A Brief History of American Culture [Paperback]

Robert M. Crunden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996

The roots of today's "culture wars" can be found in the molding tensions of an American character, one that wasn't handed down by tradition or enforced by a government, but one that was shaped out of the mire of individuals, religious beliefs, communities, a newly formed democracy, capitalism and freedom, art and literature all prominently influencing the vast and uncharted young nation. The important cultural centers from 1630-1815 - Boston, Philadelphia, and Virginia - are highlighted through figures like Benjamin Franklin, "the rustic sage." An early America, "the playground of the European imagination, " began to form its own intellectual, artistic, and political culture, where fresh ideas about democracy, rationality, nature, a benign God, flourished and America became the place where "it could happen." As the country expanded westward, from 1815-1901, a revival of conservative religion burst upon the scene. Protestantism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, Baptists, even groups like the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics saturated the culture and profoundly influenced its institutions, especially education. Reformers like Horace Mann and Charles Finney, Transcendentalists like Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, all blazed the path toward abolitionism and supplied much of the energy to American cultural activity. The Civil War became a dividing point in American culture in ways that transcended its social and political impact. Social development went through profound changes; Darwinism, progressivism, and pragmatism secularized the prevailing thought and religious energies were channeled into economic activity and then into a political faith. In the early 1900s, cosmopolitanism turned American eyes to Europe, where many Americans experimented in art, literature, and philosophy: Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Pound, and Eliot. And America initiated its own indigenous cultural growth: jazz, George Gershw

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Over the past 20 years, University of Texas at Austin history professor Crunden has taught and lectured around the world, most notably in Finland, Germany, Australia, and India. Seeking to help students in other countries understand the U.S., he has come to perceive in American culture "a peculiar mixture of Christianity, capitalism, and democracy" (in order of chronology as well as importance). Crunden's Brief History covers five historical phases: local culture (1630-1815), sectional culture (1815-1901), "the Northern Nation" (1865-1917), national culture (1901-1941), and cosmopolitan culture (1941-present). The discussion of each period is wide-ranging, analyzing movements and spotlighting major figures in politics and philosophy, law and literature, economics and education, jazz and journalism, science and civil rights. A readable, insightful overview of the underlying patterns that give shape to U.S. cultural history. Nonacademic readers will find Crunden's selective bibliographical essay helpful Mary Carroll --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Reworking a book first published abroad, Crunden (American Civilization/Univ. of Texas at Austin) provides readers in these United States with a useful overview of their cultural history. The narrative presents American creative endeavor as gradually increasing in scale and growing more integrated into the world. Crunden (American Salons, 1992, etc.) begins with ``local culture,'' looking in turn at Puritan Boston, Enlightened Philadelphia, and the Virginia of the Founding Fathers. Discussing the subsequent era of North, South, and West, he shifts his emphasis from culture's religious and political dimensions toward the fine arts. Especially strong pages treat Washington Irving and John James Audubon. Somewhat scanting the Civil War, Crunden moves quickly to a discussion of the national culture that found progressives and pragmatists tempering capitalist excesses. Mini- biographies--e.g., of William and Henry James, of Alice Hamilton- -convey much information. Paradoxically, the emergence of international modernism crowns Crunden's narrative of the specifically American. Charles Ives and Frank Lloyd Wright, we find, were following European leads by formalizing indigenous national styles. The author further gestures toward an apotheosis of the American with a final section on ``cosmopolitan culture.'' A profile of William F. Buckley Jr. nicely encapsulates the emergence of a ``conservative hegemony,'' while an examination of T. Coraghessan Boyle's fiction as exemplary post-60s literature works surprisingly well. Crunden represents contemporary academic thought by rehashing David Lehman's denunciations of Paul de Man and followers--this is a letdown in the wake of his superb account of transatlantic intellectual exchange around the time of the Second World War. But this history aspires to start, not finish, debates over coverage; its risky choices work to stimulate rather than to conceal. Leavening common information with uncommon insights and skillfully managing--without directly addressing--the difficulties of its mission, Crunden's work should provoke fine conversations on what Americans might want to say next. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 363 pages
• Publisher: M.E. Sharpe; 1st paperback ed edition (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563248654
• ISBN-13: 978-1563248658
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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