Author: Timothy R. Mahoney File Type: pdf Mahoney examines how members of the middle class from small cities across the great West were transformed by boom and bust, years of recession, and civil war. He argues that in their encounters with national economic forces, the national crisis in politics, and the Civil War, middle class people were cut adrift from the social identity that they had established in the face to face communities of the hometowns of the urban West. By grounding them in their hometown ethos, and understanding how the Panic of 1857 and the subsequent recession undermined their lives, the author provides important insights into how they encountered, responded to, and were changed by their experiences in the Civil War. Providing a rare view of social history through the framework of the Civil War, the author documents, in both breadth and depth, the dramatic change and development of modern life in nineteenth-century America. **

Author: Susan Strasser File Type: epub An unprecedented look at that most commonplace act of everyday life--throwing things out--and how it has transformed American society. Susan Strassers pathbreaking histories of housework and the rise of the mass market have become classics in the literature of consumer culture. Here she turns to an essential but neglected part of that culture--the trash it produces--and finds in it an unexpected wealth of meaning. Before the twentieth century, streets and bodies stank, but trash was nearly nonexistent. With goods and money scarce, almost everything was reused. Strasser paints a vivid picture of an America where scavenger pigs roamed the streets, swill children collected kitchen garbage, and itinerant peddlers traded manufactured goods for rags and bones. Over the last hundred years, however, Americans have become hooked on convenience, disposability, fashion, and constant technological change--the rise of mass consumption has led to waste on a previously unimaginable scale. Lively and colorful, Waste and Want recaptures a hidden part of our social history, vividly illustrating that what counts as trash depends on whos counting, and that what we throw away defines us as much as what we keep. **From Publishers Weekly Nothing is inherently trash, claims Strasser (Satisfaction Guaranteed) in this vibrant social history of American attitudes toward superfluous or unusable material items. Before the 20th centuryAwhen mass production, post-WWII consumer culture and planned obsolescence created a society in which disposability was the normAbroken crockery, food, buttons, bones, fat, rags, tin, paper and other refuse were precious commodities, especially in areas of urban or rural poverty. Drawing on the work of such anthropologists as Mary Douglas, Thorsten Veblen and Claude L?vi-Strauss, of social critics like Jacob Riis and of such authors as Lydia Maria Child (whose popular The American Frugal Housewife was published in 1829), Strasser demonstrates how the designation trash exposes underlying attitudes about class, race, ethnicity, patriotism, survival, religion and art. Perceptively noting the intersections between capitalism, consumerism, industrialization and class mobility, the book spills over with fascinating factsAfor instance, in 1830, 10,000 hogs roamed Manhattans streets eating garbage and providing food for the poor. It also offers revealing analyses of why many Jewish immigrants went into the rag business how trash is gendered and how sanitary napkins became emblematic of the new disposable consumer culture. The chapters on the ultra-patriotic scrap drives of WWI and IIAparticularly Strassers observations on how the U.S. government encouraged spying on those who hoarded scrap metalAare illuminating and prove her point that trash is always more than it appears. Agent, Mary Evans. (Sept.) 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal The author of books on housework and the American mass market, social historian Strasser explores what America has discarded, from the period when Colonists valued everything up to todays era of public landfills. She chronicles how mass production, technological change, ideals of cleanliness, and style have altered Americas attitudes toward stewardship and throwing things out. Since paper production in the early days required the addition of scarce rags and scraps, people used paper sparingly. But while Henry Fords Model T was meant to last, competitor General Motorss yearly model changes heralded a consumer culture that venerated the new. Strassers well-sourced text, replete with attributions from womens magazines, indicates that genres evolution from frugal housekeepers counselor to consumer culture adjunct. Beginning as a countercultural environmental movement in the late 1960s, recycling had begun to enter the mainstream by the 1980s. The book ends on the promising note that profligacy may one day be understood as a stage of development. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.AElaine Machleder, Bronx, NY 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Lesley Coote File Type: pdf This cutting-edge volume demonstrates both the literary quality and the socio-economic importance of works on the matter of the greenwood over a long chronological period. These include drama texts, prose literature and novels (among them, childrens literature), and poetry. Whilst some of these are anonymous, others are by acknowledged canonical writers such as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and John Keats. The editors and the contributors argue that it is vitally important to include Robin Hood texts in the canon of English literary works, because of the high quality of many of these texts, and because of their significance in the development of English literature. **

Author: Carl Einstein File Type: pdf