Videri - User contributions [en]

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T21:43:37Z

Kabercrombie3:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Robert Frank. [[The Americans|The Americans: Photographs by Robert Frank Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[Social Darwinism in American Thought]] (1994).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Mae Ngai. [[Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America]] (2014).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Aviva Chomsky. [[Linked Labor Histories| Linked Labor Histories : New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class]] (2008 .

The Americans

2018-10-22T00:32:18Z

Kabercrombie3:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Americans
| author = Robert Frank
| publisher = Grove Press
| pub_date = 1958
| pages = 180
| isbn = 978-3865215840
| image = [[File:The Americans.jpg|alt=image]]
}}

Following World War II (September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945) social photography in America became increasingly prevalent as the social structure of society began to evolve. Numerous photographers such as Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) took this opportunity to idealize American culture and society – an objective which culminated in the publishing of “The Family of Man,” in 1955. This exhibit was a photography gallery, first displayed in New York City then traveling to six continents, which projected United States’ society as having commonalities with all of humanity. Many of these commonalities were centered on the positive attributes of humanity such as love, kindness, family, and childhood. The exhibit, however, was quite obviously an idealistic viewpoint as the photography ignored societal issues such as class/racial divides, issues of war and conflict, and the nonconformity movement of youth culture at this time. This was most evidently displayed in the presentation of African Americans throughout the exhibit. The photography deliberately ignored issues such as the Civil Rights Movement while focusing on African American “tribal culture,” instead.

Conversely, another social photographer emerged shortly after the publication of “The Family of Man,” and his work would shift the direction of social photography entirely for the generations to come. In 1955, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) traveled across the U.S. photographing American society under the support of a Guggenheim fellowship. The resulting book, rightfully called, “The Americans,” accomplished what Steichen did not as it presented a realistic perspective of true American culture in the mid-twentieth century. The collection of photographs presented Frank’s findings from his 1955 endeavor and established a new type of photography – one that not only had imperfections but one that highlighted these aspects and gave a more realistic view of the world through photographs.

As stated in the latter, the primary goal for Frank in photography was to highlight the imperfections of the world and present realistic evidence of his surroundings. This goal was undoubtedly established out of the imperfect society that Frank was living in throughout the 1950s. Issues such as the Red Scare and the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Youth Revolution, and racial/class division presented a problematic society with endless imperfections for Frank to display. Through his photography in, “The Americas,” that is exactly what he did.

Shortly following the end of WWII in 1945, the Soviet Union asserted its dominance in Europe as they consolidated their powers over the Eastern bloc. Following this assertion, the United States began to enforce the strategy of containment in order to prevent the spread of communism. Territorial disputes over African colonies, countries in Latin America and small wars in Asia created tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became known as the Cold War. Such tensions were furthered by the first successful explosion of an atomic bomb in 1949.

Following the establishment of the Cold War in 1947, the fear of communism grew rapidly. Led by Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, the so-called witch hunt for communists in the U.S. took down over hundreds of screen writers, directors, and actors for being threats to national security. Such hysteria instilled fear and conformity into the lives of countless Americans who then sought to live as patriots who were radically opposed to the eclectic style of communists. The Cold War and the Red Scare proved to be a pivotal influence on the work of Frank as the photographs taken were reflections of the American lives shaped by such events.

Following the Second World War, the United States experienced unprecedented economic prosperity that resulted in the betterment of lives for white citizens. However, throughout this time, the separate but equal law enacted by Plessy v. Ferguson casted a shadow over African Americans as these individuals were forced to live in the Jim Crow Era (1892-1964). Such individuals however established the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement roughly in 1954. Suffering from discrimination such as voting rights, hate crimes, and segregation, the civil rights movement serves as a reminder that not all Americans were living prosperously in the 1950s – in fact this era serves as one of the divided and violent eras for the U.S.

The 1950’s saw a cultural movement that was unlike any other prior to its emergence. With the birth of rock’n’roll and beat literature, a cultural youth movement became mainstream for the first time in American history. As an example of counterculture, the ideals of the movement were rooted in non-conformism, spirituality, sexual liberation, and human exploration. As the name Beatnik (later shortened to beat) was derived from the Russian satellite Sputnik launched in 1958, the beat generation and youth culture during the 1950s was set on going against American mainstream culture. Ironically this culture then became the new mainstream and set the backdrop for Frank’s photography in, “The Americans.”

The story of Robert Frank’s imperfect America is illustrated throughout his work, “The Americans,” however one of the most telling images in the book is “Political Rally – Chicago,” as it illustrates a clear manifestation of conflict. The image is centered on a man yelling from the top of a building at a political rally in Chicago. While we are unsure which cause he is fighting for might it be civil rights, anti-communism, or youth culture, he most clearly illuminates the obvious discontent of Americans with society during the 1950s.

A second photograph that highlights the clear imperfections with American society during the 1950s is “Charleston – South Carolina.” This image centers on an African American woman dressed in a maid’s uniform holding a white baby. Such an image clearly illustrates the racial/class division present in American society as she is more than likely raising a child that is not her own while its parents live lavishly – a lifestyle illustrated by their ability to hire a nanny and their lack of appearance in the photograph. As a result Frank has shown the imperfect conflicts of 1950s America. This image is a reflection of the civil rights movement and racial/class divide.

“Dine-In Movie – Detroit,” tells the story of Robert Frank as it centers in on the youth culture that had gone mainstream in this time. This youth culture was one of the first to be centered on popular entertainment such as film and as the image shows, this was clearly a priority for this generation of youth. The image shows hundreds of young adults gathered at a drive in theatre to celebrate their new mainstream culture and this in turn represented the imperfect society struggling to remain non-conformists while celebrating their rebel culture.
Implications for the 1960’s:

The work of “The Americans,” by Robert Frank had serious implications for the future generations of the 1960s and onward. The book clearly resonated with leaders of the beat generations as displayed by the introduction written by beat generation leader Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969). This work so clearly resonated with these leaders because it helped bring life and popularity to their cultural movement. Images throughout the work embodied nonconformity, imperfection, and criticism of society. As a result, the work was able to spread such a message to the masses and this in turn spurred the cultural movements of hippies in the subsequent generations.

The work, “The Americans,” by Robert Frank was undoubtedly groundbreaking as it was one of the first to emerge with a perspective of the real America. By showcasing ideals such as imperfection and conflict, Frank inspired a new generation of Americans to embrace these ideals and live authentically. As a result new generations of imperfect nonconformists took hold in the 1960s and the work in turn has been immortalized as one of the most iconic representations of American history of all time.

Works Cited:
Orvell, Miles. Photography in America Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Peter, Byrd, "Cold War," The concise Oxford dictionary of politics. Oxford University Press. 2003.
Johnpoll, Bernard K. “A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States: Volume III Unite and Fight, 1934–1935.” Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.1994.
Lawlor ed., William T. Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons and Impact.
Robert, Frank. “The Americans

[[Category: Twentieth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Robert Frank]]

The Americans

2018-10-22T00:31:21Z

Kabercrombie3:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Americans
| author = Robert Frank
| publisher = Grove Press
| pub_date = 1958
| pages = 180
| isbn = 978-3865215840
| image = [[File:The Americans.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
Following World War II (September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945) social photography in America became increasingly prevalent as the social structure of society began to evolve. Numerous photographers such as Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) took this opportunity to idealize American culture and society – an objective which culminated in the publishing of “The Family of Man,” in 1955. This exhibit was a photography gallery, first displayed in New York City then traveling to six continents, which projected United States’ society as having commonalities with all of humanity. Many of these commonalities were centered on the positive attributes of humanity such as love, kindness, family, and childhood. The exhibit however, was quite obviously an idealistic viewpoint as the photography ignored societal issues such as class/racial divides, issues of war and conflict, and the nonconformity movement of youth culture at this time. This was most evidently displayed in the presentation of African Americans throughout the exhibit. The photography deliberately ignored issues such as the Civil Rights Movement while focusing on African American “tribal culture,” instead.

Conversely, another social photographer emerged shortly after the publication of “The Family of Man,” and his work would shift the direction of social photography entirely for the generations to come. In 1955, Swiss born photographer Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) traveled across the U.S. photographing American society under the support of a Guggenheim fellowship. The resulting book, rightfully called, “The Americans,” accomplished what Steichen did not as it presented a realistic perspective of true American culture in the mid twentieth century. The collection of photographs presented Frank’s findings from his 1955 endeavor and established a new type of photography – one that not only had imperfections but one that highlighted these aspects and gave a more realistic view of the world through photographs.

As stated in the latter, the primary goal for Frank in photography was to highlight the imperfections of the world and present realistic evidence of his surroundings. This goal was undoubtedly established out of the imperfect society that Frank was living in throughout the 1950s. Issues such as the Red Scare and the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Youth Revolution, and racial/class division presented a problematic society with endless imperfections for Frank to display. Through his photography in, “The Americas,” that is exactly what he did.

Shortly following the end of WWII in 1945, the Soviet Union asserted its dominance in Europe as they consolidated their powers over the Eastern bloc. Following this assertion, the United States began to enforce the strategy of containment in order to prevent the spread of communism. Territorial disputes over African colonies, countries in Latin America and small wars in Asia created tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became known as the Cold War. Such tensions were furthered by the first successful explosion of an atomic bomb in 1949.

Following the establishment of the Cold War in 1947, the fear of communism grew rapidly. Led by Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, the so-called witch hunt for communists in the U.S. took down over hundreds of screen writers, directors, and actors for being threats to national security. Such hysteria instilled fear and conformity into the lives of countless Americans who then sought to live as patriots who were radically opposed to the eclectic style of communists. The Cold War and the Red Scare proved to be a pivotal influence on the work of Frank as the photographs taken were reflections of the American lives shaped by such events.

Following the Second World War, the United States experienced unprecedented economic prosperity that resulted in the betterment of lives for white citizens. However, throughout this time, the separate but equal law enacted by Plessy v. Ferguson casted a shadow over African Americans as these individuals were forced to live in the Jim Crow Era (1892-1964). Such individuals however established the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement roughly in 1954. Suffering from discrimination such as voting rights, hate crimes, and segregation, the civil rights movement serves as a reminder that not all Americans were living prosperously in the 1950s – in fact this era serves as one of the divided and violent eras for the U.S.

The 1950’s saw a cultural movement that was unlike any other prior to its emergence. With the birth of rock’n’roll and beat literature, a cultural youth movement became mainstream for the first time in American history. As an example of counterculture, the ideals of the movement were rooted in non-conformism, spirituality, sexual liberation, and human exploration. As the name Beatnik (later shortened to beat) was derived from the Russian satellite Sputnik launched in 1958, the beat generation and youth culture during the 1950s was set on going against American mainstream culture. Ironically this culture then became the new mainstream and set the backdrop for Frank’s photography in, “The Americans.”

The story of Robert Frank’s imperfect America is illustrated throughout his work, “The Americans,” however one of the most telling images in the book is “Political Rally – Chicago,” as it illustrates a clear manifestation of conflict. The image is centered on a man yelling from the top of a building at a political rally in Chicago. While we are unsure which cause he is fighting for might it be civil rights, anti-communism, or youth culture, he most clearly illuminates the obvious discontent of Americans with society during the 1950s.

A second photograph that highlights the clear imperfections with American society during the 1950s is “Charleston – South Carolina.” This image centers on an African American woman dressed in a maid’s uniform holding a white baby. Such an image clearly illustrates the racial/class division present in American society as she is more than likely raising a child that is not her own while its parents live lavishly – a lifestyle illustrated by their ability to hire a nanny and their lack of appearance in the photograph. As a result Frank has shown the imperfect conflicts of 1950s America. This image is a reflection of the civil rights movement and racial/class divide.

“Dine-In Movie – Detroit,” tells the story of Robert Frank as it centers in on the youth culture that had gone mainstream in this time. This youth culture was one of the first to be centered on popular entertainment such as film and as the image shows, this was clearly a priority for this generation of youth. The image shows hundreds of young adults gathered at a drive in theatre to celebrate their new mainstream culture and this in turn represented the imperfect society struggling to remain non-conformists while celebrating their rebel culture.
Implications for the 1960’s:

The work of “The Americans,” by Robert Frank had serious implications for the future generations of the 1960s and onward. The book clearly resonated with leaders of the beat generations as displayed by the introduction written by beat generation leader Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969). This work so clearly resonated with these leaders because it helped bring life and popularity to their cultural movement. Images throughout the work embodied nonconformity, imperfection, and criticism of society. As a result, the work was able to spread such a message to the masses and this in turn spurred the cultural movements of hippies in the subsequent generations.

The work, “The Americans,” by Robert Frank was undoubtedly groundbreaking as it was one of the first to emerge with a perspective of the real America. By showcasing ideals such as imperfection and conflict, Frank inspired a new generation of Americans to embrace these ideals and live authentically. As a result new generations of imperfect nonconformists took hold in the 1960s and the work in turn has been immortalized as one of the most iconic representations of American history of all time.

Works Cited:
Orvell, Miles. Photography in America Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Peter, Byrd, "Cold War," The concise Oxford dictionary of politics. Oxford University Press. 2003.
Johnpoll, Bernard K. “A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States: Volume III Unite and Fight, 1934–1935.” Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.1994.
Lawlor ed., William T. Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons and Impact.
Robert, Frank. “The Americans

[[Category: Twentieth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Robert Frank]]

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T00:28:15Z

Kabercrombie3:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Robert Frank. [[The Americans|The Americans: Photographs by Robert Frank Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T00:27:50Z

Kabercrombie3:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Robert Frank. [[The Americans|The Americans Photographs by Robert Frank: Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).

File:The Americans.jpg

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The Americans

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{{Infobox book
| name = The Americans
| author = Robert Frank
| publisher = Grove Press
| pub_date = 1958
| pages = 180
| isbn = 978-3865215840
| image = [[File:The Americans.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
Following World War II (September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945) social photography in America became increasingly prevalent as the social structure of society began to evolve. Numerous photographers such as Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) took this opportunity to idealize American culture and society – an objective which culminated in the publishing of “The Family of Man,” in 1955. This exhibit was a photography gallery, first displayed in New York City then traveling to six continents, which projected United States’ society as having commonalities with all of humanity. Many of these commonalities were centered on the positive attributes of humanity such as love, kindness, family, and childhood. The exhibit however, was quite obviously an idealistic viewpoint as the photography ignored societal issues such as class/racial divides, issues of war and conflict, and the nonconformity movement of youth culture at this time. This was most evidently displayed in the presentation of African Americans throughout the exhibit. The photography deliberately ignored issues such as the Civil Rights Movement while focusing on African American “tribal culture,” instead.
Conversely, another social photographer emerged shortly after the publication of “The Family of Man,” and his work would shift the direction of social photography entirely for the generations to come. In 1955, Swiss born photographer Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) traveled across the U.S. photographing American society under the support of a Guggenheim fellowship. The resulting book, rightfully called, “The Americans,” accomplished what Steichen did not as it presented a realistic perspective of true American culture in the mid twentieth century. The collection of photographs presented Frank’s findings from his 1955 endeavor and established a new type of photography – one that not only had imperfections but one that highlighted these aspects and gave a more realistic view of the world through photographs.
As stated in the latter, the primary goal for Frank in photography was to highlight the imperfections of the world and present realistic evidence of his surroundings. This goal was undoubtedly established out of the imperfect society that Frank was living in throughout the 1950s. Issues such as the Red Scare and the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Youth Revolution, and racial/class division presented a problematic society with endless imperfections for Frank to display. Through his photography in, “The Americas,” that is exactly what he did.
Shortly following the end of WWII in 1945, the Soviet Union asserted its dominance in Europe as they consolidated their powers over the Eastern bloc. Following this assertion, the United States began to enforce the strategy of containment in order to prevent the spread of communism. Territorial disputes over African colonies, countries in Latin America and small wars in Asia created tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became known as the Cold War. Such tensions were furthered by the first successful explosion of an atomic bomb in 1949.
Following the establishment of the Cold War in 1947, the fear of communism grew rapidly. Led by Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, the so-called witch hunt for communists in the U.S. took down over hundreds of screen writers, directors, and actors for being threats to national security. Such hysteria instilled fear and conformity into the lives of countless Americans who then sought to live as patriots who were radically opposed to the eclectic style of communists. The Cold War and the Red Scare proved to be a pivotal influence on the work of Frank as the photographs taken were reflections of the American lives shaped by such events.
Following the Second World War, the United States experienced unprecedented economic prosperity that resulted in the betterment of lives for white citizens. However, throughout this time, the separate but equal law enacted by Plessy v. Ferguson casted a shadow over African Americans as these individuals were forced to live in the Jim Crow Era (1892-1964). Such individuals however established the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement roughly in 1954. Suffering from discrimination such as voting rights, hate crimes, and segregation, the civil rights movement serves as a reminder that not all Americans were living prosperously in the 1950s – in fact this era serves as one of the divided and violent eras for the U.S.
The 1950’s saw a cultural movement that was unlike any other prior to its emergence. With the birth of rock’n’roll and beat literature, a cultural youth movement became mainstream for the first time in American history. As an example of counterculture, the ideals of the movement were rooted in non-conformism, spirituality, sexual liberation, and human exploration. As the name Beatnik (later shortened to beat) was derived from the Russian satellite Sputnik launched in 1958, the beat generation and youth culture during the 1950s was set on going against American mainstream culture. Ironically this culture then became the new mainstream and set the backdrop for Frank’s photography in, “The Americans.”
The story of Robert Frank’s imperfect America is illustrated throughout his work, “The Americans,” however one of the most telling images in the book is “Political Rally – Chicago,” as it illustrates a clear manifestation of conflict. The image is centered on a man yelling from the top of a building at a political rally in Chicago. While we are unsure which cause he is fighting for might it be civil rights, anti-communism, or youth culture, he most clearly illuminates the obvious discontent of Americans with society during the 1950s.
A second photograph that highlights the clear imperfections with American society during the 1950s is “Charleston – South Carolina.” This image centers on an African American woman dressed in a maid’s uniform holding a white baby. Such an image clearly illustrates the racial/class division present in American society as she is more than likely raising a child that is not her own while its parents live lavishly – a lifestyle illustrated by their ability to hire a nanny and their lack of appearance in the photograph. As a result Frank has shown the imperfect conflicts of 1950s America. This image is a reflection of the civil rights movement and racial/class divide.
“Dine-In Movie – Detroit,” tells the story of Robert Frank as it centers in on the youth culture that had gone mainstream in this time. This youth culture was one of the first to be centered on popular entertainment such as film and as the image shows, this was clearly a priority for this generation of youth. The image shows hundreds of young adults gathered at a drive in theatre to celebrate their new mainstream culture and this in turn represented the imperfect society struggling to remain non-conformists while celebrating their rebel culture.
Implications for the 1960’s:
The work of “The Americans,” by Robert Frank had serious implications for the future generations of the 1960s and onward. The book clearly resonated with leaders of the beat generations as displayed by the introduction written by beat generation leader Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969). This work so clearly resonated with these leaders because it helped bring life and popularity to their cultural movement. Images throughout the work embodied nonconformity, imperfection, and criticism of society. As a result, the work was able to spread such a message to the masses and this in turn spurred the cultural movements of hippies in the subsequent generations.
The work, “The Americans,” by Robert Frank was undoubtedly groundbreaking as it was one of the first to emerge with a perspective of the real America. By showcasing ideals such as imperfection and conflict, Frank inspired a new generation of Americans to embrace these ideals and live authentically. As a result new generations of imperfect nonconformists took hold in the 1960s and the work in turn has been immortalized as one of the most iconic representations of American history of all time.

Works Cited:
Orvell, Miles. Photography in America Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Peter, Byrd, "Cold War," The concise Oxford dictionary of politics. Oxford University Press. 2003.
Johnpoll, Bernard K. “A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States: Volume III Unite and Fight, 1934–1935.” Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.1994.
Lawlor ed., William T. Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons and Impact.
Robert, Frank. “The Americans

[[Category: Twentieth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Robert Frank]]

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T00:25:39Z

Kabercrombie3:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Robert Frank. [[The Americans|Photographs by Robert Frank: Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).

The Americans

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Kabercrombie3: Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = The Americans | author = Robert Frank | publisher = Grove Press | pub_date = 1958 | pages = 180 | isbn..."

{{Infobox book
| name = The Americans
| author = Robert Frank
| publisher = Grove Press
| pub_date = 1958
| pages = 180
| isbn = 978-3865215840
| image = [[File:Name of File.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
Following World War II (September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945) social photography in America became increasingly prevalent as the social structure of society began to evolve. Numerous photographers such as Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) took this opportunity to idealize American culture and society – an objective which culminated in the publishing of “The Family of Man,” in 1955. This exhibit was a photography gallery, first displayed in New York City then traveling to six continents, which projected United States’ society as having commonalities with all of humanity. Many of these commonalities were centered on the positive attributes of humanity such as love, kindness, family, and childhood. The exhibit however, was quite obviously an idealistic viewpoint as the photography ignored societal issues such as class/racial divides, issues of war and conflict, and the nonconformity movement of youth culture at this time. This was most evidently displayed in the presentation of African Americans throughout the exhibit. The photography deliberately ignored issues such as the Civil Rights Movement while focusing on African American “tribal culture,” instead.
Conversely, another social photographer emerged shortly after the publication of “The Family of Man,” and his work would shift the direction of social photography entirely for the generations to come. In 1955, Swiss born photographer Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) traveled across the U.S. photographing American society under the support of a Guggenheim fellowship. The resulting book, rightfully called, “The Americans,” accomplished what Steichen did not as it presented a realistic perspective of true American culture in the mid twentieth century. The collection of photographs presented Frank’s findings from his 1955 endeavor and established a new type of photography – one that not only had imperfections but one that highlighted these aspects and gave a more realistic view of the world through photographs.
As stated in the latter, the primary goal for Frank in photography was to highlight the imperfections of the world and present realistic evidence of his surroundings. This goal was undoubtedly established out of the imperfect society that Frank was living in throughout the 1950s. Issues such as the Red Scare and the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Youth Revolution, and racial/class division presented a problematic society with endless imperfections for Frank to display. Through his photography in, “The Americas,” that is exactly what he did.
Shortly following the end of WWII in 1945, the Soviet Union asserted its dominance in Europe as they consolidated their powers over the Eastern bloc. Following this assertion, the United States began to enforce the strategy of containment in order to prevent the spread of communism. Territorial disputes over African colonies, countries in Latin America and small wars in Asia created tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became known as the Cold War. Such tensions were furthered by the first successful explosion of an atomic bomb in 1949.
Following the establishment of the Cold War in 1947, the fear of communism grew rapidly. Led by Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, the so-called witch hunt for communists in the U.S. took down over hundreds of screen writers, directors, and actors for being threats to national security. Such hysteria instilled fear and conformity into the lives of countless Americans who then sought to live as patriots who were radically opposed to the eclectic style of communists. The Cold War and the Red Scare proved to be a pivotal influence on the work of Frank as the photographs taken were reflections of the American lives shaped by such events.
Following the Second World War, the United States experienced unprecedented economic prosperity that resulted in the betterment of lives for white citizens. However, throughout this time, the separate but equal law enacted by Plessy v. Ferguson casted a shadow over African Americans as these individuals were forced to live in the Jim Crow Era (1892-1964). Such individuals however established the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement roughly in 1954. Suffering from discrimination such as voting rights, hate crimes, and segregation, the civil rights movement serves as a reminder that not all Americans were living prosperously in the 1950s – in fact this era serves as one of the divided and violent eras for the U.S.
The 1950’s saw a cultural movement that was unlike any other prior to its emergence. With the birth of rock’n’roll and beat literature, a cultural youth movement became mainstream for the first time in American history. As an example of counterculture, the ideals of the movement were rooted in non-conformism, spirituality, sexual liberation, and human exploration. As the name Beatnik (later shortened to beat) was derived from the Russian satellite Sputnik launched in 1958, the beat generation and youth culture during the 1950s was set on going against American mainstream culture. Ironically this culture then became the new mainstream and set the backdrop for Frank’s photography in, “The Americans.”
The story of Robert Frank’s imperfect America is illustrated throughout his work, “The Americans,” however one of the most telling images in the book is “Political Rally – Chicago,” as it illustrates a clear manifestation of conflict. The image is centered on a man yelling from the top of a building at a political rally in Chicago. While we are unsure which cause he is fighting for might it be civil rights, anti-communism, or youth culture, he most clearly illuminates the obvious discontent of Americans with society during the 1950s.
A second photograph that highlights the clear imperfections with American society during the 1950s is “Charleston – South Carolina.” This image centers on an African American woman dressed in a maid’s uniform holding a white baby. Such an image clearly illustrates the racial/class division present in American society as she is more than likely raising a child that is not her own while its parents live lavishly – a lifestyle illustrated by their ability to hire a nanny and their lack of appearance in the photograph. As a result Frank has shown the imperfect conflicts of 1950s America. This image is a reflection of the civil rights movement and racial/class divide.
“Dine-In Movie – Detroit,” tells the story of Robert Frank as it centers in on the youth culture that had gone mainstream in this time. This youth culture was one of the first to be centered on popular entertainment such as film and as the image shows, this was clearly a priority for this generation of youth. The image shows hundreds of young adults gathered at a drive in theatre to celebrate their new mainstream culture and this in turn represented the imperfect society struggling to remain non-conformists while celebrating their rebel culture.
Implications for the 1960’s:
The work of “The Americans,” by Robert Frank had serious implications for the future generations of the 1960s and onward. The book clearly resonated with leaders of the beat generations as displayed by the introduction written by beat generation leader Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969). This work so clearly resonated with these leaders because it helped bring life and popularity to their cultural movement. Images throughout the work embodied nonconformity, imperfection, and criticism of society. As a result, the work was able to spread such a message to the masses and this in turn spurred the cultural movements of hippies in the subsequent generations.
The work, “The Americans,” by Robert Frank was undoubtedly groundbreaking as it was one of the first to emerge with a perspective of the real America. By showcasing ideals such as imperfection and conflict, Frank inspired a new generation of Americans to embrace these ideals and live authentically. As a result new generations of imperfect nonconformists took hold in the 1960s and the work in turn has been immortalized as one of the most iconic representations of American history of all time.

Works Cited:
Orvell, Miles. Photography in America Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Peter, Byrd, "Cold War," The concise Oxford dictionary of politics. Oxford University Press. 2003.
Johnpoll, Bernard K. “A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States: Volume III Unite and Fight, 1934–1935.” Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.1994.
Lawlor ed., William T. Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons and Impact.
Robert, Frank. “The Americans

[[Category: Twentieth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Robert Frank]]

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T00:19:26Z

Kabercrombie3: /* Book Summaries */

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Kayla Abercrombie. [[The Americans|Photographs by Robert Frank: Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T00:19:03Z

Kabercrombie3: /* Book Summaries */

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
Kayla Abercrombie. [[The Americans|Photographs by Robert Frank: Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).