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Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars havelabored to uncover the facts behind Chamberss shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage.In this highly original work,Susan Jacoby turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions. Unfettered by political ax-grinding, the author examines conflicting responses, from scholars and the media on both the left and the right, and the ways in which they have changed from 1948 to our present postCold War era. With a brisk, engaging style, Jacoby positions the case in the politics of the postWorld War II eraand then explores the ways in which generations of liberals and conservatives have put Chambers and Hiss to their own ideological uses. An iconic event of the McCarthy era, the case of Alger Hiss fascinates political intellectuals not only because of its historical significance but because of its timeless relevance to equally fierce debates today about the difficult balance between national security and respect for civil liberties.

One of the master stylists of American literature, Gore Vidal now provides us with his uniquely irreverent take on America's founding fathers, bringing them to life at key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation.“Pure Vidal. . . . Inventing a Nation is his edgy tribute to the way we were before the fall.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review“[Vidal offers] details that enliven and . . .  reflections on the past that point sharply to today.” —Richard Eder, New York Times“An engaging [and] . . . unblinking view of our national heroes by one who cherishes them, warts and all.”—Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books“[Vidal's] quick wit flickers over the canonical tale of our republic's founding, turning it into a dark and deliciously nuanced comedy of men, manners, and ideas.”—Amanda Heller, Boston Sunday Globe“This entertaining and enlightening reappraisal of the Founders is a must for buffs of American civilization and its discontents.”—Booklist“Gore Vidal . . . still understands American history backwards and forwards as few writers ever have.”—David Kipen, National Public Radio 

First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage's 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note, is among the most celebrated and ballyhooed cultural gestures in the history of modern music. This title offers the reader both an expert's analysis and highly personal interpretation of Cage's most divisive work.

Tracing Fred Astaire's life from his birth in Omaha to his death in his late eighties in Hollywood, this book discusses his early days with his talented and outspoken sister Adele, his gifts as a singer, and his many movie dance partners, among them Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse, and Betty Hutton.

What do Americans think of when they think of the hamburger? A robust, succulent spheroid of fresh ground beef, the birthright of red-blooded citizens? Or a Styrofoam-shrouded Big Mac, mass-produced to industrial specifications and served by wage slaves to an obese, brainwashed population? Is it cooking or commodity? An icon of freedom or the quintessence of conformity?This fast-paced and entertaining book unfolds the immense significance of the hamburger as an American icon. Josh Ozersky shows how the history of the burger is entwined with American business and culture and, unexpectedly, how the burgers story is in many ways the story of the country that invented (and reinvented) it.Spanning the years from the nineteenth century with its waves of European immigrants to our own era of globalization, the book recounts how German hamburg steak evolved into hamburgers for the rising class of urban factory workers and how the innovations of the White Castle System and the McDonalds Corporation turned the burger into the Model T of fast food. The hamburger played an important role in Americas transformation into a mobile, suburban culture, and today, Americas favorite sandwich is nothing short of an irrepressible economic and cultural force. How this all happened, and why, is a remarkable story, told here with insight, humor, and gusto.

The Empire State Building literally cannot be seen in its totality, from any perspective. This book encourages us to look beneath the strong physical presence of the building, to become aware of its evolving layers of meaning, and to see how the building lives within a unique imaginative space in the landscape of the American consciousness.

In a work of great wisdom and insight, art critic and philosopher Arthur Dantodelivers a compact, masterfultour of Andy Warhols personal, artistic, and philosophical transformations. Danto traces the evolution of the pop artist, including his early reception, relationships with artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the Factory phenomenon. He offers close readings of individual Warhol works, including their social context and philosophical dimensions, key differences with predecessors such as Marcel Duchamp, and parallels with successors like Jeff Koons. Danto brings to bear encyclopedic knowledge of Warhols time andshows us Warhol as an endlessly multidimensional figureartist, political activist, filmmaker, writer, philosopherwho retains permanentresidence in our national imagination.Danto suggests that "e;what makes him an American icon is that his subject matter is always something that the ordinary American understands: everything, or nearly everything he made art out of came straight out of the daily lives of very ordinary Americans. . . . The tastes and values of ordinary persons all at once were inseparable from advanced art."e;

Includes the entire text of "e;I Have A Dream"e;I have a dreamno words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. Kings speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the I have a dream speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justicedebates as old as the nation itselfand demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom.This book is the first to set Kings speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of Kings Second Emancipation Proclamation and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

Jackson Pollock (19121956) not only put American art on the map with his famous "e;drip paintings,"e; he also served as an inspiration for the character of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desirethe role that made Marlon Brando famous. Like Brando, Pollock became an icon of rebellion in 1950s America, and the brooding, defiant persona captured in photographs of the artist contributed to his celebrity almost as much as his notorious paintings did. In the years since his death in a drunken car crash, Pollock's hold on the public imagination has only increased. He has become an enduring symbol of the tormented artistour American van Gogh.In this highly engaging book, Evelyn Toynton examines Pollock's itinerant and poverty-stricken childhood in the West, his encounters with contemporary art in Depression-era New York, and his years in the run-down Long Island fishing village that, ironically, was transformed into a fashionable resort by his presence. Placing the artist in the context of his time, Toynton also illuminates the fierce controversies that swirled around his work and that continue to do so. Pollock's paintings captured the sense of freedom and infinite possibility unique to the American experience, and his life was both an American rags-to-riches story and a darker tale of the price paid for celebrity, American style.

The little red schoolhouse has all but disappeared in the United States, but its importance in national memory remains unshakable. This engaging book examines the history of the one-room school and how successive generations of Americans have remembered—and just as often misremembered—this powerful national icon. Drawing on a rich range of sources, from firsthand accounts to poems, songs, and films, Jonathan Zimmerman traces the evolution of attitudes toward the little red schoolhouse from the late nineteenth century to the present day. At times it was celebrated as a symbol of lost rural virtues or America’s democratic heritage; at others it was denounced as the epitome of inefficiency and substandard academics. And because the one-room school has been a useful emblem for liberal, conservative, and other agendas, the truth of its history has sometimes been stretched. Yet the idyllic image of the schoolhouse still unites Americans. For more than a century, it has embodied the nation’s best aspirations and—especially—its continuing faith in education itself.

The Big House"e; is Americas idea of the prisona huge, tough, ostentatiously oppressive pile of rock, bristling with rules and punishments, overwhelming in size and the intent to intimidate. Stephen Cox tells the story of the American prisonits politics, its sex, its violence, its inability to control itselfand its idealization in American popular culture.This book investigates both the popular images of prison and the realities behind them: problems of control and discipline, maintenance and reform, power and sexuality. It conveys an awareness of the limits of human and institutional power, and of the symbolic and iconic qualities the Big House has attained in Americas understanding of itself.

The untold story of Henry Miller's explosive 1934 novel, banned in America for more than a quarter century