Download or read book Mystic Chords of Memory written by Michael Kammen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-17 with total page 879 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystic Chords of Memory "Illustrated with hundreds of well-chosen anecdotes and minute observations . . . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history . . . insightful and sardonic." —Washington Post Book World In this ground-breaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Machine That Would Go of Itself examines a central paradox of our national identity How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past—as embodied in our traditions—have been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to immigrant associations, and filled with incisive analyses of such phenonema as Americana and its collectors, "historic" villages and Disneyland, Mystic Chords of Memory is a brilliant, immensely readable, and enormously important book. "Fascinating . . . a subtle and teeming narrative . . . masterly." —Time "This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task . . . an importnat book—and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves." —Milwaukee Journal

Download or read book Mystic Chords of Memory written by Michael Kammen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1993-02-02 with total page 879 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystic Chords of Memory "Illustrated with hundreds of well-chosen anecdotes and minute observations . . . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history. . . . Insightful and sardonic."—Washington Post Book World In this groundbreaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Machine That Would Go of Itself examines a central paradox of our national identity. How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past—as embodied in our traditions—been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to immigrant associations, and filled with incisive analyses of such phenonema as Americana and its collectors, "historic" villages and Disneyland, Mystic Chords of Memory is a brilliant, immensely readable, and enormously important book. "Fascinating . . . a subtle and teeming narrative . . . masterly."—Time "This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task. . . . An important book—and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves."—Milwaukee Journal

Download or read book Mystic Chords of Memory written by Richard Singley and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is divided into three sections. The first section is dedicated to antebellum America. Often, the antecedent causes of the Civil War, including the emergence of technology and the acquisition of land, are overshadowed by the vicissitudes of the war and the emancipation of slaves. The second section of this book is devoted to the war and the surrounding personal events that are so often hidden in the fog of war. The third part of the book is devoted to the aftermath of this bloody fratricidal conflict; and the subsequent effects on America, in general, and African Americans in particular.

Download or read book Mystic Chords of Memory written by David J. Eicher and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1998-11-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When I set foot on ground where Lincoln, Lee, Grant, or others walked, where the great battles raged, an almost magical feeling infuses me. Capturing these places on film, hopefully, in some small way, allows us to preserve that magical feeling of the special places and people of the war in our everyday lives.” These are the impassioned words of longtime Civil War aficionado David J. Eicher. Through his stunning photographs in Mystic Chords of Memory, Eicher presents many of the historical sites that evoke that “magical feeling” for him and thousands of other Civil War scholars and buffs. In this captivating -pictorial work, Eicher not only visits the most famous Civil War battlefields—Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Antietam among them—but also introduces readers to an array of lesser-known battle sites as well as monuments, forts, houses and farms, cemeteries, and museums. The breathtaking color photographs, chosen from Eicher’s vast personal collection, are supplemented by powerful, historical black-and-white photographs that propel readers back to the Civil War era. The resulting richly illustrated work captures the most important, unusual, and interesting places associated with the war as they stand today. Eicher’s probing analysis of the arduous four-year struggle provides background on its origins, interpretations of its major battles, and a summary of the war’s aftermath. Peppered with more than 150 quotations from the journals, letters, and diaries of Civil War participants, the narrative allows readers to absorb the human aspects of the greatest of America’s national tragedies. Eicher details the firing on Fort Sumter, the shock of First Bull Run, the carnage of Shiloh, the transformation of the war at Antietam, the turning points at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the decisive, grueling campaigns of 1864, and the surrender at Appomattox. Contributing to the book’s charm are dozens of images of forgotten places touched by the war, such as an abandoned graveyard in a Mississippi wood, the sandy strip of beach where some of the war’s first black soldiers won fame, trenches along a Virginia county highway, and a brick church in Virginia pocked by artillery fire. Whether viewed as fields of death or fields of glory—and they were both—Civil War sites retain a commanding hold on the American imagination. In words as well as photographs, Eicher captures the poignant memory of our nation in conflict.

Download or read book Contested Commemoration in U S History written by Klara Stephanie Szlezák and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of two recent socio-political developments—the shift from the Obama to the Trump administration and the surge in nationalist and populist sentiment that ushered in the current administration—Contested Commemoration in U.S. History presents eleven essays focused on practices of remembering contested events in America’s national history. This edited volume contains fresh interpretations of public history and collective memory that explore the evolving relationship between the U.S. and its past. The individual chapters investigate efforts to memorialize events or interrogate instances of historical sanitization at the expense of less partial representations that would include other perspectives. The primary source material and geography covered is extensive; contributors use historic sites and monuments, photographs, memoirs, textbooks, periodicals, music, and film to discuss the periods from colonial America, through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars up until the Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, and Cold War, to explore how the commemoration of those eras resonates in the twenty-first century. Through a range of commemoration media and primary sources, the authors illuminate themes and arguments that are indispensable to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in Public History and American Studies more broadly.

Download or read book The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2012-06-13 with total page 988 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of all American presidents, left us a vast legacy of writings, some of which are among the most famous in our history. Lincoln was a marvelous writer—from the humblest letter to his great speeches, including his inaugural addresses, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address. His sentences were so memorably crafted that many resonate across the years. "Fourscore and seven years ago," begins the Gettysburg Address, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." In 1940, the prolific author and historian Philip Van Doren Stern produced this volume as a guide to Lincoln's life through his writings. Stern's "Life of Abraham Lincoln" is a full biography of the man and includes a detailed chronology. Stern has collected all the essential texts of Lincoln's public life, from his first public address—a stump speech in New Salem, Illinois, in 1832 for an election he went on to lose—to his last piece of public writing, a pass to a congressman who was to visit the president the day after Lincoln went to Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865. Some 275 such documents are collected and placed in their historical context. Together with the "Life" and the Introduction, "Lincoln in His Writings," by noted historian Allan Nevins, they give a full and vivid picture of Abraham Lincoln.

Download or read book The American Patriot s Almanac written by William J. Bennett and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2013-04-08 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read here the storied history of these United States. The stories in this book are part of what Abraham Lincoln called the “mystic chords of memory.” They are the symbols that define the essence of the United States, that mark its historic course, and connect its people. The American Patriot’s Almanac is a daily source of inspiration and information about the history, heroes, and achievements that sum up what this nation is all about.

Download or read book Remaking America written by John Bodnar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a compelling inquiry into public events ranging from the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial through ethnic community fairs to pioneer celebrations, John Bodnar explores the stories, ideas, and symbols behind American commemorations over the last century. Such forms of historical consciousness, he argues, do not necessarily preserve the past but rather address serious political matters in the present.

Download or read book Lincoln on the Verge written by Ted Widmer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE LINCOLN FORUM BOOK PRIZE “A Lincoln classic...superb.” ­—The Washington Post “A book for our time.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Lincoln on the Verge tells the dramatic story of America’s greatest president discovering his own strength to save the Republic. As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration—an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge charts these pivotal thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks directly to the public, and sees his country up close. Drawing on new research, this riveting account reveals the president-elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, as he foils an assassination attempt, forges an unbreakable bond with the American people, and overcomes formidable obstacles in order to take his oath of office.

Download or read book Civil War Memories written by Robert J. Cook and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has the Civil War continued to influence American life so profoundly? Winner of the 2018 Book Prize in American Studies of the British Association of American Studies At a cost of at least 800,000 lives, the Civil War preserved the Union, aborted the breakaway Confederacy, and liberated a race of slaves. Civil War Memories is the first comprehensive account of how and why Americans have selectively remembered, and forgotten, this watershed conflict since its conclusion in 1865. Drawing on an array of textual and visual sources as well as a wide range of modern scholarship on Civil War memory, Robert J. Cook charts the construction of four dominant narratives by the ordinary men and women, as well as the statesmen and generals, who lived through the struggle and its tumultuous aftermath. Part One explains why the Yankee victors’ memory of the “War of the Rebellion” drove political conflict into the 1890s, then waned with the passing of the soldiers who had saved the republic. It also touches on the leading role southern white women played in the development of the racially segregated South’s “Lost Cause”; explores why, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had embraced a powerful reconciliatory memory of the Civil War; and details the failed efforts to connect an emancipationist reading of the conflict to the fading cause of civil rights. Part Two demonstrates the Civil War’s capacity to thrill twentieth-century Americans in movies such as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. It also reveals the war’s vital connection to the black freedom struggle in the modern era. Finally, Cook argues that the massacre of African American parishioners in Charleston in June 2015 highlighted the continuing relevance of the Civil War by triggering intense nationwide controversy over the place of Confederate symbols in the United States. Written in vigorous prose for a wide audience and designed to inform popular debate on the relevance of the Civil War to the racial politics of modern America, Civil War Memories is required reading for informed Americans today.

Download or read book The Better Angels of Our Nature written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.

Download or read book Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book features the inaugural address given by Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1861, as he was sworn in as the sixteenth President of the United States. In the midst of secession by seven states in the South, Lincoln delivered a conciliatory speech addressed to the people of the region, outlining his intended policies towards them. He made a commitment to maintain government property and stated that the Union would not interfere with slavery where it existed. At the same time, he warned that any use of arms against the United States would be met with force. Lincoln ended with a plea for unity, reminding Americans of their common bonds and the need to avoid passion and division. This address was delivered just before the start of the American Civil War, which began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12.

Download or read book Harriet Tubman written by Milton C. Sernett and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-05 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harriet Tubman is one of America’s most beloved historical figures, revered alongside luminaries including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History tells the fascinating story of Tubman’s life as an American icon. The distinguished historian Milton C. Sernett compares the larger-than-life symbolic Tubman with the actual “historical” Tubman. He does so not to diminish Tubman’s achievements but rather to explore the interplay of history and myth in our national consciousness. Analyzing how the Tubman icon has changed over time, Sernett shows that the various constructions of the “Black Moses” reveal as much about their creators as they do about Tubman herself. Three biographies of Harriet Tubman were published within months of each other in 2003–04; they were the first book-length studies of the “Queen of the Underground Railroad” to appear in almost sixty years. Sernett examines the accuracy and reception of these three books as well as two earlier biographies first published in 1869 and 1943. He finds that the three recent studies come closer to capturing the “real” Tubman than did the earlier two. Arguing that the mythical Tubman is most clearly enshrined in stories told to and written for children, Sernett scrutinizes visual and textual representations of “Aunt Harriet” in children’s literature. He looks at how Tubman has been portrayed in film, painting, music, and theater; in her Maryland birthplace; in Auburn, New York, where she lived out her final years; and in the naming of schools, streets, and other public venues. He also investigates how the legendary Tubman was embraced and represented by different groups during her lifetime and at her death in 1913. Ultimately, Sernett contends that Harriet Tubman may be America’s most malleable and resilient icon.

Download or read book The Rest Is Noise written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Download or read book The Better Angels of Our Nature written by S. C. Gylanders and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-11-14 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, a mysterious visitor appears at General William Tecumseh Sherman’s camp. Without family or home, with only a uniform and the name of Jesse, this prepossessing stranger is an intriguing mix of naiveté and wisdom, ignorant of the most basic conventions of warfare yet uncannily familiar with even the most intimate details of Sherman’s personal life and career. Jesse, in turn, has only one desire: to remain by Sherman’s side–for reasons only Jesse knows and isn’t revealing. Initially unwilling to become a father figure to this beguiling visitor, Sherman is finally unable to resist such devotion and tenacity. He takes Jesse under his wing, determined to train this enigmatic creature in the art of war–and provide the strength and wisdom needed to survive its horrors. Resourceful and courageous, Jesse soon earns the respect of Sherman’s men, especially the compassionate but plain-talking surgeon, Seth Cartwright, and Thomas Ransom, a noble and handsome young infantry officer. No matter their destiny neither man can divert Jesse’s mission. But what is the truth? What is Jesse’s purpose and why has this fascinating youth appeared at this most crucial time in Sherman’s life and in the life of the bitterly divided nation? In the end we are forced to ask: Who is under whose wing? The Better Angels of Our Nature brilliantly re-creates the drama and brutality of America’s Civil War. Set in the momentous fourteen-month period spanning Shiloh and Vicksburg–a time that turned the tide of war and determined the nation’s fate–this harrowing, lyrically written novel is filled with unforgettable characters and wondrous twists that will give readers pause to reconsider events familiar to us all. Meticulously researched and movingly written, this masterwork will remain with readers long after the last page is savored.

Download or read book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee written by Dee Brown and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “fascinating” #1 New York Times bestseller that awakened the world to the destruction of American Indians in the nineteenth-century West (The Wall Street Journal). First published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee generated shockwaves with its frank and heartbreaking depiction of the systematic annihilation of American Indian tribes across the western frontier. In this nonfiction account, Dee Brown focuses on the betrayals, battles, and massacres suffered by American Indians between 1860 and 1890. He tells of the many tribes and their renowned chiefs—from Geronimo to Red Cloud, Sitting Bull to Crazy Horse—who struggled to combat the destruction of their people and culture. Forcefully written and meticulously researched, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee inspired a generation to take a second look at how the West was won. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dee Brown including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

Download or read book Lincoln s American Dream written by Kenneth L. Deutsch and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the voluminous literature on the central figure in American history, no other book in the field of political science compares to Lincoln's American Dream. It addresses comprehensively the overarching themes of Lincoln's political thought and leadership through provocative and divergent interpretations from leading scholars. Each chapter is devoted to one of these major themes about Lincoln: - The Declaration and equality - Political ambition - Race and slavery - His democratic political leadership - Executive power - Religion and politics - The Union and the role of the state The book's thirty-three contributors include such respected Lincoln scholars and political commentators as Harry V. Jaffa, Stephen B. Oates, Mark E. Neely, Richard C. Current, Herman Belz, and Frank J. Williams. With an introduction by Kenneth L. Deutsch and Joseph R. Fornieri, Lincoln's American Dream will be of enduring interest to scholars, students, teachers, and Lincoln aficionados alike and will attract interest in the fields of American history, leadership, religion and culture, American studies, and African-American studies.