The iconic images of Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe, or the "fireside chats" of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.: these are the words, images, and sounds that populate American cultural history. From the Boston Tea Party to the Dodgers, from the blues to Andy Warhol, dime novels to Disneyland, the history of American culture tells us how previous generations of Americans have imagined themselves, their nation, and their relationship to the world and its peoples. This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Lane offers a historical explanation for rising levels of black urban crime and family instability during a paradoxical era. Modern crime rates and patterns are shown to be products of a historical culture traceable from its formative years. The author charts Philadelphia's story but also makes suggestions about national and international patterns.

The Navajo nation is one of the most frequently researched groups of Indians in North America. Anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and others have taken turns explaining their views of Navajo history and culture. A recurrent theme throughout is that the U.S. government defeated the Navajos so soundly during the early 1860s that after their return from incarceration at Bosque Redondo, they were a badly shattered and submissive people. The next thirty years saw a marked demographic boom during which the Navajo population doubled. Historians disagree as to the extent of this growth, but the position taken by many historians is that because of this growth and the rapidly expanding herds of sheep, cattle, and horses, the government beneficently gave more territory to its suffering wards. While this interpretation is partly accurate, it centers on the role of the government, the legislation that was passed, and the frustrations of the Indian agents who rotated frequently through the Navajo Agency in Fort Defiance, New Mexico, and ignores or severely limits one of the most important actors in this process of land acquisition-the Navajos themselves. Instead of being a downtrodden group of prisoners, defeated militarily in the 1860s and dependent on the U.S. government for protection and guidance in the 1870s and 80s, they were vigorously involved in defending and expanding the borders of their homelands. This was accomplished not through war and as a concerted effort, but by an aggressive defensive policy built on individual action that varied with changing circumstances. Many Navajos never made the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. Instead they eluded capture in northern and western hinterlands and thereby pushed out their frontier. This book focuses on the events and activities in one part of the Navajo borderlands-the northern frontier-where between 1860 and 1900 the Navajos were able to secure a large portion of land that is still part of the reservation. This expansion was achieved during a period when most Native Americans were losing their lands.

John White Alexander, Cecilia Beaux, James Carroll Beckwich, Frank Weston Benson, Nelson Norris Bickford, John Leslie Breck, Dennis Miller Bunker, Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Jefferson David Chalfant, William Merritt Chase, Charles Courtney Curran, Thomas Eakins, Mary Fairchild, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, Abbott Fuller Graves, Ellen Day Hale, Frederick Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Thomas Hovenden, William Morris Hunt, Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Hermann Dudley Murphy, Elizabeth Nourse, Charles Sprague Pearce, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, John Singer Sargent, Julius LeBlanc Stewart, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Edmund Charles Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman, Harry van der Weyden, Frederic Porter Vinton, Robert Vonnoh, Julian Alden Weir, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, New York City was an undistinguished town, competing with Philadelphia and Boston to be America's dominant port city. Just two generations later, it had built itself into the country's powerhouse center of trade and finance, rivaled only by London as financial capital of the world. In Capital City, Thomas Kessner tells the story of this remarkable transformation. With the advantages of its famous harbor and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New York became the chief commercial center for the growing nation. As the shipping industry prospered, capital accumulated, and a growing banking center emerged, New York went on to finance the Union cause during the Civil War, open the West to development, and consolidate the national railroad system. The city's energy and opportunity attracted ambitious men from all over the country whose names became synonymous with big business: Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan. New York's banks set the interest rates for the nation, its stock exchange fixed the price of securities, its investors transformed American business from family-owned enterprises into modern corporations, and its growing political clout catapulted public figures, such as Samuel Tilden and Teddy Roosevelt, onto the national stage. Combining political and urban history with a colorful cast of characters, Capital City chronicles how Gotham's Gilded Age reshaped the metropolis and the nation as it molded our present-day economy.

This revised edition is updated with nearly 30 vintage images, as well as new chapters on personal hygiene, cosmetics, clothing manufacture, laundry, and the dating of vintage photographs, along with updated prices. -- Publisher's blurb.