Pulitzer-winning historian Kammen (Cornell; In the Past Lane, 1997; People of Paradox, 1972; etc.) offers a thoughtful essay on the evolution of leisure in America from the late 19th century to today. In their pursuit of leisure, Kammen estimates, Americans now spend over $1 trillion a year—“far more than they spend on health care, on cars and trucks, or on housing.” Kammen proceeds to trace how Americans have spent their leisure time and money, and how critics and other authorities have perceived American culture since the emergence of popular culture in the late 19th century. Distinguishing popular culture (participatory or interactive activities on smaller scales, such as nightclubs or amusement parks) from mass culture (passive activities on a large or societal scale, such as television), Kammen divides America’s modern cultural history into three phases: the heyday of popular culture from 1885 to 1935; the period of the emergence of “proto-mass” culture from 1935 to 1965; and the growth of mass culture from the mid-—60s through the present. Within these time frames, Kammen explores such themes as the growing democratization of culture as Americans found themselves with unprecedented time and opportunity for leisure, and the decline of ideals of “high culture”; the growth and transformation of popular culture by advertising and other techniques of mass consumerism; the blurring of taste levels during the heyday of commercialized popular culture between what was formerly known as “highbrow” and “middlebrow” culture, and the decline of the authority of critics and the rise of such authorities as opinion polls, television ratings, and the corporate sponsor. The consequence of these phenomena, Kammen writes, is “an increase in cultural populism,” a decline in cultural elitism, and the growing cultural importance of powerful economic forces. A stimulating inquiry into the conflicting ways in which Americans have understood their dynamic and influential culture, more valuable for the paradigms and issues it raises than for the answers it provides.
Pub Date: Aug. 24, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-42740-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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