1st Edition

Icons of American Popular Culture From P.T. Barnum to Jennifer Lopez

By Robert C. Cottrell Copyright 2010
    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    278 Pages
    by Routledge

    Traces the evolution of American popular culture over the past two centuries. In a lengthy chronology of landmark events, and ten chapters, each revolving around the lives of two individuals who are in some way emblematic of their times, this provides a window on the social, economic, and political history of US democracy from the antebellum period to the present.

    Introduction; 1. Democratic Showmen: James Gordon Bennett and P. T. Barnum; 2. Exponents of the Culture of Consumption: Marshall Field and Horatio Alger; 3. Stars of Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley: Lillian Russell and Irving Berlin; 4. The Cinematic Artist and the Literary Lion: D. W. Griffith and Ernest Hemingway; 5. The New Woman and the New Negro: Clara Bow and Bessie Smith; 6. Voices of Radical Culture: Margaret Bourke-White and Woody Guthrie; 7. American Heroes: Hank Greenberg and Edward R. Murrow; 8. American Rebels: Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley; 9. American Icons during a Time of Unrest: John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Muhammad Ali; 10. American Dreamers: Michael Jordan and Jennifer Lopez.

    Biography

    Robert C. Cottrell