Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume 2

ISBN-13: 9781933385136 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 272 str.

Patrick Gerster; Nicholas Cords

Opis

The idea for Myth America grew out of our won teaching experiences. In continuously dealing with students who for the most part were beginning their collegiate study of American history, we found that a thematic approach to the nation's past was stimulating. The theme of myth as threads within the diverse tapestry of cultural experience proved to be especially engaging.

The selected historical myths discussed and analyzed in Myth America can best be understood as a series of false beliefs about America's past. They are false beliefs, however, that have been accepted as true and acted upon as real, and in that acting they have acquired truth. Therefore, myths remain both true and false simultaneously. In fact, the making of myths is a process by which a culture structures its world and perpetuates its grandest dreams.

While offering a strong foundation of classic historical writing and interpretation, Myth America includes numerous fresh selections on womens' history, southerners and American regionalism, popular culture, African American stereotyping, urban America, controversial leaders such as Booker T. Washington, progressivism in relation to both conservation and ethnicity, the nature and legacy of the Great War, World War II, and Vietnam, President Kennedy and Reagan, mythic dynamics of the Cold War, Asian-Americans, and multiculturalism. We have been guided in our final selections by a desire to offer articles that voice our mythic theme in a scholarly and provocative way: articles that offer students readability and current interest without sacrificing the demands of thorough historical scholarship. We occasionally refer to historiography, for historians function as the culture's preeminent storytellers and so maintain their seemingly contradictory roles of mythmakers and myth-debunkers.

Spis treści

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

I. Myths of Reconstruction & the Gilded Age.

Myth of Reconstruction (Eric Foner).

The Lost Cause Myth in the New South Era (Charles Reagan Wilson).

The Agrarian Myth (Richard Hofstadter).

Frontierswomen: Myths and Realities (Glenda Riley).

Ten–Gallon Hero: The Myth of the Cowboy (David Brion Davis).

Andrew Carnegie and the Robber Baron Myth (Milton Goldin).

II. American Myths at Century s End.

The Winning of the West and the Sioux: A Myth (Richard White).

Myths of the American West: Missionaries, Entrepreneurs, and New Identites (Patricia Nelson LimerickA).

Commanding Performance: Booker T. Washington s Atlanta Compromise Address (David Lionel Smith).

The Horatio Alger Myth (Carol Nackenoff).

Mythology and Workers Power (Herbert G. Gutman).

The May Day Myth: The Emergence of the United States as a World Power (Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords).

III. Myths of Progressivism & the 1920s.

The Frontier Myth and Teddy Roosevelt s Fight for Conservation (Leroy G. Dorsey).

Woodrow Wilson, Ethnicity, and the Myth of American Unity (Hans Vought).

Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker (John Hope Franklin).

The Myth of the Disillusioned American Soldier (David M. Kennedy).

What Sadie Knew: The Immigrant Working Girl and the Emergence of the Modern Young Women (John McClymer).

The Mythic Meaning of Lindbergh s Flight (John William Ward).

IV. Myths of Politics & Foreign Affairs.

The Lengthening Shadow of FDR: An Enduring Myth (William E. Leuchtenburg).

The Myth of New Deal Radicalism (Paul K. Conkin).

The Myth of the Good War (Richard Polenberg).

The Myth of the Placid 1950s (Robert D. Marcus).

The Kennedy Myth (Herbert S. Parmet).

With One Hand Tied Behind Their Back and Other Myths of the Vietnam War (Robert Buzzanco).

The Frontier Myth and the Reagan Presidency (Richard Slotkin).

The Myth of Deterrence and the End of the Cold War (Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein).

V. Social Myths of Modern America.

The Myth of the Feminine Mystique (Joanne Meyerowitz).

Mythology and the Charismatic Leadership of Martin Luther King (Clayborne Carson).

The Chicano Image and the Myth of Aztlan Rediscovered (John R. Chavez).

Streets of Gold: The Myth of the Model Minority (Curtis Chang).

Revolution in Indian Country (Fergus M. Bordewich).

Myth, the Melting Pot, and Multiculturalism (Carl N. Degler)

O autorze

Patrick Gerster is Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at San Jose City College.