Things American

Author : Wendy A. Woloson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022666449X
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Crap written by Wendy A. Woloson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-05 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crap. We all have it. Filling drawers. Overflowing bins and baskets. Proudly displayed or stuffed in boxes in basements and garages. Big and small. Metal, fabric, and a whole lot of plastic. So much crap. Abundant cheap stuff is about as American as it gets. And it turns out these seemingly unimportant consumer goods offer unique insights into ourselves—our values and our desires. In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, Wendy A. Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are often cynically-made and easy to dismiss: things not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions but seeks to understand them as a way to understand aspects of ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we—as individuals and as a culture—possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owning them? Woloson tells the history of crap from the late eighteenth century up through today, exploring its many categories: gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, variety store merchandise. As Woloson shows, not all crap is crappy in the same way—bric-a-brac is crappy in a different way from, say, advertising giveaways, which are differently crappy from commemorative plates. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset, revealing the complexity of our relationship with commodity culture over time. By studying crap rather than finely made material objects, Woloson shows us a new way to truly understand ourselves, our national character, and our collective psyche. For all its problems, and despite its disposability, our crap is us.

Author : Bill Brown
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226076318
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Sense of Things written by Bill Brown and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-12-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1906, the Atlantic Monthly commented that Americans live not merely in an age of things, but under the tyranny of them, and that in our relentless effort to sell, purchase, and accumulate things, we do not possess them as much as they possess us. For Bill Brown, the tale of that possession is something stranger than the history of a culture of consumption. It is the story of Americans using things to think about themselves. Brown's captivating new study explores the roots of modern America's fascination with things and the problem that objects posed for American literature at the turn of the century. This was an era when the invention, production, distribution, and consumption of things suddenly came to define a national culture. Brown shows how crucial novels of the time made things not a solution to problems, but problems in their own right. Writers such as Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Henry James ask why and how we use objects to make meaning, to make or remake ourselves, to organize our anxieties and affections, to sublimate our fears, and to shape our wildest dreams. Offering a remarkably new way to think about materialism, A Sense of Things will be essential reading for anyone interested in American literature and culture.

Author : Edward Moser
Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 1596529210
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Patriot's A to Z of America written by Edward Moser and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is a nation of firsts, from its pioneering innovation in technology and science to its politics, social affairs, and culture. But despite its intriguing and unique history, many Americans aren't as well-versed as they think they are when it comes to knowledge of the monumental events, people, and ideas that shaped this revolutionary country. Chock-full of surprising snippets of history you should know about, A Patriot's A to Z of America: Things Every Good American Should Know is the eye-opening remedy for every aspiring good American, featuring heroic events and creative individuals who surmounted great difficulties to achieve great things going to the moon, wiring the planet, defeating the Nazis, setting up the first large democratic republic, and largely banishing starvation overseas achievements of which no other nation can boast. Organized from A to Z, these exceptional tales are America's to tell and for you to discover.

Author : Will Hurd
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982160772
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Reboot written by Will Hurd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From former US Congressman and CIA Officer Will Hurd, a “how-to guide with a prescription for getting the nation on the right footing” (Politico) and “a clarion call for a major political pivot” (San Antonio Report) rooted in the timeless ideals of bipartisanship, inclusivity, and democratic values. “Hurd has the biography and the charisma and the God-given political chops to put the Republican Party—and the rest of the country—on notice.” —THE ATLANTIC It’s getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called “the future of the GOP” by Politico, provides a “detailed blueprint” (Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, 2006–2011) for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism—a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable. Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party’s failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial. Hurd has seen these challenges up close. A child of interracial parents in South Texas, Hurd survived the back alleys of dangerous places as a CIA officer. He carried that experience into three terms in Congress, where he was, for a time, the House’s only Black Republican, representing a seventy-one percent Latino swing district in Texas that runs along 820 miles of the US-Mexico border. As a cyber security executive and innovation crusader, Hurd has worked with entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of technology to anticipate the shockwaves of the future. Hurd, who the Houston Chronicles calls “a refreshing contract to the panderers, petty demagogues, and political provocateurs who reign these days,” draws on his remarkable experience to present “a call to Americans to consider the most contentious issues of our times more holistically” (The Atlantic). He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America’s technological future. We all know we can do better. It’s time to hit “ctrl alt del” and start the American Reboot.

Author : Jeffrey C. Stewart
Publisher : Gramercy
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about African American History written by Jeffrey C. Stewart and published by Gramercy. This book was released on 2006 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive and entertaining account of African-American history is presented in a fun, engaging, and intelligent way. Significant information in six broad sections includes Great Migrations; Civil Rights and Politics; Science, Inventions, and Medicine; Sports; Military; Culture and Religion.

Author : E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0394758439
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Literacy written by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1988-04-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

Author : Jeffrey Trask
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812205650
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Things American written by Jeffrey Trask and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American art museums of the Gilded Age were established as civic institutions intended to provide civilizing influences to an urban public, but the parochial worldview of their founders limited their democratic potential. Instead, critics have derided nineteenth-century museums as temples of spiritual uplift far removed from the daily experiences and concerns of common people. But in the early twentieth century, a new generation of cultural leaders revolutionized ideas about art institutions by insisting that their collections and galleries serve the general public. Things American: Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era tells the story of the civic reformers and arts professionals who brought museums from the realm of exclusivity into the progressive fold of libraries, schools, and settlement houses. Jeffrey Trask's history focuses on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stood at the center of this movement to preserve artifacts from the American past for social change and Americanization. Metropolitan trustee Robert de Forest and pioneering museum professional Henry Watson Kent influenced a wide network of fellow reformers and cultural institutions. Drawing on the teachings of John Dewey and close study of museum developments in Germany and Great Britain, they expanded audiences, changed access policies, and broadened the scope of what museums collect and display. They believed that tasteful urban and domestic environments contributed to good citizenship and recognized the economic advantages of improving American industrial production through design education. Trask follows the influence of these people and ideas through the 1920s and 1930s as the Met opened its innovative American Wing while simultaneously promoting modern industrial art. Things American is not only the first critical history of the Metropolitan Museum. The book also places museums in the context of the cultural politics of the progressive movement—illustrating the limits of progressive ideas of democratic reform as well as the boldness of vision about cultural capital promoted by museums and other cultural institutions.

Author : Dan DiMicco
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1137279796
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Made written by Dan DiMicco and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chairman of America's most successful steel company dismantles myths about the decline of American industry

Author : Sarah Wasserman
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452964157
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Death of Things written by Sarah Wasserman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive study of ephemera in twentieth-century literature—and its relevance to the twenty-first century “Nothing ever really disappears from the internet” has become a common warning of the digital age. But the twentieth century was filled with ephemera—items that were designed to disappear forever—and these objects played crucial roles in some of that century’s greatest works of literature. In The Death of Things, author Sarah Wasserman delivers the first comprehensive study addressing the role ephemera played in twentieth-century fiction and its relevance to contemporary digital culture. Representing the experience of perpetual change and loss, ephemera was central to great works by major novelists like Don DeLillo, Ralph Ellison, and Marilynne Robinson. Following the lives and deaths of objects, Wasserman imagines new uses of urban space, new forms of visibility for marginalized groups, and new conceptions of the marginal itself. She also inquires into present-day conundrums: our fascination with the durable, our concerns with the digital, and our curiosity about what new fictional narratives have to say about deletion and preservation. The Death of Things offers readers fascinating, original angles on how objects shape our world. Creating an alternate literary history of the twentieth century, Wasserman delivers an insightful and idiosyncratic journey through objects that were once vital but are now forgotten.

Author : Judith A. McGaw
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807839981
Total Pages : 495 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Early American Technology written by Judith A. McGaw and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays documents technology's centrality to the history of early America. Unlike much previous scholarship, this volume emphasizes the quotidian rather than the exceptional: the farm household seeking to preserve food or acquire tools, the surveyor balancing economic and technical considerations while laying out a turnpike, the woman of child-bearing age employing herbal contraceptives, and the neighbors of a polluted urban stream debating issues of property, odor, and health. These cases and others drawn from brewing, mining, farming, and woodworking enable the authors to address recent historiographic concerns, including the environmental aspects of technological change and the gendered nature of technical knowledge. Brooke Hindle's classic 1966 essay on early American technology is also reprinted, and his view of the field is reassessed. A bibliographical essay and summary of Hindle's bibliographic findings conclude the volume. The contributors are Judith A. McGaw, Robert C. Post, Susan E. Klepp, Michal McMahon, Patrick W. O'Bannon, Sarah F. McMahon, Donald C. Jackson, Robert B. Gordon, Carolyn C. Cooper, and Nina E. Lerman.