Robert McParland Knihy

Focusing on the experiences of Twain's audience, this book explores how his fiction intertwined with their realities, influencing American publishing, literacy, and educational reform. It highlights the strong emotional connection readers felt to Twain's work, emphasizing the theatricality and humor he infused into their lives, which fostered a unique reading community that shaped cultural dynamics in America.

This book examines the songs and themes, which continue to resonate with contemporary listeners, and argues that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young reflect part of the broader story of American culture. číst celé

At the height of the Great Depression the narrator loses his job in the Butte copper mines and leaves home to look for work despite the fact that there are eighteen million unemployed and his chances are slim. He hoboes 10,000 miles throughout the West, stealing rides in boxcars and passenger trains, hitchhiking on the roads. He stops at hobo jungle and Hoovervilles, encounters sadistic railroad security and always capitalized the Law. He digs potatoes for a quarter a day, washes cars for a penny each, boxes in a carnival for two dollars a fight. He is picked up as a vagrant, beds down in a brothel, watches a hanging, and winds up in the county jail on suspicion of murder. Because his story is largely autobiographical, every word rings true. He is a Depression-era pilgrim and the people he meets comprise the face of America in despair. There are authentic and persuasive portraits of people trying to find their way through one of the most desperate times in history. O'Malley's graphic, first-hand account will tell you what it was really like.

The book explores the influence of Charles Dickens on American culture during the nation's formative years, emphasizing the experiences of his American readers as a distinct "reading community." It examines how Dickens's works resonated with their lives, shaped American publishing, and contributed to literacy and educational reforms. Additionally, it highlights the appeal of Dickens's theatrical style and its significance in the American literary landscape.

Demonstrating the power a single author can have on generations of individuals around the world, Citizen Steinbeck enables readers to make sense of both the past and the present through the prism of this literary icon's inspirational work. číst celé

This book demonstrates how the explosion of distinctly American fiction in the 1920s-including work by authors such as Hemingway, Cather, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Faulker, and others-contributed to shaping the national imagination.