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Why are we speaking English? Replenishing the Earth gives a new answer to that question, uncovering a 'settler revolution' that took place from the early nineteenth century that led to the explosive settlement of the American West and its forgotten twin, the British West, comprising the settler dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Between 1780 and 1930 the number of English-speakers rocketed from 12 million in 1780 to 200 million, and their wealth and power grew to match. Their secret was not racial, or cultural, or institutional superiority but a resonant intersection of historical changes, including the sudden rise of mass transfer across oceans and mountains, a r...
In this exciting new work, Scott C. Martin brings together cutting-edge scholarship and articles from diverse sources to explore the cultural dimensions of the market revolution in America. By reflecting on the reciprocal relationship between cultural and economic change, the work deepens our understanding of American society during the turbulent early nineteenth century.
For all that has been written about the Civil War's impact on the urban northeast and southern home fronts, we have until now lacked a detailed picture of how it affected specific communities in the Union's Midwestern heartland. Nicole Etcheson offers a deeply researched microhistory of one such community--Putnam County, Indiana, from the Compromise of 1850 to the end of Reconstruction-and shows how its citizens responded to and were affected by the war. Delving into the everyday life of a small town in one of the nineteenth century's bellwether states, A Generation at War considers the Civil War within a much broader chronological context than other accounts. It ranges across three decades ...
The field of American history has undergone remarkable expansion in the past century, all of it reflecting a broadening of the historical enterprise and democratization of its coverage. Today, the shape of the field takes into account the interests, identities, and narratives of more Americans than at any time in its past. Much of this change can be seen through the history of the Organization of American Historians, which, as its mission states, "promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history." This century-long history of the Organization o...
This book is an investigation of the widely overlooked photographic style of pictorialism in the American West between 1900 and 1950 and argues that western pictorialist photographers were regionalists that had their roots in the formidable photographic heritage of the nineteenth-century American West.
In this new edition, Samuel P. Hays expands the scope of his pioneering account of the ways in which Americans reacted to industrialism during its early years from 1885 to 1914. Hays now deepens his coverage of cultural transformations in a study well known for its concise treatment of political and economic movements. Hays draws on the vast knowledge of America's urban and social history that has been developed over the last thirty-eight years to make the second edition an unusually well-rounded study. He enhances the original coverage of politics, labor, and business with new accounts of the growth of cities, the rise of modern values, cultural conflicts with Native Americans and foreign nations, and changing roles for women, African-Americans, education, religion, medicine, law, and leisure. The result is a tightly woven portrait of America in transition that underscores the effects of impersonal market forces and greater personal freedom on individuals and chronicles such changes as the rise of social inequality, shifting power, in the legal system, the expansion of the federal government, and the formation of the Populist, Progressive, and Socialist parties.
The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.
From the girl in Red Cloud who oversaw the construction of a miniature town called Sandy Point in her backyard, to the New Woman on a bicycle, celebrating art and castigating political abuse in Lincoln newspapers, to the aspiring novelist in New York City, committed to creation and career, Daryl W. Palmer’s groundbreaking literary biography offers a provocative new look at Willa Cather’s evolution as a writer. Willa Cather has long been admired for O Pioneers! (1913), Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918)—the “prairie novels” about the lives of early Nebraska pioneers that launched her career. Thanks in part to these masterpieces, she is often viewed as a representative o...