Kirjahaku

"A true poem," Walt Whitman proclaimed in 1852, "is the daily newspaper"--and American culture was never the same again. Like a blast of cold air in a stuffy drawing room, Whitman's campaign to give artistic representation to gritty reality shocked the genteel artistic elite of the 1850s; but the brassy poet's efforts helped generate a revolution in American life and thought. Four decades later, Willa Cather could declare that the "public demands realism, and they will have it." In Facing Facts, David Shi provides the most comprehensive history to date of the rise of realism in American culture. He vividly captures the character and sweep of this all-encompassing movement--ranging from Winslow Homer to the rise of the Ash Can school, from Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Dreiser. He begins with a look at the idealist atmosphere of the antebellum years, when otherwordly themes were considered the only fit subject for art (Hawthorne wrote that "the grosser life is a dream, and the spiritual life is a reality"). Whitman's assault on these standards coincided with sweeping changes in American society: the bloody Civil War, the aggressive advance of a modern scientific spirit, the popularity of photography, the expansion of cities, capitalism, and the middle class--all worked to shake the foundations of genteel idealism and sentimental romanticism. Both artists and the public developed an ever-expanding appetite for hard facts, and for art that accurately depicted them. As Shi proceeds through the nineteenth century, he traces the realist revolution in each major area of arts and letters, combining an astute analysis of the movement's essential themes with incisive portraits of its leading practitioners. Here we see Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., shaken to stern realism by the horrors of the Civil War; the influence of Walt Whitman on painter Thomas Eakins and architect Louis Sullivan, a leader of the Chicago school; the local-color verisimilitude of Louisa May Alcott and Sarah Orne Jewett; and the impact of urban squalor on intrepid young writers such as Stephen Crane. In the process of surveying nineteenth-century cultural history, Shi provides fascinating insights into the specific concerns of the realist movement--in particular, the nation's growing obsession with gender roles. Realism, he writes, was in many respects an effort to revive masculine virtues in the face of declining virility. During the twentieth century, a new modernist sensibility challenged the now-orthodox tenets of realism: "Is it not time," one critic asked, "that we renounce the heresy that it is the function of art to record a fact?" Shi examines why so many Americans answered yes to this question, under influences ranging from psychoanalysis to the First World War. Nuanced, detailed, and comprehensive, Facing Facts provides the definitive account of the realist phenomenon, revealing why it played so great a role in American cultural history, and why it retains its perennial fascination.

The Essential Learning Edition of America’s celebrated narrative offers a unique pedagogical program built around core objectives. In-chapter features guide reading, source activities guide analysis, and digital resources reinforce the reading and skill development, all providing a clear path for student success. The Second Edition has been made even more accessible and engaging with a streamlined narrative, expanded visuals, added coverage on the culture of daily life, and NEW History Skills Tutorials.

America is the leading narrative history because students love to read it. Additional coverage of immigration enhances the timeliness of the narrative. New Chapter Overview videos, History Skills Tutorials, and Norton’s adaptive learning tool, InQuizitive, help students develop history skills, engage with the reading, and come to class prepared, while AP®-specific resources help teachers prepare lesson plans and assessments. AP® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

Our current less-is-more impulse may have contemporary trappings, says David E. Shi, but the underlying ideal has been around for centuries. From Puritans and Quakers to Boy Scouts and hippies, our quest for the simple life is an enduring, complex tradition in American culture. Looking across more than three centuries of want and prosperity, war and peace, Shi introduces a rich cast of practitioners and proponents of the simple life, among them Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Scott and Helen Nearing, and Jimmy Carter.In the diversity of their aspirations and failings, Shi finds that nothing is simple about our mercurial devotion to the ideal of plain living and high thinking. "Difficult choices are the price of simplicity," he writes in the book's revised epilogue. We may hedge a bit in the practice of simple living, and now and then we are driven by motives no deeper than nostalgia. Shi stresses, however, that the diverse efforts to avoid anxious social striving and compulsive materialism have been essential to the nation's spiritual health.

Noted historian-cum-university president genially shares his discoveries; When David Emory Shi, a leading historian and writer, left the classrooms of Davidson College for the president's office of Furman University in 1994, he took with him his interest in the past, in people, and in the process of becoming educated. Determined to elude the academic ivory tower and the swamp of administration, Shi continued his study of the connections between past and present, self and society. He also became a popular speaker on topics of public interest as well as a newspaper columnist and radio commentator with a loyal following throughout the country. Shi's miscellany of speeches and columns, collected in this volume, display both his desire to link academe to the real world and his infectious enthusiasm for liberal learning. Shi's meditations reflect his ever-widening circle of interests - from Martin Luther King Jr., the Marquis de Lafayette, and the artist Cecilia Beaux to Transcendentalism and nineteenth-century reform. Shi offers innovative interpretations on topics ranging from the fate of books in the digital age to America's conflicted fascination with the simple life, from George Washington's rules for civility to the Montgomery bus boycott. Published as part of Furman University's 175th anniversary celebration, The Bell Tower and Beyond features tributes to distinguished Furman alumni, celebrations of university traditions, and black-and-white drawings by North Carolina architect and Furman alumnus Ronald Boozer that were prepared especially for this volume. The Bell Tower and Beyond also includes selections on Greenville and its citizens, the South, America's past, and contemporary culture.