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American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume III: Flintlock Alterations and Muzzleloading Percussion Shoulder Arms, 1840-1865
by George D. MollerThis third volume in Moller&’s authoritative reference work describes muzzleloading percussion shoulder arms procured by the U.S. government for issue to federal and state armed forces in the period that includes the Civil War. These twenty-five years were an exciting time in the history of shoulder arms. During the 1840s, only a handful of American manufacturers were capable of producing significant quantities of arms having fully interchangeable components. By the early 1850s, at least one firm was producing rifles with close enough tolerances to be considered fully interchangeable. And thanks to the invention of the expanding bullet, rifled arms could be used by an army&’s entire infantry. For the first time, line infantry were equipped with arms capable of rapid reloading and of consistently hitting a man-sized target at distances as great as three hundred yards. Like the first two volumes of American Military Shoulder Arms, this exhaustive reference work will be a must for serious arms collectors, dealers, and museum specialists.
American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell
by Deborah SolomonA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY"Welcome to Rockwell Land," writes Deborah Solomon in the introduction to this spirited and authoritative biography of the painter who provided twentieth-century America with a defining image of itself. As the star illustrator of The Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century, Norman Rockwell mingled fact and fiction in paintings that reflected the we-the-people, communitarian ideals of American democracy. Freckled Boy Scouts and their mutts, sprightly grandmothers, a young man standing up to speak at a town hall meeting, a little black girl named Ruby Bridges walking into an all-white school—here was an America whose citizens seemed to believe in equality and gladness for all.Who was this man who served as our unofficial "artist in chief" and bolstered our country's national identity? Behind the folksy, pipe-smoking façade lay a surprisingly complex figure—a lonely painter who suffered from depression and was consumed by a sense of inadequacy. He wound up in treatment with the celebrated psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. In fact, Rockwell moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts so that he and his wife could be near Austen Riggs, a leading psychiatric hospital. "What's interesting is how Rockwell's personal desire for inclusion and normalcy spoke to the national desire for inclusion and normalcy," writes Solomon. "His work mirrors his own temperament—his sense of humor, his fear of depths—and struck Americans as a truer version of themselves than the sallow, solemn, hard-bitten Puritans they knew from eighteenth-century portraits."Deborah Solomon, a biographer and art critic, draws on a wealth of unpublished letters and documents to explore the relationship between Rockwell's despairing personality and his genius for reflecting America's brightest hopes. "The thrill of his work," she writes, "is that he was able to use a commercial form [that of magazine illustration] to thrash out his private obsessions." In American Mirror, Solomon trains her perceptive eye not only on Rockwell and his art but on the development of visual journalism as it evolved from illustration in the 1920s to photography in the 1930s to television in the 1950s. She offers vivid cameos of the many famous Americans whom Rockwell counted as friends, including President Dwight Eisenhower, the folk artist Grandma Moses, the rock musician Al Kooper, and the generation of now-forgotten painters who ushered in the Golden Age of illustration, especially J. C. Leyendecker, the reclusive legend who created the Arrow Collar Man.Although derided by critics in his lifetime as a mere illustrator whose work could not compete with that of the Abstract Expressionists and other modern art movements, Rockwell has since attracted a passionate following in the art world. His faith in the power of storytelling puts his work in sync with the current art scene. American Mirror brilliantly explains why he deserves to be remembered as an American master of the first rank.
American Missiles: The Complete Smithsonian Field Guide
by Brian D. NicklasThis remarkable guide provides for the first time an illustrated listing of almost 200 of Americas most powerful missiles. With information on all aspects of the missiles specifications, including the speed and capacity of the explosives used in its warhead, this book provides a comprehensive guide to the US Armys projectile hardware. 'American Missiles: The Complete Smithsonian Field Guide' draws heavily on the Herbert S. Desind Photo Collection, a resource of more than 110,000 images recently catalogued at the National Air and Space Museum. Of interest to both the specialist and the aviation enthusiasts, this book demonstrates the evolution of American missile design over the last forty years in an accessible and entertaining format.
American Modern
by Thomas Obrien“One of those designers whose interior and furniture designs look discovered, not created . . . both comfortable and exquisite, calm and eclectic.” —Apartment TherapyDesigner and merchant, collector and tastemaker, Thomas O’Brien has made a career of translating cool notions of modernism into an easy and generous array of modern styles that anyone can attain. Now he introduces readers to a range of those styles—from casual to formal, vintage to urban—alongside stunning photography and charming design stories.O’Brien carefully describes the design process of his chosen projects, including a downtown New York City loft, a traditional Connecticut estate, and a converted schoolhouse in eastern Long Island. Each home explores a view on the modern design spectrum he has created, as well as the individual choices that make the design unique and its mix essentially American. He explains not only what was at work to create a given style, but how readers can import those practices to their own homes and personal design sensibilities. Important design principles such as architectural authenticity, color relationships, correctness of scale, and informed collecting are threaded through a practical narrative that reads like a master class in interior design. American Modern is an inspiring design volume that will redefine the way readers think about modern interiors.“O’Brien carefully describes the design process of his chosen projects. Beautiful imagery and a unique layout describe his approach to design in a new and innovative way.” —LIFEMSTYLE“It’s like getting a glimpse into the studio paintings of a great master . . . I especially love how all of his spaces feel so gender neutral, the perfect balance.” —Cottage Farm
American Musical Theatre
by Steven PorterFirst Published in 1987. Split into four parts, this book seeks to inform the reader, teachers, directors and students about American Musical Theatre. Part I is a brief history of the American Musical Theatre, for it is only in the context of history that the material on which you work can be fully judged and mastered. Part II is a brief discussion of the elements of production. Knowing what ought to take place in a well-planned show can go a long way toward counteracting what does not take place in a poorly planned one. Part III is a brief discussion of how to evaluate the elements of craftmanship one expects to find in the writing and performing of a musical. The knowledge here is indispensable to the performer. It is the feel of the plane to the pilot, the touch of the key to the pianist. It is, in fact, the very life blood of the art form. Finally, Part IV provides an opportunity to put into practice what previous study has taught.
American Myths in Post-9/11 Music
by Daniele CuffaroAfter September 11, 2001, the void left following the attack on the Twin Towers in the heart of New York was the visible symbol that there was to be a breaking point with the past. The attacks dramatically changed the everyday lives of the American people and the new devastating landscape led people to seek to restore the certainties that had been so suddenly shattered. In doing this, Americans went back to the historical myths in their culture. This book explores the collective memory and historical American myths like, for example, the myth of the innocent nation and the frontier myth, and shows how some of these nationally considered historical truths have not disappeared, but were indeed exhumed in the music produced post-9/11.
American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism (Catholic Practice in the Americas)
by Katherine Dugan and Karen E. ParkA vital collection of interdisciplinary essays that illuminates the significance of Marian shrines and promises to teach scholars how to “read” them for decades to come.American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism is a collection of twelve essays that examine the historical and contemporary roles of Marian shrines in US Catholicism. The essays in this collection use historical, ethnographic, and comparative methods to explore how Catholics have used Marian devotion to make an imprint on the physical and religious landscape of the United States. Using the dynamic malleability of Marian shrines as a starting place for studying US Catholicism, each chapter reconsiders the American religious landscape from the perspective of a single shrine to Mary and asks: What does this shrine reveal about US Catholicism and about American religion?Each of the contributors in American Patroness examines why and how Marian shrines persist in the twenty-first century and subsequently uses that examination to re-read contemporary US Catholicism. Because shrines are not neutral spaces—they reflect and shape the elastic yet strict boundaries of what counts as Catholic identity, and who controls prayer practices—the studies in this collection also shed light on the contested dynamics of these holy sites. American Patroness demonstrates that Marian shrines continue to be places where an American Catholic identity is continuously worked on, negotiations about power occur, and Marian relationships are fostered and nurtured in spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate.
American Pickers Guide to Picking
by Libby CallawayA true adventure story and the go-to guide for "picking" American treasures from anyone's backyard, straight from the stars of History's American PickersIn these pages, professional treasure hunters Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz chronicle their road trips across the American countryside in search of "rusty gold" to buy and sell among the picking world's one-of-a-kind characters. Whether you are a fan of the show or just like finding hidden riches, you will love seeing what Wolfe and Fritz dig up and enjoy meeting the devoted collectors, extreme stockpilers, and elite dealers who they encounter along the way.Wolfe and Fritz do not deal in fine antiques. Their secondhand treasures are of the down-and-dirty and sometimes even bizarre variety, from old bicycles and vintage tools, to sun-bleached cars and handmade furniture, retired carnival games and unusual taxidermy. Assisted by Danielle Colby, who helps out at Antique Archaeology, Wolfe and Fritz buy on the cheap and then sell to dealers, art directors, interior designers, or anyone looking for a little bit of authentic Americana. The three now share their secrets to finding hidden gems, offering helpful hints that will show what average Americans can do to find the treasures that await them.From American Pickers Guide to Picking:Junk is BeautifulWhen we knock on a door, 90 percent of the time the things we find are junk. But we don't care about the odds; a picker never turns down an opportunity, no matter where it is. We've picked pickup trucks. We've picked flat beds. We've picked dumpsters. We even picked a Mercury Sable. We're looking for the unusual, the impossible, the funky, the different, the bizarre-things we have never seen before. And we'll go anywhere we have to go to find it.No location is off-limits to a hard-core picker. And there's plenty of things to be found at antique stores, thrift and consignment shops, flea markets, estate sales, and swap meets, and a lot of the tips in this book apply to finding treasures at these joints. But that's not really the kind of picking we do anymore. We look outside the box to find our junk-a word we use almost like a term of endearment: to us: junk is beautiful.
American Political Movies: An Annotated Filmography of Feature Films (Routledge Library Editions: Cinema)
by James CombsEssays here explore the relationship between politics and explicitly political feature films from the beginning of the movie industry to World War I, and for each decade through to the 1980's. The included filmography is particularly useful. Originally published in 1990, the method of inquiry put forward in this text is nonetheless extendable to the decades following its publication.
American Politics Film Festival: Understanding US Politics through Film
by Thomas E.Cronin Michael A.GenoveseThis is an innovative and inspirational examination of films and documentaries that helps us explain the evolution of, struggles of, and aspirations of the American experiment. This book sorts politics into categories and then identifies films, TV shows, and documentaries that illuminate various aspects of that category. For each chapter, the authors list and discuss an impressive variety of films, documentaries, and television shows. This accessible book is designed for course use and general readers interested in how American politics and history has been portrayed in media.
American Pop Art in France: Politics of the Transatlantic Image (Routledge Research in Art History)
by Liam ConsidinePop art was essential to the Americanization of global art in the 1960s, yet it engendered resistance and adaptation abroad in equal measure, especially in Paris. From the end of the Algerian War of Independence and the opening of Ileana Sonnabend’s gallery for American Pop art in Paris in 1962, to the silkscreen poster workshops of May ’68, this book examines critical adaptations of Pop motifs and pictorial devices across French painting, graphic design, cinema and protest aesthetics. Liam Considine argues that the transatlantic dispersion of Pop art gave rise to a new politics of the image that challenged Americanization and prefigured the critiques and contradictions of May ’68.
American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century
by Jeffrey Melnick Rachel RubinDesigned as a broad introductory survey, and written by experts in the field, this book examines the rise of American music over the 20th century - the period in which that music came into its own and achieved unprecedented popularity. Beginning with a look at music as a business, 11 essays explore a variety of popular musical genres, including Tin Pan Alley, blues, jazz, country, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, folk, rap, and Mexican American corridos. Reading these essays, we come to see that the forms created by one group often appeal to, and are in turn influenced by, other groups - across lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, region and age. The chapters speak to one another, arguing for the primacy of such concepts as minstrelry, urbanization, hybridity and crossover as the most powerful tools for understanding American popular music. Moving beyond outdated music-industry categories and misleading genre labels, while acknowledging the complexities of the market, the book recovers and reinforces the essential blackness of much popular music - even a presumably white form like country and western.
American Portrait: The Story of Us, Told by Us
by PBSBased on the popular and revolutionary PBS multiplatform documentary project, an inspiring and striking photographic portrait that brilliantly captures the tumultuous, historic year that was 2020, offering an intimate look at the heart and soul of our national life and what it means to be an American today, revealed through the stories of ordinary people from sea to shining sea.Everyone has a story . . . In January 2020, in celebration of its 50th anniversary, PBS launched an ambitious national storytelling project, American Portrait, inviting people across the country to participate in a national conversation about what it means to be an American today. The multiplatform experience, including a television series that will air on PBS stations nationwide in January 2021, has created a communal voice through the individual stories of participants—each one a unique stitch in the beautiful, diverse quilt that is America. A vivid yet nuanced snapshot of who we are, this visually striking companion volume features more than 400 entries and photographs, all which began with an answer to a simple cue: My American story started when . . .You don’t know what it’s like to . . .My greatest challenge is . . . The tradition I carry on is . . . I was raised to believe . . . What keeps me up at night is . . .I took a risk when . . .When I step outside my door . . . Most days I feel . . . Told by people of all ages, orientations, and walks of life, these unique stories of joy, adversity, love, sacrifice, grief, sharing, triumph, and grace, centered on the themes of family, work, fun, faith, and community, illuminate the struggles, hopes, dreams, and convictions of Americans today. The more we share with our fellow citizens, the more we can see a real, complex, and fascinating representation of our country that is far richer and deeper than headlines and elections tell us. As intriguing, thoughtful, and distinct as the nation it embodies, American Portrait is a photographic manifestation of Walt Whitman’s immortal words, “I am large. I contain multitudes”—and a vital and ultimately hopeful reminder that what we all share is much greater and enduring than what may divide us.
American Progress: Nerdkultur, akrobatische Komik und Commedia dell'arte (Serienkulturen: Analyse – Kritik – Bedeutung)
by Holger SchulzeDie Serie 30Rock wälzt die medialen Erzählungen ihrer Epoche (und der Serie selbst) unaufhörlich um: in bislang sieben Staffeln, 140 Episoden, von 30 Autoren für 14 SchauspielerInnen geschrieben - rund um die Erfinderin und Hauptdarstellerin Tina Fey. Dieser Band untersucht die überdrehte Gegenwartsdystopie, ihre Erzählungen, Bühnen und Personen. Markante Episoden werden im Zusammenhang zeitgenössischer Pop- und TV-Kultur untersucht und einzelne ProtagonistInnen in ihrem medialen Handeln und dessen Referenzen. Ein Tableau der Medien- und der Nerdkultur sowie der politischen Agitation entsteht in Form von akrobatischer Komik und Celebrityobsession: eine Form der Commedia dell'arte über den American Progress.
American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood
by Marc EliotAs an actor, he seduces us with his tough-guy charm. As a director and producer, he amazes us with his artistry and technical savvy. As a Hollywood icon, Clint Eastwood, one of film's greatest living legends, represents some of the finest cinematic achievements in the history of American cinema. In American Rebel, bestselling author and acclaimed film historian Marc Eliot examines the ever-exciting, often-tumultuous arc of Clint Eastwood's life and career. Unlike past biographers, Eliot writes with unflinching candor about Eastwood's highs and lows, his artistic successes and failures, and the fascinating, complex relationship between his life and his craft. Eliot's prodigious research reveals how a college dropout and unambitious playboy rose to fame as Hollywood' s "sexy rebel," eventually and against all odds becoming a star in the Academy pantheon as a multiple Oscar winner. Spanning decades, American Rebel covers the best of Eastwood' s oeuvre, films that have fast become American classics–Fistful of Dollars, Dirty Harry, Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Gran Torino. Filled with remarkable insights into Eastwood's personal life and public work, American Rebel is highly entertaining and the most complete biography of one of Hollywood's truly respected and beloved stars–an actor who, despite being the Man with No Name, has left his indelible mark on the world of motion pictures.From the Hardcover edition.
American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
by Francis Otto MatthiessenThis text has taken its place as the definitive treatment of the most distinguished age of American literature. Centering the discussion around five literary giants of the mid-nineteenth century—Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. Matthiessen elucidates their conceptions of the nature and function of literature, and the extent to which these were realized in their writings.
American Revenge Narratives: A Collection of Critical Essays
by Kyle WigginsAmerican Revenge Narratives critically examines the nation’s vengeful storytelling tradition. With essays on late twentieth and twenty-first century fiction, film, and television, it maps the coordinates of the revenge genre’s contemporary reinvention across American culture. By surveying American revenge narratives, this book measures how contemporary payback plots appraise the nation’s political, social, and economic inequities. The volume’s essays collectively make the case that retribution is a defining theme of post-war American culture and an artistic vehicle for critique. In another sense, this book presents a scholarly coming to terms with the nation’s love for vengeance. By investigating recent iterations of an ancient genre, contributors explore how the revenge narrative evolves and thrives within American literary and filmic imagination. Taken together, the book’s diverse chapters attempt to understand American culture’s seemingly inexhaustible production of vengeful tales.
American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond
by Jeremy Dauber"America is the world's biggest haunted house and American Scary is the only travel guide you need. I loved this book." —Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support GroupFrom the acclaimed author of American Comics comes a sweeping and entertaining narrative that details the rise and enduring grip of horror in American literature, and, ultimately, culture—from the taut, terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the grisly, lingering films of Jordan Peele America is held captive by horror stories. They flicker on the screen of a darkened movie theater and are shared around the campfire. They blare out in tabloid true-crime headlines, and in the worried voices of local news anchors. They are consumed, virally, on the phones in our pockets. Like the victims in any slasher movie worth its salt, we can&’t escape the thrall of scary stories. In American Scary, noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the reader to the startling origins of horror in the United States. Dauber draws a captivating through line that ties historical influences ranging from the Salem witch trials and enslaved-person narratives directly to the body of work we more closely associate with horror today: the weird tales of H. P. Lovecraft, the lingering fiction of Shirley Jackson, the disquieting films of Alfred Hitchcock, the up-all-night stories of Stephen King, and the gripping critiques of Jordan Peele. With the dexterous weave of insight and style that have made him one of America&’s leading historians of popular culture, Dauber makes the haunting case that horror reveals the true depths of the American mind.
American Science Fiction Television and Space: Productions and (Re)configurations (1987-2021)
by Joel Hawkes Alex Christie Tom NienhuisThis collection reads the science fiction genre and television medium as examples of heterotopia (and television as science fiction technology), in which forms, processes, and productions of space and time collide – a multiplicity of spaces produced and (re)configured. The book looks to be a heterotopic production, with different chapters and “spaces” (of genre, production, mediums, technologies, homes, bodies, etc), reflecting, refracting, and colliding to offer insight into spatial relationships and the implications of these spaces for a society that increasingly inhabits the world through the space of the screen. A focus on American science fiction offers further spatial focus for this study – a question of geographical and cultural borders and influence not only in terms of American science fiction but American television and streaming services. The (contested) hegemonic nature of American science fiction television will be discussed alongside a nation that has significantly been understood, even produced, through the television screen. Essays will examine the various (re)configurations, or productions, of space as they collapse into the science fiction heterotopia of television since 1987, the year Star Trek: Next Generation began airing.
American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film (America In The 20th/21st Century Ser. #Vol. 3)
by David SeedFirst Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
American Showman: Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908–1935 (Film and Culture Series)
by Ross MelnickSamuel "Roxy" Rothafel (1882–1936) built an influential and prolific career as film exhibitor, stage producer, radio broadcaster, musical arranger, theater manager, war propagandist, and international celebrity. He helped engineer the integration of film, music, and live performance in silent film exhibition; scored early Fox Movietone films such as Sunrise (1927); pioneered the convergence of film, broadcasting, and music publishing and recording in the 1920s; and helped movies and moviegoing become the dominant form of mass entertainment between the world wars. <P><P>The first book devoted to Rothafel's multifaceted career, American Showman examines his role as the key purveyor of a new film exhibition aesthetic that appropriated legitimate theater, opera, ballet, and classical music to attract multi-class audiences. Roxy scored motion pictures, produced enormous stage shows, managed many of New York's most important movie houses, directed and/or edited propaganda films for the American war effort, produced short and feature-length films, exhibited foreign, documentary, independent, and avant-garde motion pictures, and expanded the conception of mainstream, commercial cinema. He was also one of the chief creators of the radio variety program, pioneering radio broadcasting, promotions, and tours.The producers and promoters of distinct themes and styles, showmen like Roxy profoundly remade the moviegoing experience, turning the deluxe motion picture theater into a venue for exhibiting and producing live and recorded entertainment. Roxy's interest in media convergence also reflects a larger moment in which the entertainment industry began to create brands and franchises, exploit them through content release "events," and give rise to feature films, soundtracks, broadcasts, live performances, and related consumer products. Regularly cited as one of the twelve most important figures in the film and radio industries, Roxy was instrumental to the development of film exhibition and commercial broadcasting, musical accompaniment, and a new, convergent entertainment industry.
American Silences: The Realism of James Agee, Walker Evans, and Edward Hopper
by Joseph Anthony WardIn ""American Silences"", Joseph Anthony Ward offers a unique analysis of the use and effects of silence in modern American realistic art. Beginning with the nineteenth-century literature that laid the foundation for silence in art, he moves to a brief analysis of Sherwood Anderson's ""Winesburg"", Ohio and Ernest Hemingway's ""In Our Time"", showing how they, along with several other crucial works of twentieth-century American realism, incorporate the power of the silent into their expression without sacrificing the subjects and techniques of traditional realism. Examining ""Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"", James Agee's commentary on the life of tenant farmers, documented with photographs by Walker Evans, Ward traces the book's pattern of 'silence, then silence disturbed by sound, and ultimately silence restored'. Ward further supports his theory with a study of Agee's ""A Death in the Family"" and Evans' ""American Photographs"". Ward sees Agee's admiration of photography as a connection between the silence of the scenes he writes about and the silence of Evans' photographs. The use of silence is perhaps even more obvious in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Although throughout the book Ward suggests both the positive and negative qualities of silence in art, Hopper's paintings provide little in the way of postiveness. For Ward, the art of silence is an art of extreme concentration that seeks essences rather than superficiality that nearly transcends realism itself. The theme of silence in American realism is a significant new one, but Ward's interpretation of the prose and his analysis of the photographs and paintings, many of which are reproduced in this book, establish validity for art as the voice of silence.
American Silver
by John Marshall PhillipsA practical guide to recognizing, identifying, and appreciating the finest American silverwork. Photographs and drawings of masterworks from leading collections show some of the finest work by Jacob Hurd, Jeremiah Dummer, Peter van Dyck, Edward Winslow, John Coney, Paul Revere, and other renowned silversmiths. 52 halftones, 14 black-and-white line illustrations.
American Silversmiths and Their Marks: The Definitive (1948) Edition
by Stephen G. Ensko"So thoroughly is the American ethos embodied in the works of American silversmiths that it has given to their product a typical identity and it never can be mistaken for that of any other country." -- Charles Messer Stow in the Introduction.Forsaking the flourishes and ornamentation favored by their European contemporaries, early American gold- and silver smiths pioneered a new American aesthetic sensibility in creating for their well-heeled clients finely worked, luxurious metalware for the table, which was marked by a simplicity and forthrightness of design. These accomplished artisans have left us not only a stunning legacy of priceless silverware but also an opportunity to examine the culture, lifestyle, and values -- in short, the developing ethos -- of young America. For social and cultural historians as well as Americana buffs, the study of silversmithing in this book will provide a unique perspective on a spirited new nation. For serious connoisseurs of American gold and silver ware, silver dealer Stephen G. C. Ensko's American Silversmiths and Their Marks is a rich and definitive directory. Ensko has compiled an exhaustive list of over 3,000 gold- and silversmiths working between the years 1650 and 1850. Biographical details and location of their shops are given wherever possible. Maps of the great metropolitan centers of smithing (Boston, New York, and Philadelphia) with shop locations noted are appended. Over 200 of the finest examples of the work of early American artisans are displayed in sharp, clear black-and-white photographs. Items include tankards, cups, candlesticks, sugar boxes, inkstands, tea sets, porringers, plus a pitcher, sauce dish, teapot, and other works by famous New England patriot Paul Revere. The usefulness of this work is perhaps most apparent in the practical listing of identifying marks associated with gold- and silversmiths. With over 3,000 entries, this feature alone renders American Silversmiths and Their Marks indispensable to enthusiasts interested in tracking down and identifying antique pieces.
American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination
by Amanda Brickell BellowsThe abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865 transformed both nations as Russian peasants and African Americans gained new rights as subjects and citizens. During the second half of the long nineteenth century, Americans and Russians responded to these societal transformations through a fascinating array of new cultural productions. Analyzing portrayals of African Americans and Russian serfs in oil paintings, advertisements, fiction, poetry, and ephemera housed in American and Russian archives, Amanda Brickell Bellows argues that these widely circulated depictions shaped collective memory of slavery and serfdom, affected the development of national consciousness, and influenced public opinion as peasants and freedpeople strove to exercise their newfound rights. While acknowledging the core differences between chattel slavery and serfdom, as well as the distinctions between each nation's post-emancipation era, Bellows highlights striking similarities between representations of slaves and serfs that were produced by elites in both nations as they sought to uphold a patriarchal vision of society. Russian peasants and African American freedpeople countered simplistic, paternalistic, and racist depictions by producing dignified self-representations of their traditions, communities, and accomplishments. This book provides an important reconsideration of post-emancipation assimilation, race, class, and political power.