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They left Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Michigan, and Stanford to drive ambulances on the French front, and on the killing fields of World War I they learned that war was no place for gentlemen. The tale of the American volunteer ambulance drivers of the First World War is one of gallantry amid gore; manners amid madness. Arlen J. Hansen’s Gentlemen Volunteers brings to life the entire story of the men—and women—who formed the first ambulance corps, and who went on to redefine American culture. Some were to become legends—Ernest Hemingway, e. e. cummings, Malcolm Cowley, and Walt Disney—but all were part of a generation seeking something greater and grander than what they could find at...
Paris has long been a storied center of art and culture, and of romance, but in the 1920s its magnetism was especially irresistible. From around the world writers, artists, and composers steamed in, to visit or linger, some to reside. For travelers, Francophiles and the curious, this gossipy retrospective of expatriate life in Paris in the 1920s is a mosaic of quick glimpses—Sarah Bernhardt sleeping in a coffin to overcome her fear of death, Igor Stravinsky diving through a huge wreath at the premiere of his ballet Les Noces, Ford Madox Ford meeting Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes near starvation, Josephine Baker establishing her nightclub. The list of expatriates is long and luminous, and this book—a work of immense erudition spiced with anecdotes and gossip—documents their haunts and habits, their comings and goings, their relationships intimate and artistic. Structured in thirty-three geographical and very walkable sections, Expatriate Paris is cross-referenced by streets, names, and topics and equipped with nine maps to satisfy the most demanding traveler, whether real or armchair.
The issues addressed in this volume include the limits of language and the need for linguistic form, the significance of creating.
Artistic vanguards plot new aesthetic movements, print controversial magazines, hold provocative art shows, and stage experimental theatrical and musical performances. These revolutionaries have often helped create America's countercultural movements, from the early romantics and bohemians to the beatniks and hippies. This work looks at how experimental art and the avant-garde artists' lifestyles have influenced, and at times transformed, American culture since the mid-nineteenth century. The work will introduce readers to these artists and rebels, making a careful distinction between the worlds of the high modern artist (salons and galleries) and the bohemian.
Humor and entertainment were vital to the war effort during World War I. While entertainment provided relief to soldiers in the trenches, it also built up support for the war effort on the home front. This book looks at transnational war culture by examining seemingly light-hearted discourses on the Great War.
Jews first arrived in the New World in 1654, seeking religious freedom. Since the beginning of American nationhood, Jewish volunteers and conscripts fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, on both sides of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, in both World Wars, and in the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Over the years, the American military learned to integrate its Jewish servicemen and women by providing Jewish military chaplains, kosher food, religious services, and placing the Star of David on the graves of fallen Jewish soldiers. The end of conscription and the establishment of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973 offered other paths to serve our country. American Jews have contributed with distinction in the arts and sciences, academia, entertainment, government, and in building the economy. For Jews, America is the Goldene Medina—the Golden Country.
For nearly two thousand years, the future was a realm reserved for prophets, poets, astrologers, and practitioners of deliberative rhetoric. Then in 1659 the French writer Jacques Guttin published his romance Epigone, which carried the subtitle "the history of the future century." Unlike the stories of space travel that were popular at the time, or the tales of travel to distant earthly lands which had long been a familiar literary genre, Guttin's romance described human societies displaced by time as well as by space and heroes not of his own day but of a future age. Paul Alkon's Origins of Futuristic Fiction examines the earliest works of prose fiction set in future time, the forgotten wri...
Intro -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- 1. The Making of a Soldier -- 2. Boots, Saddles, and Wedding Bells -- 3. The Not So "Splendid Little War": The Philippines -- 4. The Bureau of Insular Affairs -- 5. Preparation for War: Wyoming, Texas, Hawaii, and the Canal Zone -- 6. "Daddy"--7. Postwar Doings -- 8. "Doneroving": The Final Years -- Epilogue -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes -- References -- Index
The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal—scientific, objective, and dispassionate—and the inevitably subjective nature of day-to-day instruction. American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The modern university does not reward teachi...
Rebellious Laughter changes the way we think about the ordinary joke. Claiming that humor in America is a primary cultural weapon, Boskin surveys the multitude of joke cycles that have swept the country during the last fifty years. Dumb Blonde jokes. Elephant jokes. Jewish-American Princess jokes. Lightbulb jokes. Readers will enjoy humor from many diverse sources: whites, blacks, women, and Hispanics; conservatives and liberals; public workers and university students; the powerless and power brokers. Boskin argues that jokes provide a cultural barometer of concerns and anxieties, frequently appearing in our day-to-day language long before these issues become grist for stand-up comics.