Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)

How did a mid-eighteenth-century group, the so-called Pennsylvania Germans, build their cultural identity in the face of ethnic stereotyping, nostalgic ideals, and the views imposed by outside contemporaries? Numerous forces create a group's identity, including the views of outsiders, insiders, and the shaping pressure of religious beliefs, but to understand the process better, we must look to clues from material culture.

Cynthia Falk explores the relationship between ethnicity and the buildings, personal belongings, and other cultural artifacts of early Pennsylvania German...

"The Dalzells . . . do an astonishing job of placing Kykuit in historical context while weaving the larger-than-life Rockefeller personalities into its very walls and hallways."--Los Angeles Times

One hundred years ago America's richest man established a dynastic seat, the granite-clad Kykuit, high above the Hudson River. John D. Rockefeller, who detested ostentation, had something simple in mind--at least until his son John Jr. and his charming wife, Abby, injected classical taste and a spirit of noblesse oblige into the equation. Built to honor the senior...

Sensationalized history can be credited with inspiring generations of truth-seeking experts and enthusiasts. The tragedy of the Johnstown Flood was an oft-exploited event as writers and publishers hawked hastily written articles in original form or pirated collections. Where many of the articles lacked fact, they were rife with exaggeration and imagination.

James Herbert Walker published one of the very first of these books, The Johnstown Horror, a pamphlet of some 40 pages. Experts cite the book as being sold in New York within a week of the disaster. Though the structure...

Publisher J. S. Ogilvie's History of the Great Flood gathers many first-person accounts of the Johnstown disaster of May 1889, offering a largely sensationalized compilation of articles and interviews concerning the event. (The title's declaration of 10,000 deaths should alert readers to treat Ogilvie's facts with skepticism--the official death toll from the Johnstown Flood was just above 2,200.) The book features a variety of illustrations, including morbid images of bodies deposited in trees, tragic scenes of hospital wards overflowing with flood victims, and depictions of...

Journey through the splendor and the excesses of the Gilded Age

""Every aspect of life in the Gilded Age took on deeper, transcendent meaning intended to prove the greatness of America: residences beautified their surroundings; works of art uplifted and were shared with the public; clothing exhibited evidence of breeding; jewelry testified to cultured taste and wealth; dinners demonstrated sophisticated palates; and balls rivaled those of European courts in their refinement. The message was unmistakable: the United States had arrived culturally, and Caroline Astor and her circle were...

In 1919, the United States embarked on the country's boldest attempt at moral and social reform: Prohibition. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol around the country. This "noble experiment," as President Hoover called it, was intended to usher in a healthier, more moral, and more efficient society. Nowhere was such reform needed more, proponents argued, than in New York City--and nowhere did Prohibition fail more spectacularly. Dry Manhattan is the first major work on Prohibition in nearly a quarter century, and the...