion of home and community in American historical memory. The book also includes illustrations of such communities.
Author: Bill Richardson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440628963
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, may be the most charismatic figure in the Democratic Party today and one of its best natural politicians whose name isn't Bill Clinton. He is the man Colin Powell has called for advice, and the man George Stephanopoulos once called the Red Adair of diplomacy in homage to his ability to put out international fires. He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize and is counted as one of our most knowledgeable politicians on Iraq and Saddam Hussein; on Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda; on North Korea; on energy policy; on Latin American affairs; on domestic politics; and on Hispanic America. Richardson's background as the son of an American businessman father and a Mexican mother has offered him an unusual starting point from which to seek a life in public service, but one of his most interesting roles has been that of global troubleshooter. What he has to say about how to negotiate to get what you want shows his true colors: He can be blunt, but charming; tough, but respectful; realistic, but hopeful. Through his work as a hostage negotiator sitting across the table from the likes of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and many others-as well as his toil on Capitol Hill, in the United Nations, and New Mexico's state government-he has learned the vital importance of preparation: know as much as possible about your adversary; test your partner's truthfulness; know how much you can concede; never lie and always be direct. Between Worlds is the surprising story of one of our most seasoned and captivating national figures.
Author: Elliott J. Gorn
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780190280963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Now published by Oxford University Press, Constructing the American Past: A Source Book of a People's History, Eighth Edition, presents an innovative combination of case studies and primary source documents that allow students to discover, analyze, and construct history from the actors' perspective. Beginning with Christopher Columbus and his interaction with the Spanish crown in 1492, and ending in the Reconstruction-era United States, Constructing the American Past provides eyewitness accounts of historical events, legal documents that helped shape the lives of citizens, and excerpts from diaries that show history through an intimate perspective. The authors expand upon past scholarship and include new material regarding gender, race, and immigration in order to provide a more complete picture of the past.
Author: P. Bradley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230100473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
This book offers a social and cultural history of American culture in the formative years of the twentieth century, examining forms such as vaudeville, early film, popular songs, modernist art, and many others in the context of contemporary social changes.
Author: Peter N. Stearns
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814779965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
Cool. The concept has distinctly American qualities and it permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American culture. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to West Side Story (Keep cool, boy.) and urban slang (Be cool. Chill out.), the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary. Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? From whence came American Cool? These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume. American Cool focuses extensively on the transition decades, from the erosion of Victorianism in the 1920s to the solidification of a cool culture in the 1960s. Beyond describing the characteristics of the new directions and how they altered or amended earlier standards, the book seeks to explain why the change occured. It then assesses some of the outcomes and longer-range consequences of this transformation.
Author: Barry Joyce
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498502164
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
This book analyzes the common narrative residing in American History textbooks published in the first half of the 19th century. That story, what the author identifies as the American “creation” or “origins” narrative, is simultaneously examined as both historic and “mythic” in composition. It offers a fresh, multidisciplinary perspective on an enduring aspect of these works. The book begins with a provocative thesis that proposes the importance of the relationship between myth and history in the creation of America’s textbook narrative. It ends with a passionate call for a truly inclusive story of who Americans are and what Americans aspire to become. The book is organized into three related sections. The first section provides the context for the emergence of American History textbooks. It analyzes the structure and utility of these school histories within the context of antebellum American society and educational practices. The second section is the heart of the book. It recounts and scrutinizes the textbook narrative as it tells the story of America’s emergence from “prehistory” through the American Revolution—the origins story of America. This section identifies the recurring themes and images that together constitute what early educators conceived as a unified cultural narrative. Section three examines the sectional bifurcation and eventual re-unification of the American History textbook narrative from the 1850s into the early 20th century. The book concludes by revisiting the relationship between textbooks, the American story, and mythic narratives in light of current debates and controversies over textbooks, American history curriculum and a common American narrative.
Author: Samantha Seeley
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Who had the right to live within the newly united states of America? In the country's founding decades, federal and state politicians debated which categories of people could remain and which should be subject to removal. The result was a white Republic, purposefully constructed through contentious legal, political, and diplomatic negotiation. But, as Samantha Seeley demonstrates, removal, like the right to remain, was a battle fought on multiple fronts. It encompassed tribal leaders' fierce determination to expel white settlers from Native lands and free African Americans' legal maneuvers both to remain within the states that sought to drive them out and to carve out new lives in the West. Never losing sight of the national implications of regional conflicts, Seeley brings us directly to the battlefield, to middle states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom where removal was both warmly embraced and hotly contested. Reorienting the history of U.S. expansion around Native American and African American histories, Seeley provides a much-needed reconsideration of early nation building.
Author: John D'Agata
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1555977340
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 821
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Book Description
"Now, with "The making of the American essay' the editor includes selections ranging from Anne Bradstreet's secular prayers to Washington Irving's satires, Emily Dickinson's love letters to Kenneth Goldsmith's catalog's, Gertrude Stein's portraits to James Baldwin's and Norman Mailer's mediations on boxing. In this volume the editor uncovers new stories in the American essay's past and shows us that some of the most fiercely daring writers in the American literary canon have turned to the essay in order to produce some of our culture's most exhilarating art."-- book jacket.
