Historians and social scientists analyzing the contemporary world unfortunately have too little contact and hence miss some of the ways that their interests overlap and the research of one field might benefit another. I am, therefore, extremely grateful that the Journal of Consumer Research has invited me to share with its readers an overview of my recent research on the political and social impact of the flourishing of mass consumption on twentieth-century America. What follows is a summary of my major arguments, enough to entice you, I hope, to read A Consumers' Republic (Cohen 2003), in which I elaborate on these themes. Although this essay is by necessity schematic, the book itself is filled with extensive historical evidence and is heavily illustrated with period images. In tracing the growing importance of mass consumption to the American economy, polity, culture, and social landscape from the 1920s to the present, I in many ways establish the historical context for your research into contemporary consumer behavior and markets. I hope you will …

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A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

william cronon the trouble with wilderness or getting the trouble with wilderness or getting back to the wrong nature by william cronon print formatted version pdf in william cronon ed uncommon ground rethinking, jesse and frank james new world encyclopedia jesse woodson james was born in clay county missouri near the site of present day kearney his father robert james was a farmer and baptist minister, conqu te de l ouest wikip dia la conqu te de l ouest est le processus de colonisation par des populations essentiellement d origine europ enne et le gouvernement des tats unis au xix e, from inquiry to academic writing pdf free download this page intentionally left blank from inquiry to academic writing a text and reader aronson11e fm aronson11e fm 4

Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America

There were three epochs of growth experience after the mid 19th century for what is now called the OECD 'club'; the late 19th century, the middle years between 1914 and 1950, and the late 20th century. The late 19th and the late 20th century epochs were ones of overall fast growth and convergence: poor countries tended to grow even faster than rich and the economic gap between rich and poor countries diminished. The middle years were ones of overall slow growth and divergence: poor countries tended to grow even slower than rich and the economic gap between rich and poor countries widened. Since the middle years were also ones of economic autarky and 'de-globalization', while the rest were ones of increasing globalization in world commodity and factor markets, history offers an unambiguous positive correlation between globalization and convergence. But is the correlation spurious? When the pre-World War I years are examined in detail, the correlation turns out to be causal: the globalization of commodity and factor markets served to play a critical, perhaps the critical, role in contributing to convergence. A century and a half of OECD club history also suggests that economists should pay more attention to who gains and who loses from convergence since the answers may help determine whether pro-globalization or anti- globalization policies will persist.

Globalization, Convergence and History

The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War@@@The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt

1. Introduction: distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler 2. The coalition merchants: ideologies, parties, and their interaction 3. Creative synthesis: why ideology? 4. The independent development of ideology 5. Ideology remakes the parties 6. Issue politics in ideological context 7. Polarized parties 8. Conclusion: toward the study of creative synthesis.

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Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America

The High Cost of Living in the Progressives' Economy

Willard Straight used to be a favorite of historians. The sometime diplomat and full-time imperialist promoter enjoyed a brief glory period after his death in the influenza epidemic of 1919. His friend Herbert Croly eulogized him in a full-length life-and-letters biography, portraying him as an energetic and tragic figure.1 A later historiographical generation awarded him even more prominence as a stock villain in the drama of expanding capitalism. After all, he worked for E. H. Harriman, J. P. Morgan, and National City Bank; served in the Department of State under Elihu Root and then Philander Knox; and had the approval of Theodore Roosevelt. He popped up at all the key moments of American expansionism, and he was likely to say, flat out, "I am a borne [sic] imperialist," a "rank imperialist," an "Imperialist confirmed and deep dyed."2 Straight's eager

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/3640202

Willard Straight and the Paradox of Liberal Imperialism

In the presidential campaign of 2004, George W. Bush's advisor Karl Rove repeated to journalists his long-standing explanation of why he admires William McKinley and expects Bush to reproduce what Rove regards as McKinley's successes. In 2003, Kevin Phillips, a Bush critic, wrote a book explaining how much he also admires McKinley. Eric Schlosser, a muck-raking journalist, saw his play Americans debut in London in the fall of 2003 to a theater full of Britons drawn to a play about the assassination of McKinley. Schlosser explains his interest in McKinley by invoking William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It isn't even past.” By saying so he raises anew the old question of how much our interest in present events ought to inflect our study of the past, but he also raises a question of peculiar interest to historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The McKinley of Rove, Phillips, and Schlosser—the McKinley whom Rove wants the President to emulate—may sound dimly familiar to us. But does the work of professional historians sustain this gloss on current affairs?

William McKinley and Us

In 1900 Americans still counted as a country people, and for most of them the rhythms of rural life shaped their ideas about past, present, and future. They shared memories of cultivation and scheduled their work in anticipation of the seasons and obedience to the weather. But before the twentieth century had half passed, the American city grew to overshadow the farm. Business cycles displaced seasons at the center of Americans’ forecasts, and while weather still played its capricious part in determining how fully an investment might come to fruition, a host of other factors, epiphenomena of the industrial world, joined storm, drought, and fl ood as the unpredictable masters of fate. Americans who lived through this shift from rural to urban life often complained that the regimentation and complexity of the industrial world robbed them of their independence. At the same time, the shift to modern modes of production turned the United States into the most nearly independent national actor on the world’s stage, at the center of an international economy Americans had little experience managing or even imagining. Only through the wrenching of war and depression did they come even to a tentative reckoning with the way the world worked now, and their place in it.

An Economic History of the United States 1900–1950

The University Press of Kansas series, “Landmark Law Cases and American Society,” edited by Peter Charles Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, puts its authors in a potentially awkward position. Any case that qualifies as a “landmark case,” with an obvious and vital connection to American society, is going to be what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., called a “great case.” The series therefore risks focusing on what Holmes called “bad law. Great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.”1 To the non-lawyer, this prospect comes as something of a relief. Bad law is the stuff of good political and social history.2 And for the most part, the “Landmark Law Cases” authors de-emphasize jurisprudence and err on the side of showing us and our students how great cases entail moral, social, and political conflict. In the main, the series treats judges, especially the justices of the United States Supreme Court, as a special breed of political actors, in keeping with the explanation of the Court’s role offered in Thurman Arnold’s 1937 Folklore of Capitalism: the Supreme Court was

Eric Rauchway

Papers

The High Cost of Living in the Progressives' Economy

Willard Straight and the Paradox of Liberal Imperialism

William McKinley and Us

An Economic History of the United States 1900–1950

In Retrospect: Landmark Law Cases in American Society