Download or read book What it Felt Like written by Henry Allen and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2000 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This treasure of a book gives us a vivid and captivating evocation of the social, cultural, and spiritual tenor of the twentieth century, decade by remarkable decade. Henry Allen--veteran feature writer and editor at the Washington Post--reminds us of just how it was: "the champagne disenchantment of the tuxedo twenties. Husbands who lost Depression jobs and hid in their houses for shame, the October morning energy of the postwar forties, the dusty heat of fifties television sets, the smell of Vitalis on men's hair, women in gloves that felt sexy touching your skin, men who whistled (with trills) and wore hats tipped to one side, the barefoot LSD weddings when the universe seemed a conspiracy in everyone's favor. . . . " Each of these ten chapters is a virtual time capsule written with keen intelligence, feeling, and an uncanny sense of the essential experiences of the era: the unexpected, idiosyncratic sights, sounds, occasions, and events that defined not just the time but the way we remember it. This is a book of myriad pleasures--a reminder, as we plunge headlong into the future, of the richness and importance of our past.
Download or read book What It Felt Like Living in the American Century written by Henry Allen and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This treasure of a book from Henry Allen, Pulitzer Prize winner and veteran feature writer and editor at the Washington Post, provides a vivid and captivating evocation of the social, cultural, and spiritual tenor of the twentieth century. Each of these ten chapters is a virtual time capsule written with keen intelligence, feeling, and an uncanny sense of the essential experiences of the era: the unexpected, idiosyncratic sights, sounds, occasions, and events that defined not just the time but the way we remember it. This is a book of myriad pleasures - a reminder of the richness and importance of the past.
Download or read book Henry Kissinger and the American Century written by Jeremi Suri and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What made Henry Kissinger the kind of diplomat he was? What experiences and influences shaped his worldview and provided the framework for his approach to international relations? Jeremi Suri offers a thought-provoking, interpretive study of one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the twentieth century. Drawing on research in more than six countries in addition to extensive interviews with Kissinger and others, Suri analyzes the sources of Kissinger's ideas and power and explains why he pursued the policies he did. Kissinger's German-Jewish background, fears of democratic weakness, belief in the primacy of the relationship between the United States and Europe, and faith in the indispensable role America plays in the world shaped his career and his foreign policy. Suri shows how Kissinger's early years in Weimar and Nazi Germany, his experiences in the U.S. Army and at Harvard University, and his relationships with powerful patrons--including Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon--shed new light on the policymaker. Kissinger's career was a product of the global changes that made the American Century. He remains influential because his ideas are rooted so deeply in dominant assumptions about the world. In treating Kissinger fairly and critically as a historical figure, without polemical judgments, Suri provides critical context for this important figure. He illuminates the legacies of Kissinger's policies for the United States in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book A Life in the American Century written by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-12-19 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past eight decades, we have lived in “the American Century” – a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivalled power – be it political, economic or military - on the global stage. Born on the cusp of this new era, Joseph S. Nye Jr. has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world affairs. His many books on the nature of power and political leadership have rightly earned him his reputation as one of the most influential international relations scholars in the world today. In this deeply personal book, Joseph Nye shares his own journey living through the American century. From his early years growing up on a farm in rural New Jersey to his time in the State Department, Pentagon and Intelligence Community during the Carter and Clinton administrations where he witnessed American power up close, shaping policy on key issues such as nuclear proliferation and East Asian security. After 9/11 drew the US into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nye remained an astute observer and critic of the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies. Today American primacy may be changing, but he concludes with a faint ray of guarded optimism about the future of his country in a richer but riskier world.
Download or read book The American Essay in the American Century written by Ned Stuckey-French and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern culture, the essay is often considered an old-fashioned, unoriginal form of literary styling. The word essay brings to mind the uninspired five-paragraph theme taught in schools around the country or the antiquated, Edwardian meanderings of English gentlemen rattling on about art and old books. These connotations exist despite the fact that Americans have been reading and enjoying personal essays in popular magazines for decades, engaging with a multitude of ideas through this short-form means of expression. To defend the essay—that misunderstood staple of first-year composition courses—Ned Stuckey-French has written The American Essay in the American Century. This book uncovers the buried history of the American personal essay and reveals how it played a significant role in twentieth-century cultural history. In the early 1900s, writers and critics debated the “death of the essay,” claiming it was too traditional to survive the era’s growing commercialism, labeling it a bastion of British upper-class conventions. Yet in that period, the essay blossomed into a cultural force as a new group of writers composed essays that responded to the concerns of America’s expanding cosmopolitan readership. These essays would spark the “magazine revolution,” giving a fresh voice to the ascendant middle class of the young century. With extensive research and a cultural context, Stuckey-French describes the many reasons essays grew in appeal and importance for Americans. He also explores the rise of E. B. White, considered by many the greatest American essayist of the first half of the twentieth century whose prowess was overshadowed by his success in other fields of writing. White’s work introduced a new voice, creating an American essay that melded seriousness and political resolve with humor and self-deprecation. This book is one of the first to consider and reflect on the contributions of E. B. White to the personal essay tradition and American culture more generally. The American Essay in the American Century is a compelling, highly readable book that illuminates the history of a secretly beloved literary genre. A work that will appeal to fiction readers, scholars, and students alike, this book offers fundamental insight into modern American literary history and the intersections of literature, culture, and class through the personal essay. This thoroughly researched volume dismisses, once and for all, the “death of the essay,” proving that the essay will remain relevant for a very long time to come.
Download or read book Handbook to Life in America written by Rodney P. Carlisle and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the history, events and people of the early twentieth-century in America.
Download or read book Crafting Patriotism for Global Dominance written by Mark Dyreson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008 China plans to use the Olympic Games to remake its national identity in the global marketplace. In so doing China treads the path blazed by the United States. For more than a century the U.S. has used the Olympic Games to construct national identity, create communal memory, and craft patriotic mythology. From opening parades where the American team refuses to dip its flag in order to signal American exceptionalism to the closing ceremonies where the U.S. media trumpet that their team owes its medals not to superior athleticism but to the nation’s peerless social and political systems, Olympic Games have served as sites to bolster American nationalism. More than any other nation, the United States has politicized its Olympic participation. In the process a host of myths about American superiority in global encounters has emerged through the Olympics. In memorializing and mythologizing their Olympic teams Americans have revealed the contours of the racial, gender, and class dynamics that animate their peculiar nationhood. These essays explore the history of expressions of American national identity in Olympic arenas. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.
Download or read book Oh Play That Thing written by Roddy Doyle and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-12-14 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, lands on his feet. After the 1916 Rebellion, Henry Smart is running from the Republicans for whom he committed murder and mayhem. Lying to the immigration officer, avoiding Irish eyes that might recognise him, hiding the photograph of himself with his wife because it shows a gun across his lap, he throws his passport into the river and forges a new identity. He's a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America... The Depression is sending folks to ride the rails in search of a new life and new hope, and all trains lead to Chicago. As Henry’s past tries to catch up with him, he takes off on a journey to the great port, where music is everywhere. Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
Download or read book The American Porch written by Michael Dolan and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The former American History editor explores the creation and restoration of an essential part of a twentieth-century home’s identity—the American porch. “In this delightful look at an American icon, journalist and documentary scriptwriter . . . Dolan traces the history of the porch, using this history to explore subjects such as architecture, history, slavery, colonialism, trade, anthropology, sociology, consumer behavior, and publishing.” —Library Journal In 1981, Michael Dolan and his wife, Eileen O’Toole, bought a 1926 suburban bungalow in the Palisades area of Washington, DC. It was a fixer-upper and DIY project that consumed their lives for twelve years. As rooms were transformed with updated electrical wiring and plumbing, the house’s porch became a storage area, rotating appliances, furniture, and construction materials as they were used and discarded. After the interior renovation was completed, Michael finally turned his attention to the porch, working with contractors to resurrect it—a reconstruction that inspired him to uncover the history of porches and their significance as a symbolic piece of Americana. “In praise of the porch: Come up and sit a spell.” —USA Today “A wry, well-researched look at the place and the people who rocked, talked and courted on [the American porch] for three centuries.” —Parade “The porch is making a comeback, gradually replacing its humbler rival the deck, which the traditionalist Dolan refers to as the platform shoe or leisure suit of American architecture.” —Time “Dolan amply demonstrates that the porch is primarily a means of escaping the heat and, almost as important, a locus for casual social interaction.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The 1950s written by William H. Young and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-04-30 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have the 1950s been overly romanticized? Beneath the calm, conformist exterior, new ideas and attitudes were percolating. This was the decade of McCarthyism, Levittowns, and men in gray flannel suits, but the 1950s also saw bold architectural styles, the rise of paperback novels and the Beat writers, Cinema Scope and film noir, television variety shows, the Golden Age of the automobile, subliminal advertising, fast food, Frisbees, and silly putty. Meanwhile, teens attained a more prominent role in American culture with hot rods, rock 'n' roll, preppies and greasers, and—gasp—juvenile delinquency. At the same time, a new technological threat, the atom bomb, lurked beneath the surface of the postwar decade. This volume presents a nuanced look at a surprisingly complex time in American popular culture.
Download or read book The Plots Against the President written by Sally Denton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally became the nation's thirty-second president. The man swept in by a landslide four months earlier now took charge of a country in the grip of panic brought on by economic catastrophe. Though no one yet knew it-not even Roosevelt-it was a radical moment in America. And with all of its unmistakable resonance with events of today, it is a cautionary tale. The Plots Against the President follows Roosevelt as he struggled to right the teetering nation, armed with little more than indomitable optimism and the courage to try anything. His bold New Deal experiments provoked a backlash from both extremes of the political spectrum. Wall Street bankers threatened by FDR's policies made common cause with populist demagogues like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin. But just how far FDR's enemies were willing to go to thwart him has never been fully explored. Two startling events that have been largely ignored by historians frame Sally Denton's swift, tense narrative of a year of fear: anarchist Giuseppe Zangara's assassination attempt on Roosevelt, and a plutocrats' plot to overthrow the government that would come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch. The Plots Against the President throws light on the darkest chapter of the Depression and the moments when the fate of the American republic hung in the balance.
Download or read book The 1930s written by William H. Young and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-10-30 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most historical studies bury us in wars and politics, paying scant attention to the everyday effects of pop culture. Welcome to America's other history—the arts, activities, common items, and popular opinions that profoundly impacted our national way of life. The twelve narrative chapters in this volume provide a textured look at everyday life, youth, and the many different sides of American culture during the 1930s. Additional resources include a cost comparison of common goods and services, a timeline of important events, notes arranged by chapter, an extensive bibliography for further reading, and a subject index. The dark cloud of the Depression shadowed most Americans' lives during the 1930s. Books, movies, songs, and stories of the 1930s gave Americans something to hope for by depicting a world of luxury and money. Major figures of the age included Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Irving Berlin, Amelia Earhart, Duke Ellington, the Marx Brothers, Margaret Mitchell, Cole Porter, Joe Louis, Babe Ruth, Shirley Temple, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Innovations in technology and travel hinted at a Utopian society just off the horizon, group sports and activities gave the unemployed masses ways to spend their days, and a powerful new demographic—the American teenager—suddenly found itself courted by advertisers and entertainers.
Download or read book The Short American Century written by Andrew J. Bacevich and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-02 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 1941, Henry Luce announced the arrival of “The American Century.” But that century—extending from World War II to the recent economic collapse—has now ended, victim of strategic miscalculation, military misadventures, and economic decline. Here some of America’s most distinguished historians place the century in historical perspective.
Download or read book Murder at the Brown Palace written by Dick Kreck and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 24, 1911, one of the most notorious murders in Denver's history occurred. The riveting tale involves high society, adultery, drugs, multiple murder, and more, all set in Denver's grand old hotel, the Brown Palace.
Download or read book The End of the American Century written by David Stewart Mason and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling and persuasive book is the first to explore all of the interrelated aspects of America's decline. Hard-hitting and provocative, yet measured and clearly written, The End of the American Century demonstrates the phases of social, economic, and international decline that mark the end of a period of world dominance that began with World War II. The costs of the war on terror and the Iraq War have exacerbated the already daunting problems of debt, poverty, inequality, and political and social decay. David S. Mason convincingly argues that the United States, like other great powers in the past, is experiencing the dilemma of "imperial overstretch"--bankrupting the home front in pursuit of costly and fruitless foreign ventures. The author shows that elsewhere in the world, the United States is no longer admired as a model for democracy and economic development; indeed, it is often feared or resented. He compares the United States and its accomplishments with other industrialized democracies and potential rivals. The European Union is more stable in economic and social terms, and countries like India and China are more economically dynamic. These and other nations will soon eclipse the United States, signaling a fundamental transformation of the global scene. This transition will require huge adjustments for American citizens and political leaders alike. But in the end, Americans--and the world--will be better off with a less profligate, more interdependent United States. More information is available on the author's website.
Download or read book Time No Longer written by Patrick Smith and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIV Americans cherish their national myths, some of which predate the country’s founding. But the time for illusions, nostalgia, and grand ambition abroad has gone by, Patrick Smith observes in this original book. Americans are now faced with a choice between a mythical idea of themselves, their nation, and their global “mission,” on the one hand, and on the other an idea of America that is rooted in historical consciousness. To cling to old myths will ensure America’s decline, Smith warns. He demonstrates with deep historical insight why a fundamentally new perspective and self-image are essential if the United States is to find its place in the twenty-first century. In four illuminating essays, Smith discusses America’s unusual (and dysfunctional) relation with history; the Spanish-American War and the roots of American imperial ambition; the Cold War years and the effects of fear and power on the American psyche; and the uneasy years from 9/11 to the present. Providing a new perspective on our nation’s current dilemmas, Smith also offers hope for change through an embrace of authentic history. /div
Download or read book An American Century written by John W. Kirshon and published by Strategic Book Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set amid the flow of the great events, trends, facts and fads of the 20th century, An American Century is a non-fiction, historical novel that tells the story of an American family and the history of the United States of America in our time. It recounts the lives of three generations of the Bleucher family: Oscar and Lilly, Paul and Josephine, and Jack and Kathy, as well as others. Follow their exploits during the Progressive Era, from the Klondike Gold Rush to the San Francisco Earthquake, to life on a Blackfeet Indian reservation, through the Great War and the Red Scare, the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition, the Crash and the Great Depression, and World War II. Readers will also relive the Fabulous Fifties, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Swinging Sixties, the Vietnam War and Resistance, the Age of Reagan, and the Gulf War and Globalization, until the climax on September 11, 2001. An American Century features scenes with such historical figures as Henry Luce, Lucky Luciano, Allen Dulles, John F. Kennedy, Clare Boothe Luce, Ronald Reagan, Arthur Schlesinger and John Kennedy Jr., and offers a fact-based but ultimately little-known theory of the Kennedy assassination, the mystery of the century.Blending the art of modern storytelling with historically accurate details, it is a novel of love and war and peace, ambition and pride and loss, courage and despair and hope, as well as the tender moments that are important in every life. Fans of literature set in history will love An American Century, the epic saga of a good family and the chronicle of a great empire, illuminating one hundred years of Americana. About the Author: John W. Kirshon is a journalist, writer and editor with more than 30 years of experience at The New York Times, the Associated Press, and CBS News. He was the executive editor of Chronicle of the 20th Century and the editor-in-chief of Chronicle of America, both bestselling, illustrated history books. He grew up in Larchmont and Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, and was motivated to write An American Century in order to place the story of a representative family within the context of contemporary history, and enlighten those who seek a more confidential knowledge of the social history of the United States in the 20th century, answering the question: How did we get from where we were then to where we are now?He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and is inspired to write by the current events of daily journalism and long-term trends of history. Publisher's website: http: //www.sbpra.com/JohnWKirsho
