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Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890-1950
By: Robert FrankelImprint: University of Wisconsin Press
Format: Adobe Encrypted (DRM)
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Beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville and Frances Trollope, visitors to America have written some of the most penetrating and, occasionally, scathing commentaries on U.S. politics and culture. Observing America focuses on four of the most insightful British commentators on America between 1890 and 1950. The colorful journalist W. T. Stead championed Anglo-American unity while plunging into reform efforts in Chicago. The versatile writer H. G. Wells fiercely criticized capitalist America but found reason for hope in the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. G. K. Chesterton, one of England¿s great men of letters, urged Americans to preserve the vestiges of Jeffersonian democracy that he still discerned in the small towns of the heartland. And the influential political theorist and activist Harold Laski assailed the business ethos that he believed dominated the nation, especially after Franklin Roosevelt¿s death. Robert Frankel examines the New World experiences of these commentators and the books they wrote about America. He also probes similar writings by other prominent observers from the British Isles, including Beatrice Webb, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. The result is a book that offers keen insights into America¿s national identity in a time of vast political and cultural change.
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| Title of History eBook: Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890-1950 | |
| Release Date: 01-05-2007 | |
| Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press |
This eBook download is available in the following formats:
| Parent title | Observing America: The Commentary of... |
|---|---|
| Encrypted (DRM) | Yes |
| SKU | 9780299218836 |
| File size | 2017 |
| Security | n/a |
| Printing | Not allowed |
| Copying | Not allowed |
| Read aloud | No Sys requirements Download reader |
| Devices | Samsung Tablet, Apple Ipad & Iphone, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo eReader, Aluratek Libre, Iliad, Nokia, Blackberry, Hanlin |
| Note | Excellent navigation features are available via Adobe such as bookmarks and a quick access table of contents. Text search is easily accessible. An Adobe DRM-protected file is different than a pdf file in that it uses Adobe DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, which authors and publishers use to protect their content from illegal online distribution and to set certain privileges such as restrictions on copying and printing. |
Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890-1950
Chapter One
The Plight of the CitiesW. T. Stead and 1890s Urban America
Rarely in American history has a foreign visitor thrust himself onto the domestic scene quite in the way W. T. Stead did in the 1890s. This crusading journalist, one of the most prominent in late-Victorian Britain, possessed a special knack for attracting attention to himself, so it was only appropriate that he would first arrive in America with a bang. His involvement in the effort to reform Chicago made him a conspicuous participant in American affairs, and he left upon the nation his indelible imprint.
Although Stead had developed an affinity for America early in life, when he traveled to the New World in the 1890s he was harshly critical of what he found. After visiting Chicago and New York, he came to the conclusion that American cities were miserable aggregations of humanity plagued by corruption, greed, and callousness. During this period, among the other British travelers to the United States who thought likewise were Rudyard Kipling and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. They too recorded their negative impressions of the cities.
From Stead's encounter with the American metropolises, he also generalized about the nation as a whole. He charged that the republic had come under plutocratic control and that the citizenry had lost faith in one another and in democracy. Despite this blistering assessment of the nation, based upon his experiences in urban America, his devotion to the United States would never diminish. The inconsistency that would come to mark Stead's outlook on America was typical of this paradoxical
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