Amazon.com: Women and the Press: The Struggle for Equality (Medill Visions of the American Press) (9780810123137): Patricia Bradley, Gail Collins: Books
As I release my fourth book, "The Making of American Culture," it occurs to me that I have a penchant for big subjects and immodest titles, having previously examined slavery and the American Revolution, the feminist movement and women and the press.
This is an unusual route for someone who spent twenty years in higher education, the world in which assistant professors early decide on a specialty and relentlessly hone the subject for the rest of their careers.
My contrarian impulse may have to do with a previous life in journalism, in print and televison, where one was expected to cover whatever came of the transom with judgment and aplomb, to say nothing of getting up to speed pretty quickly.
But the push to look at multiple topics also comes from a belief that all subjects are impacted by the same forces,in varying degrees and in varying constellations. Thus, to write about anything it is necessary to cross into fields beyond one's own--politics, history, sociology, anthropology, popular culture, and so on.
In "The Making of American Culture" I suggest that the cultural products that we have come to accept as representing our nation did not simply rise out of the ground, like Old Faithful, seemingly prompted by their own force alone. Rather, what came to be accepted and what came to be rejected, or simply forgotten, had most to do with the levers of influence of their time. What gets a place at our cultural table is not based on merit alone--rising to the top like cream--but from the levers of influence that allow certain products to be served up while other worthy entrees stay in the kitchen.
I look foward to readers' own thoughts on the making of American culture.
