American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the Twentieth Century [Paperback]

Michael Kammen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465037291 | ISBN-13: 978-0465037292 | Publication Date: September 20, 2000

In American Culture, American Tastes, Michael Kammen leads us on an entertaining, thought-provoking tour of America's changing tastes, uses of leisure, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them throughout our nation's history. Starting at the point in time that late-nineteenth-century popular culture began to evolve into post-WWII mass culture, Kammen charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the relationship between "high" and "low" art; the commercialization of organized entertainment; and the ways in which television has shaped mass culture and consumerism has reconfigured it. In doing so, he draws from sources as varied and rich as the work of esteemed cultural theorists, "The Simpsons," jigsaw puzzles, Walter Winchell's gossip columns, Whitman's poetry, Warhol's art, "Sesame Street," and the Book-of-the-Month Club.With wit and ingenuity Kammen traces the emergence of American mass culture and the contested meanings of leisure, taste, consumer culture, and social divisions that it has spawned.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Intellectuals are often accused of viewing mass entertainment with contempt, fear, or condescension. The rise of cultural-studies programs in prestigious universities, however, reveals that this perception couldn't be further from the truth. In American Culture, American Tastes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael G. Kammen explores the origins and implications of this new way that academics and critics celebrate, rather than condemn, popular tastes.

In principle, Kammen supports recent scholarly forays into the effects of mass production and consumerism on Americans' leisure time. He is concerned, however, that the audience's relationship to contemporary media is greatly underappreciated. In attempting to distinguish "popular" from "mass" culture, Kammen argues that with films, music, radio, and popular fiction, certain "highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow" levels emerged, targeting specific social classes or communities. These levels were quite permeable, however, and certain works, such as Shakespeare's plays and Charlie Chaplin's slapstick comedies, allowed audiences to transcend rigid categories of taste. In the television era, Kammen believes, leisure has become more passive and homogenized, however, and the era of democratic consumption that many modern intellectuals champion may be near an end.

To combat this trend, Kammen, like Russell Jacoby, longs to resurrect "public intellectuals," such as H.L. Mencken and Dwight Macdonald, who pointedly combined a learned appreciation of popular culture with a genuine concern for preserving the vivacity of public life. In a field dominated by Marxists and feminists, this call for liberal cultural "authority" will raise some hackles in academe, but praise among general audiences. --John M. Anderson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The prize-winning Kammen (American history, Cornell; Mystic Chords of Memory) is first among equals of academics devoted to American intellectual and cultural history. In his 15th book, he considers the rise of popular culture in the last century and how it has been created, received, and altered by consumers, producers, and opinion-makers. He rejects conservative jeremiads against popular cultureAwhich he distinguishes from mass culture, though not always with great clarityAby such contemporary figures as Hilton Kramer but is equally troubled by neo-Marxist condemnations influenced by the late Herbert Marcuse. Though the writing is surprisingly dry at times, given Kammen's long record of accessible scholarship, he casts a wide net in his consideration of popular culture. In the end, Kammen's liberal reasonableness counts as a new contribution to the school of consensus, an unfashionable approach in American historiography for decades. Recommended for public libraries and required for academic collections.AScott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 322 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465037291
• ISBN-13: 978-0465037292
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you enjoyed this book, try Also "From Lowbrow to Nobrow", May 18, 2007

By 

AgnisBee (HeiDelBerg) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the Twentieth Century (Paperback)

If you enjoyed this book, try also a recent hit, "From Lowbrow to Nobrow," which provides a state of the art and revolutionary analysis of popular fiction (sort of a la Herbert Gans), and does it in an engaging, colourful and witty way. Peter Swirski, the author, is a literature specialist but his also ranges into sociology, leisure studies, aesthetics, economics, and many other aspects of the socio-cultural function of popular fiction, as well as a new socio-aesthetic category which he dubs "nobrow."

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read!, September 2, 2000

By 

J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century (Hardcover)

I picked this book up on a whim, and found it an interesting mix; a somewhat anti-academic treatise written by a flourishing academic, filled with tremendous flashes of genuine insight into the perennial American ethos as it sifts out in our culture. Written in an engaging style, Kammen is clearly devoted to his own intellectual gifts but not overcome by them. His dissection of the impact of television on modern culture is particularly adept, if only the creators of TV programming possessed this much understanding of the medium in which they work! The pace of the book is invitingly brisk, and while it is thick going in a few places, it's mostly quite readable and makes its arguments in a manner that is concise, cogent, and to-the-point. Despite the somewhat dry title (although the Reginald Marsh painting on the cover really cinched my purchase of the book!), this is a penetrating and important look at the direction of American culture. Kammen's take on multi-culturalism in America seems somewhat bleached, and his occasional ruminations on cultural life played out vis-a-vis the increasingly virulent class war that rumbles just under the surface of American life seem conservative and not always informed, perhaps closeted a bit by his academic background. One other thing- the illustrations in the book are beautifully chosen, including Rockwell, Benton, and a positively magical drawing of Warhol by Jamie Wyeth. I'd never seen it before and it alone is worth the price of the book!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Kammen Hit!, May 17, 2000

By 

Patrick Valentine (Wilson, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century (Hardcover)

Kammen once again delivers the goods in this well-researched and timely discussion of how American popular culture has changed over the past century into mass culture. Popular and mass culture are terms often mis-used, so he starts with a discussion of their differences and how their meaning has changed. Kammen's range is broad and his commentary sharp. Enjoy! (I've read the library's copy, now I'm buying something I can mark on.)