| Author | : Library of Congress |
| Publisher | : Viking Adult |
| Total Pages | : 584 |
| Release | : 1996 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : |
Presents a portait of America's social and cultural history between 1600 and 1900, told through letters, diaries, memoirs, tracts, and other articles and first-hand accounts found in the collections of the Library of Congress.
| Author | : Amy Louise Wood |
| Publisher | : Univ of North Carolina Press |
| Total Pages | : 366 |
| Release | : 2011-02-01 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0807878111 |
Lynch mobs in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America exacted horrifying public torture and mutilation on their victims. In Lynching and Spectacle, Amy Wood explains what it meant for white Americans to perform and witness these sadistic spectacles and how lynching played a role in establishing and affirming white supremacy. Lynching, Wood argues, overlapped with a variety of cultural practices and performances, both traditional and modern, including public executions, religious rituals, photography, and cinema, all which encouraged the horrific violence and gave it social acceptability. However, she also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images ultimately fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and the decline of the practice. Using a wide range of sources, including photos, newspaper reports, pro- and antilynching pamphlets, early films, and local city and church records, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching's relationship to modern life. Wood expounds on the critical role lynching spectacles played in establishing and affirming white supremacy at the turn of the century, particularly in towns and cities experiencing great social instability and change. She also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and ultimately led to the decline of lynching. By examining lynching spectacles alongside both traditional and modern practices and within both local and national contexts, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching's relationship to modern life.
| Author | : Nancy Crocker |
| Publisher | : Medallion Media Group |
| Total Pages | : 221 |
| Release | : 2014-07-15 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 1605425745 |
Missouri, 1910. John Hartmann is graduating from high school under the critical eye of his father and has no idea what options lie beyond the family farm and his small town. When Paul Bricken, nineteen and blind, buys a brand-new Ford Model T and suggests John drive him to Yellowstone National Park, John jumps at the chance. He’s less enthusiastic about inviting Henry Brotherton, who’s loud, crude, and a bigot—but Henry’s available both as a second driver and a tough guy who might be helpful in a tight spot. As the three young men set off on their tumultuous journey, America is preparing for the fight of the century between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries—and is headed for its biggest racial upheaval since the Civil War. With Yellowstone drawing ever closer and tensions rising, Paul, John, and Henry will soon learn there is a great deal they didn’t know about the fledgling American Midwest—or about each other.
| Author | : Noel Rae |
| Publisher | : Abrams |
| Total Pages | : 525 |
| Release | : 2018-02-20 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1468315145 |
“Eyewitness testimonies to the culture and commerce of slavery . . . coupled with smart commentary” from an acclaimed historian. “Essential.”(Kirkus Reviews) In this important book, Noel Rae integrates firsthand accounts into a narrative history that brings the reader face to face with slavery’s everyday reality. From the travel journals of sixteenth-century Spanish settlers who offered religious instruction and “protection” in exchange for farm labor, to the diaries of Reverend Cotton Mather, to Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted’s travelogue about the “cotton states,” to an 1880 speech given by Frederick Douglass, Rae provides a comprehensive portrait of the antebellum history of the nation. Most significant are the testimonies from former slaves themselves, ranging from the famous Solomon Northup to the virtually unknown Mary Reynolds, who was sold away from her mother as child. Drawing on thousands of original sources, The Great Stain tells of a society based on the exploitation of labor and fallacies of racial superiority. Meticulously researched, this is a work of history that is profoundly relevant to our world today. “Noel Rae expertly assembles the most consequential accounts from the era of the American slave trade. . . . A vivid and comprehensive picture.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America “Uniquely immediate, multivoiced, specific, arresting, and illuminating.” —Booklist “Many histories have been written of slavery in America, but far too few have let the participants, and particularly the victims, speak so directly for themselves. Rae has helped to fill that historical vacuum in this important work, and the voices are intense, eloquent, and haunting.” —National Book Review
| Author | : Melissa A. McEuen |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 374 |
| Release | : 2014-10-17 |
| Genre | : Photography |
| ISBN | : 0813158419 |
Seeing America explores the camera work of five women who directed their visions toward influencing social policy and cultural theory. Taken together, they visually articulated the essential ideas occupying the American consciousness in the years between the world wars. Melissa McEuen examines the work of Doris Ulmann, who made portraits of celebrated artists in urban areas and lesser-known craftspeople in rural places; Dorothea Lange, who magnified human dignity in the midst of poverty and unemployment; Marion Post Wolcott, a steadfast believer in collective strength as the antidote to social ills and the best defense against future challenges; Margaret Bourke-White, who applied avant-garde advertising techniques in her exploration of the human condition; and Berenice Abbott, a devoted observer of the continuous motion and chaotic energy that characterized the modern cityscape. Combining feminist biography with analysis of visual texts, McEuen considers the various prisms though which each woman saw and revealed America. Their documentary photographs were the result of personal visions that had been formed by experiences and emotions as well as by careful calculations and technological processes. These photographers captured the astounding variety of occupations, values, and leisure activities that shaped the nation, and their photographs illuminate the intricate workings of American culture in the 1920s and 1930s.
| Author | : Douglas Brinkley |
| Publisher | : Harper |
| Total Pages | : 624 |
| Release | : 1999-10-20 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780062716118 |
In this newly updated edition, Douglas Brinkley, one of our most distinguished historians, brings together a stunning collection of eyewitness accounts that chronicles the American experience from the perspectives of those who participated in its making. Witness to America includes nearly 150 works drawn from America's history, from the first shots of the Revolutionary War to the twenty-first century. From Patrick Henry's rousing "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" speech to John Brown's stand at Harpers Ferry; from Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise of a New Deal to Neil Armstrong's account of walking on the moon; from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to Barack Obama's landmark speech on race: this sweeping volume brings the milestones in American history vividly to life. Here are unique and revealing selections from such historical figures as John Adams, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, as well as influential individuals, among them Booker T. Washington, Charles Lindbergh, Ernie Pyle, Rosa Parks, and Betty Friedan. While many of the selections come from notable citizens, most are from ordinary Americans—schoolteachers, students, homemakers, pioneers, and soldiers—who describe the everyday events that have epitomized American life over the course of its history, indelibly demonstrating both the variety and vitality of the American character. Witness to America sweeps across the vast territory that is our nation, illuminating the movements, ideas, inventions, and events that have shaped and defined us—from the Pony Express to the personal computer; from the frontier to the rise of suburbia; from farming to modernization and the information age. Within these pages discover the art of whaling, learn about survival on the Gold Rush trail, experience the glory and trauma of war, and glean new insight on the great leaders. Here are debates and speeches, diary entries, letters, memoirs, court records, and more—including many first-person accounts that make history come alive as never before, such as a powerful description of the atomic explosion from a correspondent on the Enola Gay and a young student's evaluation of the changing roles of women at her high school. Witness to America is a fascinating, highly readable, and entertaining collection that shows us what America is and where it may go.
| Author | : Gary Weissman |
| Publisher | : Cornell University Press |
| Total Pages | : 290 |
| Release | : 2004 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780801442537 |
Introduction: to feel the horror -- Reading Wiesel -- The Holocaust experience -- Shoah illustrated -- Steven Spielberg and the sensitive line -- Claude Lanzmann and the Ring of Fire -- Conclusion: the horror, the horror.
| Author | : University of Rochester. Memorial Art Gallery |
| Publisher | : University Rochester Press |
| Total Pages | : 344 |
| Release | : 2006 |
| Genre | : Art |
| ISBN | : 9781580462464 |
A stunning, full-color volume that examines 82 pieces in the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery's American collection and their connections to American history, culture, literature, and politics. Seeing America is the first-ever catalog of the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery's American collection. Founded in 1913, the Memorial Art Gallery was created in conjunction with the University of Rochester so that it would function within a scholarly milieu, yet at the same time perform service as a community museum. From its conception it has been an ardent advocate for American art, which so many counterpart institutions snubbed untilat least the 1930s, and more often until well after World War II, in favor of European and Asian art. The 336-page, full-color volume examines 82 objects and their connections to American history, culture, literature and politics. The 73 articles present a running commentary on each piece by knowledgeable and thoughtful contemporary scholars and artists writing with expertise and insight, ultimately presenting a new and deeper understanding that enhances the reader/viewer's appreciation of the work. The tour ranges from Colonial times to the twenty-first century, from Maine to Florida to the far West, from mighty historical subjects to intimate byways, from august figures and events to the humblest and most anonymous. The diversity of American experience on display here reminds us that the best American art is inextricably bound up with the essential truths of American experience.
| Author | : Melissa A. McEuen |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 388 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : Photography |
| ISBN | : 9780813128450 |
