Before Johnny Depp and "Public Enemies," there was "The Public Enemy." James Cagney's 1931 portrayal of the Irish American gangster, Tommy Powers, set the standard for the Hollywood gangster and helped to launch a golden age of Irish American cinema. In the years that followed several of the era's greatest stars, such as Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Pat O'Brien, and Ginger Rogers, assumed Irish American roles--as boxers, entertainers, priests, and working girls--delighting audiences and at the same time providing a fresh perspective of the Irish American experience in America's cities.
With "Bowery to Broadway," Christopher Shannon guides readers through a number of classic films from the 1930s and '40s and investigates why films featuring Irish American characters were so popular among American audiences during a period when the Irish were still stereotyped and scorned for their religion. Shannon cites films such as "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Gentleman Jim," "Kitty Foyle," "Going My Way," and "Yankee Doodle Dandy," arguing that the Irish American characters in the films were presented as inhabitants of an urban village--simultaneously traditional and modern and valuing communal solidarity over individual advancement. As a result, these characters--even those involved in criminal activity--resonated deeply with the countless Americans in search of the communal values that were rapidly being lost to the social dislocation of the Depression and the increasing nationalization of life under the New Deal.

In Conspicuous Criticism, historian Christopher Shannon argues that the social-scientific critique of American culture, whether liberal or radical, can only reproduce the social relations of bourgeois individualism. He analyzes in depth key works of scholars such as Thorsten Veblen, Robert and Helen Lynd (of Middletown fame), Ruth Benedict, John Dewey, and C. Wright Mills, among others, to demonstrate how American middle-class ideas of progress, individualism, and rationalism became embedded in their critique. These works embody an ideal of reason free from tradition which unites capitalism and its social-scientific critique. The critical attempt to detach oneself from society so as to study it objectively only reinforced the ideal of objective social relations at the heart of the market society itself. Shannon argues that most historical writing on American social sciences has focused on the ways in which intellectuals have used social science to advance particular political agendas. This political focus, he argues, has forced the story of American social science into a narrative of reform and reaction that is incapable of seriously addressing the larger issue of the rational control of society. Shannon concludes that social science research of this sort has perpetuated values of individualism and capitalism which may hinder contemporary America's need to address serious social, economic, and political problems. A thoughtful and provocative alternative history, Conspicuous Criticism will interest scholars in American intellectual history, American studies, and social thought.