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The fifth volume of A History of the Book in America addresses the economic, social, and cultural shifts affecting print culture from World War II to the present. During this period factors such as the expansion of government, the growth of higher education, the climate of the Cold War, globalization, and the development of multimedia and digital technologies influenced the patterns of consolidation and diversification established earlier. The thirty-three contributors to the volume explore the evolution of the publishing industry and the business of bookselling. The histories of government publishing, law and policy, the periodical press, literary criticism, and reading--in settings such as schools, libraries, book clubs, self-help programs, and collectors' societies--receive imaginative scrutiny as well. The Enduring Book demonstrates that the corporate consolidations of the last half-century have left space for the independent publisher, that multiplicity continues to define American print culture, and that even in the digital age, the book endures. Contributors: David Abrahamson, Northwestern University James L. Baughman, University of Wisconsin-Madison Kenneth Cmiel (d. 2006) James Danky, University of Wisconsin-Madison Robert DeMaria Jr., Vassar College Donald A. Downs, University of Wisconsin-Madison Robert W. Frase (d. 2003) Paul C. Gutjahr, Indiana University David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School John B. Hench, American Antiquarian Society Patrick Henry, New York City College of Technology Dan Lacy (d. 2001) Marshall Leaffer, Indiana University Bruce Lewenstein, Cornell University Elizabeth Long, Rice University Beth Luey, Arizona State University Tom McCarthy, Beirut, Lebanon Laura J. Miller, Brandeis University Priscilla Coit Murphy, Chapel Hill, N.C. David Paul Nord, Indiana University Carol Polsgrove, Indiana University David Reinking, Clemson University Jane Rhodes, Macalester College John V. Richardson Jr., University of California, Los Angeles Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester Michael Schudson, University of California, San Diego, and Columbia University Linda Scott, University of Oxford Dan Simon, Seven Stories Press Ilan Stavans, Amherst College Harvey M. Teres, Syracuse University John B. Thompson, University of Cambridge Trysh Travis, University of Florida Jonathan Zimmerman, New York University
The career of Constance Rourke (1885-1941) is one of the richest
examples of the American writer's search for a "usable past." In
this first full-length study of Rourke, Joan Shelley Rubin
establishes the context for Rourke's defense of American culture --
the controversies that engaged her, the books that influenced her
thinking, the premises that lay beneath her vocabulary.
The proliferation of book clubs, reading groups, "outline" volumes,
and new forms of book reviewing in the first half of the twentieth
century influenced the tastes and pastimes of millions of
Americans. Joan Rubin here provides the first comprehensive
analysis of this phenomenon, the rise of American middlebrow
culture, and the values encompassed by it.
Listen to a short interview with Joan Shelley Rubin Host: Chris Gondek - Producer: Heron & Crane In the years between 1880 and 1950, Americans recited poetry at family gatherings, school assemblies, church services, camp outings, and civic affairs. As they did so, they invested poems--and the figure of the poet--with the beliefs, values, and emotions that they experienced in those settings. Reciting a poem together with others joined the individual to the community in a special and memorable way. In a strikingly original and rich portrait of the uses of verse in America, Joan Shelley Rubin shows how the sites and practices of reciting poetry influenced readers' lives and helped them to find meaning in a poet's words. Emphasizing the cultural circumstances that influenced the production and reception of poets and poetry in this country, Rubin recovers the experiences of ordinary people reading poems in public places. We see the recent immigrant seeking acceptance, the schoolchild eager to be integrated into the class, the mourner sharing grief at a funeral, the grandparent trying to bridge the generation gap--all instances of readers remaking texts to meet social and personal needs. Preserving the moral, romantic, and sentimental legacies of the nineteenth century, the act of reading poems offered cultural continuity, spiritual comfort, and pleasure. "Songs of Ourselves" is a unique history of literary texts as lived experience. By blurring the boundaries between "high" and "popular" poetry as well as between modern and traditional, it creates a fuller, more democratic way of studying our poetic language and ourselves.
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