America, United States of

10 Oct 2009 14:39

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The furnace where the future is being forged.
--- Trotsky

See also cultural criticism. A more-than-usually-inadequate notebook.

I'm particularly interested in the cultural, social and economic changes around 1880--1920, which seems to be when we did become what Trotsky took us to be, and finally gave up on being a rural republic. This, to my mind, was a Good Thing, but I want to understand it better. (I've written a little about this in two book reviews (1, 2). E.g., how did our experience during this period compare with that of other industrializing countries? How different was it from, e.g., Germany, Italy or Japan?

See also: the Cold War; Congress; Foreign Policy (American)

We are stranger than you imagine, and probably more dangerous.
--- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Recommended:
• Jacques Barzun, God's Country and Mine
• James Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society [Review]
• Annette Bernhardt, Martina Morris, Mark S. Handcock, and Marc A. Scott, Divergent Paths: Economic Mobility in the New American Labor Market [Blurb, table of contents, first chapter]
• John A. Hall and Charles Lindholm, Is America Breaking Apart? [Ans.: No.]
• Kate Schemerhorn, America's Idea of a Good Time
• Ronald C. Tobey, Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home [Online]
• Alfredo G. A. Valladao, The Twenty-First Century Will Be American

To read:
• Richard M. Abrams, America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941--2001 [Blurb]
• Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission [Blurb]
• Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500--2000
• David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History [blurb]
• Barbara Arneil, Diverse Communities: The Problem with Social Capital ["the changes in American civil society in the last half century are not so much the result of generational change or television as the unleashing of powerful economic, social and cultural forces that, despite leading to division and distrust within American society, also contributed to greater justice for women and cultural minorities"]
• Wayne E. Baker, America's Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception [Actual data in a discussion of values! Unheard-of! "The evidence shows overwhelmingly that America has not lost its traditional values, that the nation compares favorably with most other societies, and that the culture war is largely a myth." Blurb, first chapter]
• Louis Bergeron and Maria Teresa Maiullari-Pontois, Industry, Architecture and Engineering: American Ingenuity, 1750--1950 ["only comprehensive illustrated history of American industrial architecture & civil engineering from the 18th to 20th centuries & is an invaluable record of a key aspect of our heritage."]
• Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution
• David P. Billington and David P. Billington, Jr., Power, Speed and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century [Blurb]
• Judith R. Blau, The Shape of Culture: A Study of Contemporary Cultural Patterns in the United States ["This book systematically examines prevailing cultural patterns in contemporary [1992] American society. Using information on several thousands of cultural organizations, including opera and chamber music companies as well as cinemas and live rock concerts, ... examines the geography of culture, the changing demands for culture, the interdependencies among cultural organizations of different kinds, the nature of labor markets for artists, and the effects of arts subsidies on nonprofit cultural establishments over a ten year period." Blurb]
• Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
• Sarah Burns, Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America [Blurb, intro]
• Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
• Steven Cassedy, To the Other Shore: The Russian Jewish Intellectuals Who Came to America [Blurb]
• Andrew Cohen, The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900--1940 [blurb]
• Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, Crafting Equality: America's Anglo-African Word [Blurb]
• Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War [Blurb, ch. 1]
• Tyler Cowen, Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding [Blurb, ch. 1]
• Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
• Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
• Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation
• Robert Alan Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?
• Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes
• Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe
• Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium
• Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
• Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems [By "systems" he means "America". Blurb]
• John Ferling, Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic
• David Hackett Fischer
  • Albion's Seed
  • Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas
• Donna R. Gabaccia, Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History
• Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century
• Edward L. Glaeser and Glaudia Goldin, Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History [Blurb]
• William Graebner, The Engineering of Consent: Democracy and Authority in Twentieth-Century America
• Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607--1876 ["how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations?" Full blurb]
• Andrew Hacker, Money: Who Has How Much and Why
• Derek Hayes, Historical Atlas of the United States [Blurb]
• Godfrey Hodgson, More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century ["Great and growing inequality has been the most salient social fact about the America of the conservative ascendancy. It is hard not to ask whether that was not one of the conservatives' strategic goals."]
• David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism
• James J. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake
• David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800--1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States
• Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
• James M. Jasper, Restless Nation: Starting Over in America [Blurb]
• Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism
• Jacqueline Jones, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor
• Lisa A. Keister
  • Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way
  • Wealth in America: Trends in Wealth Inequality
• Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization [online]
• Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism [Blurb]
• Pamela Walker Laird, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin [blurb]
• Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution
• J. M. Mancini, Pre-Modernism: Art-World Change and American Culture from the Civil War to the Armory Show [Blurb]
• Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business
• Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism ["cultural history of Americans' engagement with Islam in the colonial and antebellum period"; full blurb]
• Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
• McGerr, A Fierce Discontent [the Progressive movement]
• William G. Meyer, The Changing American Mind: How and Why American Public Opinion Changed between 1960 and 1988
• M. A. Muqtedar Khan, American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom
• Mark A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
• David E. Nye
  • America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings
  • Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies
  • Electrifying America: The Social Meaning of a New Technology, 1880--1920
• Kathryn S. Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11
• Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism
• Dale E. Peterson, Up from Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American "Soul"
• Noah Pickus, True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism [Blurb, intro]
• Ann Powers, Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America
• Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon
• Chip Rhodes, Structures of the Jazz Age: Mass Culture, Progressive Education and Racial Disclosures in American Modernism
• Laura Rigal, American Manufactory: Art, Labor, and the World of Things in the Early Republic
• Martin Riesebrodt, Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran
• Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism [Blurb]
• Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes, Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869--1922 [Blurb]
• David Shields, Civil Tongues and polite Letters in British America
• Camilo Jose Vergara, American Ruins
• Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century [Blurb]
• William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History
• Richard Guy Wilson et al., The Machine Age in America, 1918--1941 [Art exhibition catalog]
• Robert Wuthnow, American Mythos: Why Our Best Efforts to Be a Better Nation Fall Short [Blurb, intro]
• Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century? [Blurb]