The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread dedicated to Cultural History.

Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology, archaeology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. Its subject matter encompasses the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future pertaining to a culture.

Cultural history records and interprets past events involving human beings through the social, cultural, and political milieu of or relating to the arts and manners that a group favors. Jacob Burckhardt helped found cultural history as a discipline. Cultural history studies and interprets the record of human societies by denoting the various distinctive ways of living built up by a group of people under consideration. Cultural history involves the aggregate of past cultural activity, such as ceremony, class in practices, and the interaction with locales.

Remainder of article:

Source: Wikipedia

by Judith Flanders

I'm a big reader of Victorian fiction and I found this book fascinating. It is also very, very readable and engaging. It made me feel glad to live in the 21st Century. The idea of trying to keep a coal-heated home clean is mind-boggling. The book also provides great insight to why the people do some of the things they do in those Victorian novels.

Goodreads blurb: "Nineteenth-century Britain was then the world's most prosperous nation, yet Victorians would bury meat in earth and wring sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. Such drudgery was routine for the parents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been. Following the daily life of a middle-class Victorian house from room to room; from childbirth in the master bedroom through the kitchen, scullery, dining room, and parlor, all the way to the sickroom; Judith Flanders draws on diaries, advice books, and other sources to resurrect an age so close in time yet so alien to our own. 100 illustrations, 32 pages of color."

I think that I have that book on my TBR list. It was not available in my local library (not surprising) so I am going to look for it on E-Bay. From your recommendation, I don't think I can go wrong.

Found it! :-) - The title is "India and ITS Native Princes" and the author is Louis Rousselet (not Louise).

by Louis Rousselet - (no photo)

Sounds interesting - it's in the public domain now, so there are free e-books from the usual sources.

How clever you are, Becky!

Aditya wrote: "One of the best books on Indian Culture

Hello Aditya, we have a thread on India in another segment of the board....just as an FYI. I think that Becky found the book you were trying to cite and we have rules for citations. If you had introduced yourself on the introduction thread you would have received links to the Mechanics of the Board thread and other helpful links which would explain our rules, etc. I fear that I must delete your post because a) you did not do a proper citation at all, b) we do not market to outside vendors on the whole but there are always some exceptions and if in doubt just ask. I think also that folks might not be looking for something about India on this thread and some of your comments may have been better served in a review of the book.

Also, when the citations are found properly we do not confuse our readers and group members making them look for books by non existent authors or incorrect titles. We realize that you may be new so there are no worries here but we do want to make sure you are steered in the right direction next time.

Bea wrote: "[bookcover:Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Life in Victorian England] by Judith Flanders

Just added this to TBR. Give Bryson's "At Home" at try. He goes far afield from the mid-19th century house, but always seems to find his way back home.

I will do that. Whenever you mention a book, please remember to include a citation for it.

Are there any similar books you would recommend about daily life in the 19th Century American home? I love this kind of thing.

by Bill Bryson

Bea wrote: "I will do that. Whenever you mention a book, please remember to include a citation for it.

Are there any similar books you would recommend about daily life in the 19th Century American home? I l..."

Oh yes. I forgot to repeat the citation! I don't have another title off the top of my head, but will sleep on it. A lot of what I read, I would categorize as social history. Do you see it as synonymous with cultural history? For example, earlier today I posted a recommendation under American History concerning the current exhibit in Washington, D.C., "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello." In it I recommended the companion book, Cinder Stanton's collection, "Those Who Labor for My Happiness." I think it also might interest those following the Cultural History thread and, perhaps, Civil Rights. How does the group treat cross posting? Thanks! by (Cinder) Lucia Stanton

As soon as I pushed send, I thought of a title. "The Plantation Mistress" by Catherine Clinton is a classic study of women isolated on Southern plantations. It is very readable and was a breakthrough book when it was published in 1984. I particularly like Clinton's inclusion of primary source material, letters, etc. by Catherine Clinton

I've been known to cross post in my day! Thanks for the interesting recommendations.

Bea wrote: "I've been known to cross post in my day! Thanks for the interesting recommendations."

Thanks!

Finished Herman's survey of the Scottish impact on modernity, finding it both enjoyable and informative. He convinced me that the Scots have been a great force in the shaping of American culture, in particular. Herman is, in part, following what seems to be a current trend of mini-biographies. I particularly enjoyed "meeting" Robert Adam and Thomas Telford. Limits of scope necessarily meant that many Scotsmen were left on the cutting room floor. John Muir, for example, was sorely missed.
by Arthur Herman

Ah, John Muir... His name makes me think of excursions to the Muir Woods in Marin County, CA where the redwoods are packed with people near the parking lot, but you can have them to yourself if you are willing to walk a quarter mile. Segue to "Vertigo."

I was looking up whether John Locke was Scottish (no dice) when I ran across this Wickipedia article on the Scottish Enlightment. Maybe they really are responsible for civilization as we know it! Another favorite Scot for me is Alexander Graham Bell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish...

Bea wrote: "Ah, John Muir... His name makes me think of excursions to the Muir Woods in Marin County, CA where the redwoods are packed with people near the parking lot, but you can have them to yourself if yo..."

A.G. Bell is included, but gets rather short shrift. Herman impresses on us the effect of Scots who came to America (Andrew Carnegie gets a "balanced" bio.); however, more of the book follows how the ideas and Scottish values traveled around the globe.

And yes, I love Muir Woods. Yesterday, I was at his birthplace. A lovey spot on the North Sea.

I was just handed The Britannica Guide to ... "The Ideas That Made the Modern World." It includes that Locke fellow and Thomas Hobbs. Once you include England, you've pretty much got modern, Western intellectual life covered. These Guides are created from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

by Encyclopedia Britannica

Sounds dreamy. Did you think it good place for a budding naturalist to grow up?

I did indeed! We saw a seal in the wee harbor and an amazing gull "encrusted" rock. Piles of lobster "pots" indicated there is still lobster to be caught. The forces of Nature blowing off the North Sea would impress a young boy, though yesterday was calm.

Jason Elliot is about to convince me that Persia was responsible for all the wonderful things in the world including Christmas lights and the tulip!?! We shall see if he succeeds. . . . I'm confident he'll take me on journey to unseen places.

byJason Elliot

This little book is pop culture at its best. If you have spent any time in London, you have seen these cards plastered in call boxes or on the side of newspaper kiosks. Some are quite inventive, to say the least.

Tart Cards: London's Illicit Advertising Art

by Caroline Archer(no photo)

Synopsis:

In London, sex has been sold through advertising cards posted in phone booths since the early 1980s. Tracing the history of these "tart cards" provides an opportunity to explore a real example of the evolution of vernacular design. This tour through illicit printed solicitation includes interviews with the "service providers, " their marketers "the carders, " the printers, and the local authorities who have sought to control the content of the cards. Extensively illustrated, this book has over 200 provocative examples of the cards as they have evolved over the years.

Jill wrote: "This little book is pop culture at its best. If you have spent any time in London, you have seen these cards plastered in call boxes or on the side of newspaper kiosks. Some are quite inventive, to..."

This looks fun. Thanks! I have seen the London phone booths plastered with tart cards. A fascinating phenomena.

Joanne wrote: "Jill wrote: "This little book is pop culture at its best. If you have spent any time in London, you have seen these cards plastered in call boxes or on the side of newspaper kiosks. Some are quite ..."

Somehow I missed these when I lived there in the late '80s. I lead a sheltered existence ... It does look like great fun.

1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture and the Shaping of a Generation

by Charles Kaiser (no photo)

Synopsis:

Charles Kaiser's 1968 in America is widely recognized as one of the best historical accounts of the 1960s. This book devotes equal attention to the personal and the political, speaking with authority about such diverse figures as Bob Dylan, Eugene McCarthy, Janis Joplin and Lyndon Johnson.

What an enjoyable book!!!!! I read it a couple of years ago and it is worth another read if I can get through my huge TBR pile first. Highly recommended.

The Fifties

by David Halberstam

Synopsis:

The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill.

A guidebook to what's hot and what's not in the 21st century. Fun!

Millennials and the Pop Culture

by William Strauss (no photo)

Synopsis:

This new handbook is designed to help you with the key challenge in pop-culture: figuring out today's young people before your competitors do. Suppose, in 1962, you possessed a roadmap that pointed you to Woodstock. Suppose, in 1980, you held in your hands a guide to how MTV and hip hop would take off. Millennials and the Pop Culture does exactly that, for the pop landscape of tomorrow. In this handbook, Howe, Strauss, and industry insider Pete Markiewicz bare the heart and soul of a new generation of youth. The Millennials, born in 1982 and after, are anything but X. And they are already rocking the world of pop culture.

Haight-Ashbury was the center of the hippie culture during the 1960s. This book covers that history, especially during the Summer of Love.

The Haight-Ashbury

by Charles Perry (no photo)

Synopsis

2005 marks the 40th anniversary of San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district. The psychedelic community was probably the most widely written-about phenomenon of the 1960s apart from the Vietnam War. As unexpected as it was inevitable, the whole eventfrom public manifestation to gaudy collapsehappened in less than two years. In this acclaimed, definitive work, Charles Perry examines the history, the drama, and the energy of counter-cultures defining moment. First published by Rolling Stone Press in 1984 and now re-releasedwith a new introduction by the Grateful Deads Bob Weirto time with Haight-Ashburys 40th anniversary, this highly acclaimed work is a must-have for anyone interested in the original sex, drugs, and rock n roll lifestyle.

There is something so magical about radio and the programs of the past. I have so many old radio programs on CD that I can't count them. They make great listening at bedtime. This book tells you all you need to know about this wonderful medium.

Sounds In the Air: The Golden Age of Radio

by Norman H. Finkelstein

Synopsis:

"Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear..."In this unique contribution to American social history, Normal Finkelstein explores the Golden Age of radio broadcasting from the Great Depression through World War II. Radio became the common experience that unified a diverse America, providing entertainment, news and information, which unified all Americans. Quoted passages from old programs and commercials provide readers with the flavor of what radio used to be.

Thanks Jill

One more book on radio which had a huge impact on the culture of America.

The Listener's Voice

by Elena Razlogova(no photo)

Synopsis:

During the Jazz Age and Great Depression, radio broadcasters did not conjure their listening public with a throw of a switch; the public had a hand in its own making. "The Listener's Voice" describes how a diverse array of Americans--boxing fans, radio amateurs, down-and-out laborers, small-town housewives, black government clerks, and Mexican farmers--participated in the formation of American radio, its genres, and its operations.Before the advent of sophisticated marketing research, radio producers largely relied on listeners' phone calls, telegrams, and letters to understand their audiences. Mining this rich archive, historian Elena Razlogova meticulously recreates the world of fans who undermined centralized broadcasting at each creative turn in radio history. Radio outlaws, from the earliest squatter stations and radio tube bootleggers to postwar "payola-hungry" rhythm and blues DJs, provided a crucial source of innovation for the medium. Engineers bent patent regulations. Network writers negotiated with devotees. Program managers invited high school students to spin records. Taken together, these and other practices embodied a participatory ethic that listeners articulated when they confronted national corporate networks and the formulaic ratings system that developed.Using radio as a lens to examine a moral economy that Americans have imagined for their nation, "The Listener's Voice" demonstrates that tenets of cooperation and reciprocity embedded in today's free software, open access, and filesharing activities apply to earlier instances of cultural production in American history, especially at times when new media have emerged.

A social history that takes us through the changing fashions of the 20th century.

A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century

by Bonnie English (no photo)

Synopsis:

The 20th Century saw the effective end of haute couture, the rise of prêt à porter and, finally, the triumph of street fashion. Bonnie English unravels the complexities and contradictions behind these changes to chart the history of modern fashion. What caused the demise of haute couture in the 20th century? What does the "democratisation" of fashion actually mean? Which key designers bridged the gap between "couture," with its associations of elite class and taste, and "street style," a product of tribalism and of popular culture and protest? If fashion imitates art and art imitates life, does life imitate fashion--do we wear the clothes or do the clothes wear us? Setting fashion within its social, cultural and artistic context, this book presents an engaging history of the interplay between commerce and culture, technology and aesthetics, popular culture and pastiche, and fashion and anti-fashion.

Who would have believed that the painting of a Campbell's Tomato Soup can would start a trend in what was called "pop art"? It did and this book traces the movement and the artists.

Pop Art

by Tilman Osterwold(no photo)

Synopsis

"Everything is beautiful", raved Andy Warhol, in raptures at the glamour of modern life, consumer society, and the world of the media and its stars; his proclamation can be considered the maxim of the pop generation, which included artists Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenberg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Richard Hamilton, among others. The pop artists of the 1960s had a profound effect on the cloth of art history and their influence can be clearly seen in art today. Here, Tilman Osterwald explores the styles, themes, and sources of pop art around the world.

Whew.....this book might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up!

Fear: A Cultural History

by Joanna Bourke(no photo)

Synopsis:

Fear — the word, itself, conjures the appropriate response. With a dark cacophony of associations like fright, dread, horror, panic, alarm, anxiety, and terror, fear is universally understood as one of the most basic and powerful of human emotions, obtaining a nearly palpable and overwhelming substance in today's world.

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed historian and prize-winning author Joanna Bourke covers the landscape of fear over the past two hundred years: From the nineteenth century dread of being buried alive — a subject dear to the heart of Edgar Allen Poe — to the current worry over being able to die when one chooses; from the diagnoses of phobias and anxieties produced by psychotherapists and lovingly catalogued, to the role of popular culture and media in inciting panic and dread; from the horrors of the nuclear age to the fear of twenty-first century terrorism, Fear tells the story of anguish in modern times.

A blend of social and cultural history with psychology, philosophy, and popular science, this astonishing book — exhaustively researched and beautifully written — offers strikingly original insights into the mind and worldview of the “long twentieth century” from one of the most brilliant scholars of our time.

Edgar Allan Poe

What fun this book is for the trivia lover!

Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops: The Origins of Objects in Our Everyday Lives

(no imaage)Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops: The Origins of Objects in Our Everyday Lives by Harry Oliver(no photo)

Synopsis:

The fascinating and funny origins of everyday objects-bliss for history hounds, language lovers and trivia buffs.

In this delightful volume, Harry Oliver reveals the most unusual and unexpected stories behind the household necessities, toys, common objects, technological advances, and everyday items we all take for granted. Who hasn't wondered:

?Whether Thomas Crapper really invented the toilet

?What accident led to the invention of the microwave

?Why it took nearly twenty years for someone to finally decide to slice bread

?How laziness resulted in the invention of the dishwasher

?Which discovery made the milkshake possible

?Which king's fancy for his mistress inspired the first elevator

Sounds like a fun book

Pop culture at its best!!

What is the American Dream?......or is it a myth. This author has a different approach to that question.

The American Dream: A Cultural History

by Lawrence R. Samuel (no photo)

Synopsis:

There is no better way to understand America than by understanding the cultural history of the American Dream. Rather than just a powerful philosophy or ideology, the Dream is thoroughly woven into the fabric of everyday life, playing a vital role in who we are, what we do, and why we do it. No other idea or mythology has as much influence on our individual and collective lives. Tracing the history of the phrase in popular culture, Samuel gives readers a field guide to the evolution of our national identity over the last eighty years.

Samuel tells the story chronologically, revealing that there have been six major eras of the mythology since the phrase was coined in 1931. Relying mainly on period magazines and newspapers as his primary source material, the author demonstrates that journalists serving on the front lines of the scene represent our most valuable resource to recover unfiltered stories of the Dream. The problem, Samuel reveals, is that it does not exist; the Dream is just that, a product of our imagination. That it is not real ultimately turns out to be the most significant finding and what makes the story most compelling.

More fun than happy hour!!!!

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

by Iain Gately (no photo)

Synopsis:

A spirited look at the history of alcohol from the dawn of civilization to the twenty first century

For better or worse, alcohol has helped shape our civilization. Throughout history, it has been consumed not just to quench our thirsts or nourish our bodies but also for cultural reasons. It has been associated since antiquity with celebration, creativity, friendship, and danger, for every drinking culture has acknowledged it possesses a dark side.

In Drink, Iain Gately traces the course of humanity's 10,000 year old love affair with the substance which has been dubbed the cause of - and solution to - all of life's problems. Along the way he scrutinises the drinking habits of presidents, prophets, and barbarian hordes, and features drinkers as diverse as Homer, Hemmingway, Shakespeare, Al Capone, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Covering matters as varied as bacchanals in Imperial Rome, the gin craze in 17th century London, the rise and fall of the temperance movement, and drunk driving, Drink details the benefits and burdens alcohol has conveyed to the societies in which it is consumed. Gately's lively and provocative style brings to life the controversies, past and present, that have raged over alcohol, and uses the authentic voices of drinkers and their detractors to explode myths and reveal truths about this most equivocal of fluids.

Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the war of Independence, the Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, the slave trade, and the failed experiment of National Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's best loved drinks. Enthusiasts of craft brews and fine wines will discover the origins of their favorite tipples, and what they have in common with Greek philosophers and medieval princes every time they raise a glass.

A rollicking tour through humanity's love affair with alcohol, Drink is an intoxicating history of civilization

Sounds interesting Jill

I think it calls for a vodka martini!!! It is a good companion book for Last Call, Bryan's Buddy Read last month.

by Daniel Okrent

lol

It would be a good book-end to our buddy read, Jill, right you are!

by Iain Gately (no photo)

by Daniel Okrent

Cultural History - general

Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. Its subject matter encompasses the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future pertaining to a culture.

Cultural history records and interprets past events involving human beings through the social, cultural, and political milieu of or relating to the arts and manners that a group favors. Jacob Burckhardt helped found cultural history as a discipline. Cultural history studies and interprets the record of human societies by denoting the various distinctive ways of living built up by a group of people under consideration. Cultural history involves the aggregate of past cultural activity, such as ceremony, class in practices, and the interaction with locales.

Read the rest here: Cultural History

Source: Wikipedia

For more:

by Peter Burke

Everybody has played Monopoly.......and what fun it is. This is a history of the world's most famous board game.

Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game - And How It Got That Way

by Philip E. Orbanes (no photo)

Synopsis:

Over 200,000,000 copies of the Monopoly(r) game have been sold worldwide since Parker Brothers first popularized it in 1935, making it the world's most popular proprietary game. Countless special and national editions of the game are now published in over sixty countries. But while Monopoly has global appeal, it is distinctly American--a symbol of America's system of economic "opportunity." In Monopoly: America's Game, Philip Orbanes, the leading expert on all things Monopoliana, tells the remarkable history of the game, from its predecessor's birth as a teaching tool for an economics class in the first decade of the twentieth century through its explosive growth in the postwar decades to it being a ubiquitous fixture in just about every American home today. Orbanes includes fascinating Monopoly personality portraits, little-known Monopoly legends and lore, and the extraordinary variety of advertising used throughout the twentieth century. This is the first and only book to cover comprehensively the origin, growth, and global impact of the game that has become a cultural icon.

The Corset: A Cultural History

by Valerie Steele (no photo)

Synopsis:

An essential element of fashionable dress from the Renaissance into the 20th century, the corset has been viewed not only as an object of eroticism but also as an instrument of torture and subjugation. This is an exploration of the cultural history of the corset.

A humorous look at the Summer of Love.

Summer of Love The Inside Story of LSD, Rock & Roll, Free Love, and High Times

by Joel Selvin (no photo)

Synopsis:

A pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle weaves a fascinating, sometimes lurid, narrative history of the highest times of the rock era. Selvin separates surprising fact from entrenched mythology and brings a new light to the icons of the most famous and compelling period in American music. Photos.

Hahahaha...this should be interesting. :)

A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome

by Alberto Angela

Synopsis:

The roar of frenzied spectators inside the Coliseum during a battle between gladiators. A crowd of onlookers gathered around a slave driver. The wondrous plenty of banquets where flamingos are roasted whole and wine flows like rivers. The silence of the baths and the boisterous taverns . . . Many books have dealt with the history of ancient Rome, but none has been able to bring its readers so near to daily life in the Imperial capital.

This extraordinary voyage of exploration, guided by Alberto Angela with the charm of a born story- teller, lasts twenty- four hours, beginning at dawn on an ordinary day in the year 115 A.D., with Imperial Rome at the height of its power. The reader wakes in a rich patrician home and discovers frescoes, opulent furnishings and richly appointed boudoirs. Strolling though the splendors of the Roman Forum, one overhears both erudite opinions from learned orators and local ribaldry floating out from the public latrines. One meets the intense gazes of Roman matriarchs strolling the streets, looks on as a banquet is prepared, and is afforded a peek into the sexual habits and fetishes of Roman patricians and plebs. For all those who have ever dreamed of traveling back in time, Alberto Angela's narrative style will come as a welcome change to dry historical tomes. Rich in atmosphere and historical information, A Day in Ancient Rome is a voyage into a world both distant to us in time and surprisingly near in its habits, mores, and passions.

One of the great "ooops" moments in American history, although it may have been well intentioned.

Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition

by Karen Blumenthal(no photo)

Synopsis:

It began with the best of intentions. Worried about the effects of alcohol on American families, mothers and civic leaders started a movement to outlaw drinking in public places. Over time, their protests, petitions, and activism paid off—when a Constitional Amendment banning the sale and consumption of alcohol was ratified, it was hailed as the end of public drunkenness, alcoholism, and a host of other social ills related to booze. Instead, it began a decade of lawlessness, when children smuggled (and drank) illegal alcohol, the most upright citizens casually broke the law, and a host of notorious gangsters entered the public eye. Filled with period art and photographs, anecdotes, and portraits of unique characters from the era, this fascinating book looks at the rise and fall of the disastrous social experiment known as Prohibition.

Very interesting topic, Jill! Thank you for sharing. :)

The decoration of houses

by Edith Wharton

Overview:

Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses is an invaluable reference, one of the classic works on interior decoration, and a testament to the enduring style of one of America's greatest writers. Written in collaboration with celebrated American architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton's first book is a comprehensive look at the history and character of turn-of-the-century interior design, moving from historical traditions to the distinctive styles of contemporary taste. Published in association with the Mount Press, this beautiful hardcover facsimile is carefully reproduced from the first edition published in 1897 and includes all 56 original plates-illustrating furniture, moldings, and interior styles of the 19th-century-and features décollage edges as well as a new introduction from renowned scholar Richard Guy Wilson. The Mount is a magnificent estate Edith Wharton designed and built in 1902 as a writer's retreat in the beautiful Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.