American Culture in the 1920s (Twentieth-Century American Culture) - Softcover

Currell, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0748625224 ISBN 13: 9780748625222

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2009

Synopsis

The 1920s saw the United States rise to its current status as the leading world superpower, matched by an emerging cultural dominance that characterized the second half of the twentieth century. This book provides an stimulating account of the major cultural and intellectual trends of the decade that have been pivotal to its characterization as 'the jazz age'. Currell's book places common representations of the 'roaring twenties' and the 'lost generation' into context through chapters on literature, music and performance, film and radio, and visual art and design, alongside the unprecedented rise of leisure and consumption in the 1920s.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Currell is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Sussex.

Review:

Both thoughtful and useful, Susan Currell's American Culture in the 1920s combines summatory accounts of intellectual, political, cultural and aesthetic trends with illuminating case-studies that range from close readings of particular texts through genre surveys and exhibition reviews to coverage of key or typical careers. Currell's version of the decade turns on a record of pervasive tensions between tradition and innovation, and is particularly strong on the passage of intellectual trends into popular and political theories conditioning the daily cultural life of the decade. I can think of few other introductions that so aptly catch the degree to which modernity is necessarily unfinished, unfinishable and conflicted. -- Professor Richard Godden, University of California, Irvine This is a most reliable and carefully researched book. I shall certainly add it to the reading list for my own course on America in the 1920s; indeed, I think it belongs right at the top of the list. -- Faye Hammil, University of Strathclyde Journal of American Studies Both thoughtful and useful, Susan Currell's American Culture in the 1920s combines summatory accounts of intellectual, political, cultural and aesthetic trends with illuminating case-studies that range from close readings of particular texts through genre surveys and exhibition reviews to coverage of key or typical careers. Currell's version of the decade turns on a record of pervasive tensions between tradition and innovation, and is particularly strong on the passage of intellectual trends into popular and political theories conditioning the daily cultural life of the decade. I can think of few other introductions that so aptly catch the degree to which modernity is necessarily unfinished, unfinishable and conflicted. This is a most reliable and carefully researched book. I shall certainly add it to the reading list for my own course on America in the 1920s; indeed, I think it belongs right at the top of the list.

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0748625224
• ISBN 13: 9780748625222
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272