Arguably the most influential document in the history of urban planning, Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, coauthored by Edward Bennett and produced in collaboration with the Commercial Club of Chicago, proposed many of the city’s most distinctive features, including its lakefront parks and roadways, the Magnificent Mile, and Navy Pier. CarlSmith’s fascinating history reveals the Plan’s central role in shaping the ways people envision the cityscape and urban life itself. Smith’s concise and accessible narrative begins with a survey of Chicago’s stunning rise from a tiny frontier settlement to the nation’s second-largest city. He then offers an illuminating exploration of the Plan’s creation and reveals how it embodies the renowned architect’s belief that cities can and must be remade for the better. The Plan defined the City Beautiful movement and was the first comprehensive attempt to reimagine a major American city. Smith points out the ways the Plan continues to influence debates, even a century after its publication, about how to create a vibrant and habitable urban environment. Richly illustrated and incisively written, his insightful book will be indispensable to our understanding of Chicago, Daniel Burnham, and the emergence of the modern city.

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Charles D. Benson - Moonport, A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations (1978).jpg

On 28 July 1960, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced a new manned spaceflight program. Called Apollo, its aim was to put three astronauts into sustained earth orbit, or into a flight around the moon. The timing of the announcement was not auspicious. The next day, NASA's first Mercury-Atlas (MA-1) disintegrated and fell into the ocean 58 seconds after takeoff from Cape Canaveral. This disaster ushered in a bleak four months during which the test rocket Little Joe 5 joined the MA-1 in the ocean, and the first Mercury-Redstone lifted a fraction of an inch and settled back on its launch pad. The last failure, on 21 November, marked the absolute nadir of morale for the engineers working on Mercury. The people at the new NASA headquarters in Washington, coping with financial and administrative problems and facing a change of administration after the national election, were only a little less dispirited than the workers in the field. But the fledgling space agency had an asset that made its announcement of an ambitious Apollo program more than an exercise in wishful thinking - it had the support of the American people.

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Charles D. Benson - Moonport, A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations (1978).pdf

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Charles E. Aguar, Berdeana Aguar - Wrightscapes, F rank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs (2002).jpg

Could there be anything more to say about the 20th century's most written-about architect? Landscape architecture professor Charles Aguar (Univ. of Georgia) and wife Berdeana find a fresh perspective by examining Frank Lloyd Wright's work through the eyes of environmentally conscious landscape designers. Backed by a decade's fieldwork, interviews, and archival sleuthing, the authors offer highly informed critiques of 85 designs that span Wright's 70-year career. Familiar buildings are seen in an entirely new light as the authors scrutinize each structure's interrelationship with its grounds, plantings, and "hardscape" the terraces, walls, and planters Wright used to anchor his buildings to their settings. They emphasize Wright's prescient advocacy of sound environmental planning. Unfortunately, the Aguars' penchant for speculation sometimes leads to head-scratching conclusions Wright as feng-shui master? and the book's cramped typeface, eye-straining illustrations, and perfunctory index detract from a text that deserves much better presentation.

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Charles E. Aguar, Berdeana Aguar - Wrightscapes, F rank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs (2002).pdf

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David M. Kennedy - Freedom from Fear, The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999).jpg

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. Freedom From Fear tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.
The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike. Nor was the fabled prosperity of the 1920s as uniformly shared as legend portrays. Countless Americans, especially if they were farmers, African Americans, or recent immigrants, eked out thread bare lives on the margins of national life. For them, the Depression was but another of the ordeals of fear and insecurity with which they were sadly familiar.
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal wrung from the trauma of the 1930s a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, including the Social Security Act, new banking and financial laws, regulatory legislation, and new opportunities for organized labor. Taken together, those reforms gave a measure of security to millions of Americans who had never had much of it, and with it a fresh sense of having a stake in their country.
Freedom From Fear tells the story of the New Deal's achievements, without slighting its shortcomings, contradictions, and failures. It is a story rich in drama and peopled with unforgettable personalities, including the incandescent but enigmatic figure of Roosevelt himself.
Even as the New Deal was coping with the Depression, a still more fearsome menace was developing abroad--Hitler's thirst for war in Europe, coupled with the imperial ambitions of Japan in Asia. The same generation of Americans who battled the Depression eventually had to shoulder arms in another conflict that wreaked world wide destruction, ushered in the nuclear age, and forever changed their own way of life and their country's relationship to the rest of the world. Freedom From Fear explains how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could.
Freedom From Fear is a comprehensive and colorful account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War--a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed.

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David Reimers - Other Immigrants, The Global Origi ns of the American People (2005).jpg

"While some social scientists write panicky articles about the 'changing face' of American immigration in the 21st century, historian David Reimers prefers the long view. His measured, nuanced history of black, Latino, and Asian immigration to the United States explains how, when, and why these groups came or were brought here. Shunning the Eurocentric perspective on migration to the United States, Reimers substitutes this rich chronicle that explains the contributions migrants of color made and continue to make to America's economy, society, and culture. Scholars must have it on their bookshelves; policy makers ought to, as well." —Alan M. Kraut, American University "In Other Immigrants David Reimers cements his position as a leading interpreter of recent and contemporary immigration. He uses his profound understanding of the process to weave the stories of individual newcomers into the epic of immigration to America showing that these latter day 'huddled masses,' largely from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia, have much in common with their predecessors." —Roger Daniels, author of Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians represent three of every four immigrants who arrived in the United States after 1970. Yet despite their large numbers and long history of movement to America, non-Europeans are conspicuously absent from many books about immigration. Accounts that discuss "people of color" often focus on a single ethnic group or nationality. In Other Immigrants, David M. Reimers offers the first comprehensive account of non-European immigration, chronicling the compelling and diverse stories of frequently overlooked Americans. Reimers traces the early history of Black, Hispanic, and Asian immigrants from the fifteenth century through World War II, when racial hostility led to the virtual exclusion of Asians and aggression towards Blacks and Hispanics. He also describes the modern state of immigration to the U.S., where Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians made up nearly thirty percent of the population at the turn of the century. The capstone to a lifetime of groundbreaking work on immigration, Reimers's thoughtful history recognizes the ambiguity and subjectivity of race, noting that individuals often define themselves more complexly than census forms allow. However classified, record numbers of immigrants are streaming to the United States and creating the most diverse society in the world. Other Immigrants is a timely account of their arrival.

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David Reimers - Other Immigrants, The Global Origi ns of the American People (2005).pdf

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Diana L. Ahmad - The Opium Debate and Chinese Excl usion Laws in the Nineteenth-century American West (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Diana L. Ahmad - The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusi...ion Laws in the Nineteenth-century American West 2007.jpg

America's current "war on drugs" is not the nation's first. In the mid-nineteenth century, opium-smoking was decried as a major social and public health problem, especially in the West. Although China faced its own epidemic of opium addiction, only a very small minority of Chinese immigrants in America were actually involved in the opium business. It was in Anglo communities that the use of opium soon spread and this growing use was deemed a threat to the nation's entrepreneurial spirit and to its growing mportance as a world economic and military power.
The Opium Debate examines how the spread of opium-smoking fueled racism and created demands for the removal of the Chinese from American life. This study of the nineteenth-century drug-abuse crisis reveals the ways moral crusaders linked their antiopium rhetoric to already active demands for Chinese exclusion. Until this time, anti-Chinese propaganda had been dominated by protests against the economic and political impact of Chinese workers and the alleged role of Chinese women as prostitutes. The use of the drug by Anglos added another reason for demonizing Chinese immigrants.
Ahmad describes the disparities between Anglo-American perceptions of Chinese immigrants and the somber realities of these people's lives, especially the role that opium-smoking came to play in the Anglo-American community, mostly among middle- and upper-class women. The book offers a iant analysis of the evolution of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, plus important insights into the social history of the nineteenth-century West, the culture of American Victorianism, and the rhetoric of racism in American politics.

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Diana L. Ahmad - The Opium Debate and Chinese Excl usion Laws in the Nineteenth-century American West (2007).pdf

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Donna M. Binkiewicz - Federalizing the Muse, Unite d States Arts Policy and the National Endowment fo r the Arts, 1965-1980 (2004).jpg

USA Books1 - Donna M. Binkiewicz - Federalizing the Muse, United St...d the National Endowment for the Arts, 1965-1980 2004.jpg

The National Endowment for the Arts is often accused of embodying a liberal agenda within the American government. In Federalizing the Muse, Donna Binkiewicz assesses the leadership and goals of Presidents Kennedy through Carter, as well as Congress and the National Council on the Arts, drawing a picture of the major players who created national arts policy. Using presidential papers, NEA and National Archives materials, and numerous interviews with policy makers, Binkiewicz refutes persisting beliefs in arts funding as part of a liberal agenda by arguing that the NEA's origins in the Cold War era colored arts policy with a distinctly moderate undertone.
Binkiewicz's study of visual arts grants reveals that NEA officials promoted a modernist, abstract aesthetic specifically because they believed such a style would best showcase American achievement and freedom. This initially led them to neglect many contemporary art forms they feared could be perceived as politically problematic, such as pop, feminist, and ethnic arts. The agency was not able to balance its funding across a variety of art forms before facing serious budget cutbacks. Binkiewicz's analysis brings important historical perspective to the perennial debates about American art policy and sheds light on provocative political and cultural issues in postwar America.

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Donna M. Binkiewicz - Federalizing the Muse, Unite d States Arts Policy and the National Endowment fo r the Arts, 1965-1980 (2004).pdf

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Handel Jones - Chinamerica, The Uneasy Partnership that Will Change the World (2010).jpg

Praise for ChinAmerica

“A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the emergence of China as a major industrial power and how profoundly it is changing the world economy.” —Dr. Henry Kressel, author of Competing for the Future: How Digital Innovations Are Changing the World

“This book is essential reading for business leaders and observers everywhere as this dramatic shift of economic and political power from the West to China continues.” —Ray Bingham, chairman, Flextronics International

“ChinAmerica provides extremely in-depth visibility into the interactions and interdependency of China and the United States. I believe everyone who takes the time to read it will learn of the many challenges and opportunities that exist for both China and the United States.” —Richard Kulle, president and CEO, gEM Services, Inc.

“Handel Jones lays out concisely what China is doing right and the United States is doing wrong. This is a wake-up call because China today is the most serious economic competitor that the United States has ever faced. This book should be required reading for all U.S. politicians and business leaders.” —Wilfred J. Corrigan, founder, chairman, and CEO (retired), LSI Logic Corp.

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James C. Faris - Navajo and Photography, A Critica l History of the Representation of an American Peo ple (1996).jpg

USA Books1 - James C. Faris - Navajo and Photography, A Critical Hi...tory of the Representation of an American People 1996.jpg

James Faris's Navajo and Photography concerns a world that has nearly disappeared: that of the traditional Navajos, the Indian people of the high desert American Southwest. What Faris calls "non-hostile" Navajos became an essential part of the tourist trade following the Indian Wars of the 19th century, and their representation in photographic images was a carefully crafted departure from the realities of reservation life. The Navajos were depicted as proud yet friendly warriors, not as defeated enemies and wards of a conquering state. Those photographs--and Faris's book contains scores of them--were important instruments in the foundation of a "conventional wisdom" about who Indians were and how they lived. As Faris shows in his commentary, the Navajos did not always willingly participate in this mythmaking process, and sometimes subtly subverted it. Even so, history and anthropology books are full of ersatz images of characters such as the famous "Navajo Brigand of the Black Mountain Country." Faris's text is an important contribution to a growing body of criticism of what might be called "the manufacture of The Other."

This thorough critical examination of photographic practices calls attention to the inability of most photography to communicate the lived experiences of native people or their history. Faris's survey, beginning with the earliest photographs of Navajo in captivity at the Bosque Redondo and including the most recent glossy picture books and calendars, points up the Western assumptions that have always governed photographic representation of Navajo people.

Drawing on exhaustive archival research to unearth rarely published photographs as well as unpublished photographs by well-known photographers, Faris documents Navajo resistance to the West's view (and viewfinder) and persistent attempts to overcome or dismiss such resistance. He challenges the photographic history of the Navajo people as presented by photographers, historians, and anthropologists, and explores the social and legal conditions that make such photography possible. Confronting many readers' nostalgic expectations, Navajo and Photography will appeal to all those with an interest in the juxtaposition of cultures and photographic critique.

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James C. Faris - Navajo and Photography, A Critica l History of the Representation of an American Peo ple (1996).rar

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James Hudnut-Beumler - In Pursuit of the Almighty' s Dollar, A History of Money and American Protesta ntism (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - James Hudnut-Beumler - In Pursuit of the Almightys Do...r, A History of Money and American Protestantism 2007.jpg

Every day of the week in contemporary America (and especially on Sundays) people raise money for their religious enterprises--for clergy, educators, buildings, charity, youth-oriented work, and more. In a fascinating look into the economics of American Protestantism, James Hudnut-Beumler examines how churches have raised and spent money from colonial times to the present and considers what these practices say about both religion and American culture.

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James Hudnut-Beumler - In Pursuit of the Almighty' s Dollar, A History of Money and American Protesta ntism (2007).pdf

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John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M. McPherso n, and Gary Gerstle - Liberty, Equality, Power, A History of the American People, Volume II, Since 1 863 (2005).jpg

USA Books1 - John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M. McPherson, a...ry of the American People, Volume II, Since 1863 2005.jpg

Succeed in American history with CENGAGE ADVANTAGE BOOKS: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND POWER, VOLUME II SINCE 1863, COMPACT! This history text shows how the pursuit of liberty and equality has shaped the nation, and how power has been used and abused in every aspect of American life between men and women, whites and blacks, and rich and poor. Features such as History through Film, chapter focus questions, chapter chronologies, charts, and tables help you master difficult concepts. The Book Companion Website contains additional study aids such as flashcards, tutorial quizzes, internet exercises, and links to the past designed to save you time and enhance your understanding of the material.

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John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M. McPherso n, and Gary Gerstle - Liberty, Equality, Power, A History of the American People, Volume II, Since 1 863 (2005).pdf

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Kurt T. Lash - The Lost History of the Ninth Amend ment (2009).jpg

The Ninth Amendment has had a remarkably robust history, playing a role in almost every significant constitutional debate in American history, including the controversy over the Alien and Sedition Acts, the struggle over slavery, and the constitutionality of the New Deal. Until very recently, however, this history has been almost completely lost due to a combination of historical accident, mistaken assumptions, and misplaced historical documents. Drawing upon a wide range of primary sources, most never before included in any book on the Ninth Amendment or the Bill of Rights, Kurt T. Lash recovers the lost history of the Ninth Amendment and explores how its original understanding can be applied to protect the people's retained rights today.

The most important aspect of The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment is its presentation of newly uncovered historical evidence which calls into question the currently presumed meaning and application of the Ninth Amendment. The evidence not only challenges the traditional view regarding the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment, it also falsifies the common assumption that the Amendment lay dormant prior to the Supreme Court's "discovery" of the clause in Griswold v. Connecticut.

As a history of the Ninth Amendment, the book recapitulates the history of federalism in America and the idea that local self-government is a right retained by the people. This issue has particular contemporary salience as the Supreme Court considers whether states have the right to authorize medicinal use of marijuana, refuse to assist the enforcement of national laws like the Patriot Act, or regulate physician-assisted suicide. The meaning of the Ninth Amendment has played a key role in past Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices and the current divide on the Court regarding the meaning of the Ninth Amendment makes it likely the subject will come up again during the next set of hearings.

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Kurt T. Lash - The Lost History of the Ninth Amend ment (2009).pdf

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Leonard Benardo, Jennifer Weiss - Citizen-in-Chief , The Second Lives of the American Presidents (200 9).jpg

"The American presidency . . . is merely a way station en route to the blessed condition of being an ex-president."
—John Updike

The presidency is a captivating concept in the hearts and minds of the American people. Part commander-in-chief, part national symbol, the role of president of the United States of America has been studied and commemorated by a rich trove of literature—in fiction and nonfiction, in serious political analysis and lighthearted satire. Yet despite the vast scholarship available, the lives of our presidents after leaving office remain remarkably unprobed. In Citizen-in-Chief, Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss reveal that the true stories of these great leaders, whose quest for power brought them to the countrys highest office, are rarely complete once they leave the White House.

Now, as another president strides uncertainly toward the sunset, Citizen-in-Chief examines the dramatic, little-known, and often heart-rending postpresidential lives of former Oval Office occupants. It offers the most in-depth look to date at the diverse and broad-ranging paths these famous—sometimes notorious—men have taken:

Destitute at his death, fifth president James Monroe was buried in New York, too poor to be transported to his native Virginia.

After ending Reconstruction and removing Union troops from the South during his single-term presidency, Rutherford B. Hayes went on to crusade for universal education on behalf of African Americans.

Known for "Hoovervilles" and not heroics during the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover spent his postpresidential years orchestrating overseas relief work.

After a middling presidency, John Quincy Adams reinvented himself as a progressive member of Congress, spending seventeen years as a significant antislavery advocate.

After his lone term in office, William Howard Taft went on to advocate peace-building efforts through international arbitration during World War I and later ascended to the position of chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Following a centrist presidency and a farewell address decrying the military-industrial complex, Dwight Eisenhower covertly counseled and prodded Lyndon B. Johnson to bring troops into North Vietnam.
From the high-profile humanitarianism of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to the quiet achievements of Rutherford B. Hayes and Herbert Hoover, Citizen-in-Chief is a surprising and thoughtful must-read for political junkies and history buffs alike.

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Leonard Benardo, Jennifer Weiss - Citizen-in-Chief , The Second Lives of the American Presidents (200 9).pdf

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Mark Wahlgren Summers - Party Games, Getting, Keep ing, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics (2004).jpg

Much of late-nineteenth-century American politics was parade and pageant. Voters crowded the polls, and their votes made a real difference on policy. In Party Games, Mark Wahlgren Summers tells the full story and admires much of the political carnival, but he adds a cautionary note about the dark recesses: vote-buying, election-rigging, blackguarding, news suppression, and violence.
Summers also points out that hardball politics and third-party challenges helped make the parties more responsive. Ballyhoo did not replace government action. In order to maintain power, major parties not only rigged the system but also gave dissidents part of what they wanted. The persistence of a two-party system, Summers concludes, resulted from its adaptability, as well as its ruthlessness. Even the reform of political abuses was shaped to fit the needs of the real owners of the political system--the politicians themselves.

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Mark Wahlgren Summers - Party Games, Getting, Keep ing, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics (2004).pdf

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Michael V. Tueth - Laughter In The Living Room, Te levision Comedy And The American Home Audience (20 04).jpg

For more than fifty years some very funny people have been entering American homes through television's big picture window. From Lucy and Uncle Miltie, to Archie Bunker and Marge Simpson, certain comic stars of television history have become not just cultural icons, but friends of the family. This comprehensive study of the most successful television comedies-including domestic sitcoms, workplace comedies, variety shows, late-night comedy, animated comedy, and more-reveals that, unlike the comedy found in film, on stage, in comedy clubs and concert halls, television's presentation of comic characters and stories must negotiate a relationship with the more privatized and value-laden environment of each American home that it enters.

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Michael V. Tueth - Laughter In The Living Room, Te levision Comedy And The American Home Audience (20 04).pdf

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Paul Johnson - A History of the American People (1 999).jpg

Paul Johnson, whose previous works include the distinguished Modern Times and A History of the Jews, has produced an epic that spans the history of the American people over the past 400 years. The prolific narrative covers every aspect of U.S. history, from science, customs, religion, and politics to the individual men and women who have helped shape the nation. His detailed, provocative examinations of political and social icons, from Lyndon Johnson to Norman Rockwell, are especially strong. Johnson's text is intelligent and rich with detail, and yet extremely accessible for anyone interested in a reinterpretive analysis of America's past.

What makes this book unique is Johnson's approach to this self-professed Herculean task. The prevalent tone throughout is optimism. Whether he's discussing race relations, industrialization, the history of women, immigrants, Vietnam, or political correctness, Johnson--a staunch conservative who was born, bred, and educated in England--is openly enamored with America's past, particularly the hardships and tribulations that the nation has had to overcome. He sees this story as a series of important lessons, not just for Americans but for the whole of mankind as well. At a time when other contemporary scholars find it easier to bemoan the past, Johnson offers the reader "a compelling antidote to those who regard the future with pessimism." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Ritchie Devon, Jr. Watson - Normans and Saxons, So uthern Race Mythology and the Intellectual History of the American Civil War (2008).jpg

USA Books1 - Ritchie Devon, Jr. Watson - Normans and Saxons, South...e Intellectual History of the American Civil War 2008.jpg

When Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina savagely caned Senator Charles Sumner Massachusetts on the floor of the U.S. Senate on May 21, 1856, southerners viewed the attack as a triumphant affirmation of southern chivalry, northerners as a confirmation of southern barbarity. Public opinion was similarly divided nearly three-and-a-half years later after abolitionist John Brown's raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, with northerners crowning John Brown as a martyr to the cause of freedom as southerners excoriated him as a consciousness fanatic. These events opened American minds to the possibility that North and South might be incompatible societies, but some of Dixie's defenders were willing to go one step further--to propose that northerners and southerners represented not just a "divided people" but two scientifically distinct races. In Normans and Saxons, Ritchie Watson, Jr., explores the complex racial mythology created by the upper classes of the antebellum South in the wake of these divisive events to justify secession and, eventually, the Civil War.

This mythology cast southerners as descendants of the Normans of eleventh-century England and thus also of the Cavaliers of the seventeenth century, some of whom had come to the New World and populated the southern colonies. These Normans were opposed, in mythic terms, by Saxons--Englishmen of German descent--some of whose descendants made up the Puritans who settled New England and later fanned out to populate the rest of the North. The myth drew on nineteenth-century science and other sources to portray these as two separate, warring "races," the aristocratic and dashing Normans versus the common and venal Saxons. According to Watson, southern polemical writers employed this racial mythology as a justification of slavery, countering the northern argument that the South's peculiar institution had combined with its Norman racial composition to produce an arrogant and brutal land of oligarchs with a second-rate culture. Watson finds evidence for this argument in both prose and poetry, from the literary influence of Sir Walter Scott, De Bow's Review, and other antebellum southern magazines, to fiction by George Tucker, John Pendleton Kennedy, and William Alexander Caruthers and northern and southern poetry during the Civil War, especially in the works of Walt Whitman. Watson also traces the continuing impact of the Norman versus Saxon myth in "Lost Cause" thought and how the myth has affected ideas about southern sectionalism of today.

Normans and Saxons provides a thorough analysis of the ways in which myth ultimately helped to convince Americans that regional differences over the issue of slavery were manifestations of deeper and more profound differences in racial temperament--differences that made civil war inevitable.

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