Download or read book Muncie the Middletown of America written by E. Bruce Geelhoed and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was the publication of research conducted by Robert S. Lynd and his wife Helen Merrell Lynd in 1929 that transformed Muncie, Indiana into the barometer of social attitudes, customs, beliefs, and behavior in the American heartland. Recognized as the most widely studied mid-sized community in America, Muncie has attracted researchers and historians for nearly a century. A town which prospered in the 1920s, and survived the economic hardships of the Great Depression, Muncie has grown to become a prospering business community with a strong link to its rich past. Muncie: The Middletown of America explores the evolution of Muncie in a series of over two hundred black and white images. Spectacular photographs unveil Muncie's past, from the Ball Brothers, whose glass-making company gave the city its reputation in the 1880s, to exciting high school basketball and volleyball contests in the 1980s and 1990s. Striking imagery enables the reader to connect to the past and visualize how Muncie developed to where it stands today.
Download or read book The Other Side of Middletown written by Luke E. Lassiter and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous study by Lynd and Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors uncover the neglected part of the story of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. It is a uniquely collaborative field study involving local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. The book, The Other Side of Middletown, and DVD, Middletown Redux, are valuable resources for community research. Sponsored by the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, Muncie, Indiana.
Download or read book Muncie India na written by Himanee Gupta-Carlson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2018-02-21 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muncie, Indiana, remains the epitome of an American town. Yet scholars built the image of so-called typical communities across the United States on an illusion. Their decades of studies ignored the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and tensions woven into the American communities that Muncie supposedly embodied. Himanee Gupta-Carlson puts forth an essential question: what do nonwhites, non-Christians, and/or non-natives mean when they call themselves American? A daughter in one of Muncie's first Indian American families, Gupta-Carlson merges personal experience, the life histories of others, and critical analysis to explore the answers. Her stories of members of Muncie's South Asian communities unearth the silences imposed by past studies while challenging the body of scholarship in fundamental ways. At the same time, Gupta-Carlson shares personal memories and experiences that illuminate her place within the historical, political, and socio-cultural currents she engages in her work. It also reveals how that work informs and transforms her as a scholar and a person. As meditative as it is insightful, Muncie, India(na) invites readers to feel the truth of the fascinating stories behind one woman's revised portrait of an American community.
Download or read book Muncie America s Middletown written by E. Bruce Professor Geelhoed and published by Arcadia Library Editions. This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was the publication of research conducted by Robert S. Lynd and his wife Helen Merrell Lynd in 1929 that transformed Muncie, Indiana into the barometer of social attitudes, customs, beliefs, and behavior in the American heartland. Recognized as the most widely studied mid-sized community in America, Muncie has attracted researchers and historians for nearly a century. A town which prospered in the 1920s, and survived the economic hardships of the Great Depression, Muncie has grown to become a prospering business community with a strong link to its rich past. Muncie: The Middletown of America explores the evolution of Muncie in a series of over two hundred black and white images. Spectacular photographs unveil Muncie's past, from the Ball Brothers, whose glass-making company gave the city its reputation in the 1880s, to exciting high school basketball and volleyball contests in the 1980s and 1990s. Striking imagery enables the reader to connect to the past and visualize how Muncie developed to where it stands today.
Download or read book Back to Middletown written by Rita Caccamo and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 1929, Robert Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd's Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture was destined to become a sociological point of reference for the quality of life in an "average" American town in the 1920s. Their Middletown in Transition, a 1937 restudy of the same community—now known to be Muncie, Indiana—provided a second point of reference on community values in the midst of the great American depression. Achieving the status of cultural benchmarks, these two books have generated an enormous secondary literature on Muncie/Middletown, including a two-volume restudy by Theodore Caplow, published in the 1980s, and a series of six documentary films. Back to Middletown differs from the numerous other investigations and analyses of one of the most famous community studies in the history of sociology. The author, an Italian sociologist, examines the complete Middletown saga through the distinctive lens of an outsider, tracing the character and evolution of "middle America" from the Lynds' time down to the present. She has been resourceful and meticulous in her discovery of previously unknown sources—data, documents, and correspondence—that shed new light on the formation and elaboration of the Lynds' Middletown project and on the changing evaluation of the project by generations of scholars. In the process, the book addresses, from a fresh perspective, major issues that have confronted sociology and social anthropology: relative levels of analysis, the relationship of empirical observation to theory building and conceptual frameworks of interpretation, and controversies focusing on the structure of power in America. In addition to its value and import as a theoretical work, the book takes up questions that reflect the contemporary contradictions and dissonances in the American social fabric. As the author demonstrates, the story of Middletown is a continuing narrative, whose end is yet to be written, encapsulating the pain of social and economic alienation, political war, religious messianism, and personal demoralization.
Download or read book Middletown Jews written by Dan Rottenberg and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Middletown Jews . . . takes us, through nineteen fascinating interviews done in 1979, into the lives led by mainly first generation American Jews in a small mid-western city." —San Diego Jewish Times ". . . this brief work speaks volumes about the uncertain future of small-town American Jewry." —Choice "The book offers a touching portrait that admirably fills gaps, not just in Middletown itself but in histories in general." —Indianapolis Star ". . . a welcome addition to the small but growing number of monographs covering local aspects of American Jewish history." —Kirkus Reviews In Middletown, the landmark 1927 study of a typical American town (Muncie, Indiana), the authors commented, "The Jewish population of Middletown is so small as to be numerically negligible . . . [and makes] the Jewish issue slight." But WAS the "Jewish issue" slight? What did it mean to be a Jew in Muncie? That is the issue that this book seeks to answer. The Jewish experience in Muncie reflects what many similar communities experienced in hundreds of Middletowns across the midwest.
Download or read book Middletown Families written by and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Middletown Families was first published in 1985. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Fifty years after publication of Robert and Helen Lloyd's classic studies, Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), the Middletown III Project picked up and continued their exploration of American values and institutions. By duplicating the original studies - in many cases by using the same questions - this team of social scientists attempted to gauge the changes that had taken place in Muncie, Indiana, since the 1920s. In Middletown Families, the first book to emerge from this project, Theodore Caplow and his colleagues reveal that many widely discussed changes in family life, such as the breakdown of traditional male/female roles, increased conflict between parents and children, and disintegration of extended family ties, are more perceived than actual. Their evidence suggests that the Middletown family seems to be stronger and more tolerant, with closer bonds and greater marital satisfaction than fifty years ago. Instead of breaking it apart, the pressures of modern society may have drawn the family closer together.
Download or read book Life on the Color Line written by Gregory Howard Williams and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-02-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Heartbreaking and uplifting… a searing book about race and prejudice in America… brims with insights that only someone who has lived on both sides of the racial divide could gain.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “A triumph of storytelling as well as a triumph of spirit.”—Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No Children Here As a child in 1950s segregated Virginia, Gregory Howard Williams grew up believing he was white. But when the family business failed and his parents’ marriage fell apart, Williams discovered that his dark-skinned father, who had been passing as Italian-American, was half black. The family split up, and Greg, his younger brother, and their father moved to Muncie, Indiana, where the young boys learned the truth about their heritage. Overnight, Greg Williams became black. In this extraordinary and powerful memoir, Williams recounts his remarkable journey along the color line and illuminates the contrasts between the black and white worlds: one of privilege, opportunity and comfort, the other of deprivation, repression, and struggle. He tells of the hostility and prejudice he encountered all too often, from both blacks and whites, and the surprising moments of encouragement and acceptance he found from each. Life on the Color Line is a uniquely important book. It is a wonderfully inspiring testament of purpose, perseverance, and human triumph. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Download or read book All Faithful People written by Theodore Caplow and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1983-10-17 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All Faithful People was first published in 1983. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In 1924 Robert and Helen Lynd went to Middletown (Muncie, Indiana) to study American institutions and values. The results of their work are the classic studies Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). In the late 1970s a team of social scientists returned to Middletown to gauge the changes that have taken place in the fifty years since the Lynds' first visit. The Middletown III Project, by replicating the earlier work, in some cases by using the same questions, provides an unprecedented portrait of a small American town as it adapts to changing times. Its first report, Middletown Families, was published by Minnesota in 1982. This book explores the role of religion in the life of Middletown. Using the Lynds' magnificent cache of empirical data as a base, social scientists on the Middletown III Project attempted to gauge how religious beliefs and practices have changed. For the most part, their findings show that the current perception of a trend toward a more secular society is not true. In Middletown, religion seems to be more important than ever. All Faithful People also covers the history of Middletown's churches, the differences between the town's Protestants and Catholics, religious participation among young people, and the role in Middletown life of private devotions and public rituals. In conclusion, the authors of All Faithful People evaluate Middletown as a representative community. They attempt to explain the myth of the death of organized religion, and briefly compare religion in America to religion in other Western countries. Fifty years after the Lynds first made Middletown famous, a team of social scientists returned to find out how American values have changed. This, their second report, focuses on religion. What does religion mean to Middletown today? Has America become a secular society? Those are some of the questions discussed in All Faithful People.
Download or read book The Westside Park Murders written by Keith Roysdon and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a warm night in September 1985, teenagers Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon were brutally murdered in Westside Park in Muncie, Indiana. Their killer has never been charged. Early on, police focused on a family member of one of the teens as a primary suspect. The investigation even ruled out fantastic scenarios, including a theory that the perpetrator was a Dungeons & Dragons devotee. The case grew cold. Only decades later did a dogged police investigator narrow the scope to a suspect whose name has never been publicly revealed until now. Keith Roysdon and Douglas Walker, authors of Wicked Muncie and Muncie Murder & Mayhem, have followed the investigation into the Westside Park murders for decades and, for the first time, report the complete and untold story.
Download or read book Our Towns written by James Fallows and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BEST SELLER • The basis for the HBO documentary now streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.
Download or read book What Middletown Read written by Frank Felsenstein and published by Studies in Print Culture and t. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discovery of a large cache of circulation records from the Muncie, Indiana, Public Library in 2003 offers unprecedented detail about American reading behavior at the turn of the twentieth century. Frank Felsenstein and James J. Connolly have mined these records to produce an in-depth account of print culture in Muncie, the city featured in the famed "Middletown" studies conducted by Robert and Helen Lynd almost a century ago. Using the data assembled and made public through the What Middletown Read Database (www.bsu.edu/libraries/wmr), a celebrated new resource the authors helped launch, Felsenstein and Connolly analyze the borrowing choices and reading culture of social groups and individuals. What Middletown Read is much more than a statistical study. Felsenstein and Connolly dig into diaries, meeting minutes, newspaper reports, and local histories to trace the library's development in relation to the city's cosmopolitan aspirations, to profile individual readers, and to explore such topics as the relationship between children's reading and their schooling and what books were discussed by local women's clubs. The authors situate borrowing patterns and reading behavior within the contexts of a rapidly growing, culturally ambitious small city, an evolving public library, an expanding market for print, and the broad social changes that accompanied industrialization in the United States. The result is a rich, revealing portrait of the place of reading in an emblematic American community.
Download or read book The Averaged American written by Sarah E. Igo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: supports the death penalty, that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that four out of five prefer a particular brand of toothpaste. But remarkably, such data--now woven into our social fabric--became common currency only in the last century. With a bold and sophisticated analysis, Sarah Igo demonstrates the power of scientific surveys to shape Americans' sense of themselves as individuals, members of communities, and citizens of a nation.
Download or read book The First Measured Century written by Theodore Caplow and published by American Enterprise Institute. This book was released on 2001 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Companion v. to the PBS television documentary "The first measured century". Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-296) and index.
Download or read book Electrifying America written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1990 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how electricity seeped into and redefined American culture, becoming fundamental to modern life.
Download or read book Oral History Collections written by Ruth McMullin and published by New York : Bowker. This book was released on 1975 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Muncie India na written by Himanee Gupta-Carlson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2018-02-21 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muncie, Indiana, remains the epitome of an American town. Yet scholars built the image of so-called typical communities across the United States on an illusion. Their decades of studies ignored the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and tensions woven into the American communities that Muncie supposedly embodied. Himanee Gupta-Carlson puts forth an essential question: what do nonwhites, non-Christians, and/or non-natives mean when they call themselves American? A daughter in one of Muncie's first Indian American families, Gupta-Carlson merges personal experience, the life histories of others, and critical analysis to explore the answers. Her stories of members of Muncie's South Asian communities unearth the silences imposed by past studies while challenging the body of scholarship in fundamental ways. At the same time, Gupta-Carlson shares personal memories and experiences that illuminate her place within the historical, political, and socio-cultural currents she engages in her work. It also reveals how that work informs and transforms her as a scholar and a person. As meditative as it is insightful, Muncie, India(na) invites readers to feel the truth of the fascinating stories behind one woman's revised portrait of an American community.
