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Autor/in: Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey and John R. Howe Titel: The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society : To 1877: Creating a Nation and a Society, Volume I (Chapters 1-16)

Pt. 1. An emerging people, origins to 1815 --
ch. 1. Ancient America and Africa --
ch. 3. Europeans and Africans reach the Americas --
ch. 4. The maturing of colonial society --
ch. 5. Bursting the bonds of empire --
ch. 6. A people in revolution --
ch. 7. Creating a nation --
pt. 2. An expanding people, 1815-1877 --
ch. 8. Currents of change in Northeast and the old Northwest --
ch. 9. Slavery and the old South --
ch. 10. Shaping America in the Antebellum age --
ch. 11. Moving West --
ch. 12. The union in peril --
ch. 13. The union severed --
ch. 14. The union reconstructed --
pt. 3. A modernizing people, 1877 to 1929 --
ch. 15. The realities of rural America --
ch. 16. The rise of smokestack America --
ch. 17. The new metropolis --
ch. 18. Becoming a world power --
ch. 19. The progressives confront the industrial capitalism --
ch. 20. The Great War --
ch. 21. Affluence and anxiety --
pt. 4. A resilient people, 1929 to present --
ch. 22. The Great Depression and the New Deal --
ch. 23. World War II --
ch. 24. Chills and fever during the Cold War, 1945-1960 --
ch. 25. Postwar America at home, 1945-1960 --
ch. 26. Reform and rebellion in the turbulent sixties, 1960-1969 --
ch. 27. Disorder and discontent, 1969-1980 --
ch. 28. Conservatism and a shift in course, 1980-2010
The 38 letters written by Rockefeller to his son imparting his perspectives, ideology, and wisdom to his son.
Main contents of Life wealth: The 38 Letters of Rockefeller to His Son include: John D Rockefeller, the author of Life Wealth, tells us: it depends on your own mentality. If you think work is fun, your life will become paradise; if you think work is a duty to fulfill, your life is like suffering in hell. Work is not only the provider of food, clothing, housing and transportation, but also the meaning to you not only lies in the money and material you get from it, but also in what you will become as a result! Smart people work hard not only to make money, they are dedicated to a higher level than making money - to fight for a career of their own. When you get there, you won’t feel any more pain, because you know it’s the job that provides the opportunity to make you better. In this way, you will be enthusiastic about your work and become more active. When you are active in your work, your efforts will be rewarded, and success will become a natural thing.
Author Dale Carnegie Publisher Simon & Schuster Publication date October 1936

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a self-help book written by Dale Carnegie, published in 1936. Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.[1][2]

Carnegie had been conducting business education courses in New York since 1912.[3] In 1934, Leon Shimkin of the publishing firm Simon & Schuster took one of Carnegie's 14-week courses on human relations and public speaking;[3] afterward, Shimkin persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes from the course to be revised for publication. The initial five thousand copies[3] of the book sold exceptionally well, going through 17 editions in its first year alone.

In 1981, a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released.[4] The revised edition reduced the number of sections from six to four, eliminating sections on effective business letters and improving marital satisfaction. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time's list of the 100 most influential books.[5]

 

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism.

The Hudson River School was America’s first true artistic fraternity. Its name was coined to identify a group of New York City-based landscape painters that emerged about 1850 under the influence of the English émigré Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and flourished until about the time of the Centennial. Because of the inspiration exerted by his work, Cole is usually regarded as the “father” or “founder” of the school, though he himself played no special organizational or fostering role except that he was the teacher of Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Along with Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Church was the most successful painter of the school until its decline. After Cole’s death in 1848, his older contemporary Asher B. Durand (1796–1886) became the acknowledged leader of the New York landscape painters; in 1845, he rose to the presidency of the National Academy of Design, the reigning art institution of the period, and, in 1855–56, published a series of “Letters on Landscape Painting” which codified the standard of idealized naturalism that marked the school’s production. The New York landscape painters were not only stylistically but socially coherent. Most belonged to the National Academy, were members of the same clubs, especially the Century, and, by 1858, many of them even worked at the same address, the Studio Building on West Tenth Street, the first purpose-built artist workspace in the city. Eventually, several of the artists built homes on the Hudson River. Though the earliest references to the term “Hudson River School” in the 1870s were disparagingly aimed, the label has never been supplanted and fairly characterizes the artistic body, its New York headquarters, its landscape subject matter, and often literally its subject.

If Cole is rightly designated the founder of the school, then its beginnings appear with his arrival in New York City in 1825. He determined to become a landscape painter after a period of itinerant portrait painting in Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and a stint in Philadelphia during which he admired and imitated the landscapes of early American specialists such as Thomas Doughty. As significantly, in 1824, a tourist hotel was opened in the Catskill Mountains 100 miles upriver from New York. Once in New York in late 1825, Cole sailed for the Catskills, making sketches there and elsewhere along the banks of the Hudson. He produced a series of paintings that, when spotted in a bookstore window by three influential artists, gained him widespread commissions and almost instant fame. He was welcomed into the larger cultural life of the city, and was befriended especially by William Cullen Bryant, the poet and newspaper editor, who wrote a sonnet to Cole when he departed on a Grand Tour of Europe in 1829.

From the start, Cole’s style was marked by dramatic forms and vigorous technique, reflecting the British aesthetic theory of the Sublime, or fearsome, in nature. In the representation of American landscape, really in its infancy in the early nineteenth century, the application of the Sublime was virtually unprecedented, and moreover accorded with a growing appreciation of the wildness of native scenery that had not been seriously addressed by Cole’s predecessors. However, the wilderness theme had earlier gained currency in American literature, especially in the “Leatherstocking” novels of James Fenimore Cooper, which were set in the upstate New York locales that became Cole’s earliest subjects, including several pictures illustrating scenes from the novels. Fired by the initial reception to his work, as well as by engravings of historical landscapes by J. M. W. Turner and John Martin, Cole’s ambitions swelled during his European tour. After Cole returned to America, he continued to interpret the Italian landscape in the form of monumental allegories comprising several pictures, such as The Course of Empire (1833–36; New-York Historical Society) and, following his second European trip in 1839–40, The Voyage of Life (1840; Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Ithaca, N.Y.). Cole continued to produce scenic American subjects, but even in those his aims were aggrandized by the historical and religious preoccupations of his mature career. He died rather suddenly in Catskill, New York, where he had moved in 1836, starting a tradition followed by many Hudson River School artists.

The engraver, portrait, and genre painter Asher Durand was one of the three discoverers of Thomas Cole in 1825 and, in the following decade, was gradually moved to take up landscape painting himself. However, by the time Durand wrote “Letters on Landscape Painting” in the 1850s, he had seen the plein-air work of John Constable, Turner’s colleague and rival, in England, and held Constable’s naturalism up as the standard for young landscape painters—in the process, gently relegating Cole’s histrionic subjects and style to the past. With the example of Durand in both word and practice, outdoor sketching in oils as the foundation of and model for studio landscapes became common, and both plein-airism and the loosening authority of Sublime aesthetics led to a less inflected idiom whose most conspicuous features often were the light influencing terrestrial forms and the air bathing them. This trend coincided with the proliferation of tourist resorts both inland and on the coast during the Civil War period, along with the refinement of the vacation experience—increasingly pursued to relieve the pressures of urban workaday life. Painters who both reflected the new aesthetic standards and accommodated the vacationing class of patrons were John F. Kensett (1816–1872), Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910), Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880), Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900), and Jervis McEntee (1828–1891).

Somewhat exceptional were Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt, who in a measure extended the heroic landscape ambitions of Cole after his death. Church enjoyed the privilege and distinction of being Cole’s student (1844–46), but supplanted his teacher’s literary and historical conceits with scientific and expeditionary ones. Establishing his reputation with outsize depictions of North American scenic wonders such as Niagara Falls, Church was stirred by the travel accounts and scientific tracts of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt to journey twice to South America in the 1850s and paint large-scale landscapes of the equatorial Andean regions that encompassed torrid to frigid habitats in a single picture—the Earth in microcosm. The Museum’s ten-foot-wide Heart of the Andes (09.95) is the most ambitious and acclaimed of these works. It was promoted as a single-picture attraction—i.e., set in a dark, windowlike frame draped with curtains and starkly illuminated in an otherwise darkened room—that drew thousands of paying spectators in New York, London, and eight other American cities. Later Church exhibited “full-scale” paintings of the Arctic regions and the Holy Land.

In the Civil War years, Church’s only serious rival was Albert Bierstadt, an émigré who returned to his native Germany to study art at the Düsseldorf Academy. After a stint in Switzerland and Italy, he returned to the U.S. to seize—just as Church had the southern hemisphere—the American West as his artistic frontier. The Museum’s six-by-ten-foot Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak (07.123) was the chief product of Bierstadt’s first journey to the Rockies of Wyoming with the government survey expedition of Colonel Frederick W. Lander. The great painting was placed as a deliberate complement and competitor opposite The Heart of the Andes in the art gallery of the Metropolitan Fair in New York in 1864. In another gallery of the fair, the artist mounted a tableau vivant of real Indians recalling those in the foreground of his picture. In 1866, Bierstadt was among the earliest white visitors to Yosemite, and produced many large paintings of that region. He toured many times in the West, as well as in Canada, Alaska, Europe, and the Bahamas, and cultivated a large international clientele. His numerous sales enabled him to build a baronial mansion on the Hudson River at Irvington in 1866, even as Church was beginning his great home overlooking the river at Hudson, New York.

By the time Church and Bierstadt died, respectively in 1900 and 1902, the Hudson River School had been virtually forgotten. Its fall from grace began about the time of the Centennial. After the Civil War, the aesthetic orientation of the United States shifted from Great Britain, the mother culture, to the Continent, especially France. The appeal of figure painting grew somewhat at the expense of landscape, but the face of landscape painting itself altered with the influence of the softer, more intimate French Barbizon style first adapted to American scenery by George Inness (1825–1894). At first spurned or ignored by critics, Inness gained admiration through the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. By the 1880s, he had become the most highly regarded landscape painter in America and was attracting many followers. The Hudson River School, on the other hand, was increasingly assailed for its scenic and monumental aesthetics, prompting the derogatory label it has worn through its revival in the mid- and later twentieth century.

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the CatskillAdirondack, and White Mountains. Works by the second generation of artists associated with the school expanded to include other locales in New Englandthe Maritimes, the American West, and South America.

Catalog
1 year ago 1 year ago
Wolfe and Roth, Biography, Sports and Fiction

Tom Wolfe intended to write a book about the entire space program, up to the Apollo moon landings. But once he finished with the amazing story of the Mercury astronauts, those seven brave men who got the space program underway, Wolfe realized he had a finished product. It’s all here: Chuck Yeager, the mountaineer who broke the speed of sound, Alan Shepherd, the first American in space, and John Glenn, whose orbit of the earth made him a national hero. You’ll read this 365-page book in one sitting, guaranteed.

 

Author Thomas S. Kuhn Cover artist Ted Lacey Country United States Language English Subject History of science Publisher University of Chicago Press Publication date 1962

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; second edition 1970; third edition 1996; fourth edition 2012) is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the historyphilosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity where there is cumulative progress, which Kuhn referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. The discovery of "anomalies" during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere "puzzle-solving" of the previous paradigm, change the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research.[1]

For example, Kuhn's analysis of the Copernican Revolution emphasized that, in its beginning, it did not offer more accurate predictions of celestial events, such as planetary positions, than the Ptolemaic system, but instead appealed to some practitioners based on a promise of better, simpler solutions that might be developed at some point in the future. Kuhn called the core concepts of an ascendant revolution its "paradigms" and thereby launched this word into widespread analogical use in the second half of the 20th century. Kuhn's insistence that a paradigm shift was a mélange of sociology, enthusiasm and scientific promise, but not a logically determinate procedure, caused an uproar in reaction to his work. Kuhn addressed concerns in the 1969 postscript to the second edition. For some commentators The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced a realistic humanism into the core of science, while for others the nobility of science was tarnished by Kuhn's introduction of an irrational element into the heart of its greatest achievements.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was first published as a monograph in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, then as a book by University of Chicago Press in 1962. In 1969, Kuhn added a postscript to the book in which he replied to critical responses to the first edition. A 50th Anniversary Edition (with an introductory essay by Ian Hacking) was published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2012.[2]

Kuhn dated the genesis of his book to 1947, when he was a graduate student at Harvard University and had been asked to teach a science class for humanities undergraduates with a focus on historical case studies. Kuhn later commented that until then, "I'd never read an old document in science." Aristotle's Physics was astonishingly unlike Isaac Newton's work in its concepts of matter and motion. Kuhn wrote "... as I was reading him, Aristotle appeared not only ignorant of mechanics, but a dreadfully bad physical scientist as well. About motion, in particular, his writings seemed to me full of egregious errors, both of logic and of observation." This was in an apparent contradiction with the fact that Aristotle was a brilliant mind. While perusing Aristotle's Physics, Kuhn formed the view that in order to properly appreciate Aristotle's reasoning, one must be aware of the scientific conventions of the time. Kuhn concluded that Aristotle's concepts were not "bad Newton," just different.[3] This insight was the foundation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.[4]

Prior to the publication of Kuhn's book, a number of ideas regarding the process of scientific investigation and discovery had already been proposed. Ludwik Fleck developed the first system of the sociology of scientific knowledge in his book The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935). He claimed that the exchange of ideas led to the establishment of a thought collective, which, when developed sufficiently, served to separate the field into esoteric (professional) and exoteric (laymen) circles.[5][6] Kuhn wrote the foreword to the 1979 edition of Fleck's book, noting that he read it in 1950 and was reassured that someone "saw in the history of science what I myself was finding there."[6]

Kuhn was not confident about how his book would be received. Harvard University had denied his tenure a few years prior. However, by the mid-1980s, his book had achieved blockbuster status.[7] When Kuhn's book came out in the early 1960s, "structure" was an intellectually popular word in many fields in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics and anthropology, appealing in its idea that complex phenomena could reveal or be studied through basic, simpler structures. Kuhn's book contributed to that idea.[8]

One theory to which Kuhn replies directly is Karl Popper's “falsificationism,” which stresses falsifiability as the most important criterion for distinguishing between that which is scientific and that which is unscientific. Kuhn also addresses verificationism, a philosophical movement that emerged in the 1920s among logical positivists. The verifiability principle claims that meaningful statements must be supported by empirical evidence or logical requirements.

 

The American Language; An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, first published in 1919, is H. L. Mencken's book about the English language as spoken in the United States.

Mencken was inspired by "the argot of the colored waiters" in Washington, as well as one of his favorite authors, Mark Twain, and his experiences on the streets of Baltimore. In 1902, Mencken remarked on the "queer words which go into the making of 'United States.'" The book was preceded by several columns in The Evening Sun. Mencken eventually asked "Why doesn't some painstaking pundit attempt a grammar of the American language... English, that is, as spoken by the great masses of the plain people of this fair land?"

In the tradition of Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary, Mencken wanted to defend "Americanisms" against a steady stream of English critics, who usually isolated Americanisms as borderline "perversions" of the "mother tongue". Mencken assaulted the prescriptive grammar of these critics and American "schoolmarms", arguing, like Samuel Johnson in the preface to his dictionary, that language evolves independently of textbooks.

The book discusses the beginnings of "American" variations from "English", the spread of these variations, American names and slang over the course of its 374 pages. According to Mencken, American English was more colourful, vivid, and creative than its British counterpart.

The book sold exceptionally well by Mencken's standards—1400 copies in the first two months.[1] The book was an early title published by Alfred A. Knopf and was revised three times in the author's lifetime.[1] Reviews of the book praised it lavishly, with the exception of one by Mencken's old nemeses, Stuart Sherman.

Many of the sources and research material associated with the book are in the Mencken collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

Quelle: usawineratings.com

There are plenty of wine regions across the nation that are rapidly growing in prominence. Here’s a closer look at the Top 10 wine regions of the United States.

While California’s Napa Valley and Sonoma still reign supreme as the top wine regions in the United States, there are plenty of wine regions across the nation that are rapidly growing in prominence. Not only are these regions producing world-class wines, but they are also helping to create the basis of a thriving wine industry – everything from wine tourism to wine festivals. Here’s a closer look at the Top 10 wine regions of the United States.

California

Total wineries: 4.391

Within California, Napa Valley and Sonoma are still the templates that every other wine region is trying to follow. Napa, of course, is known for its world-class Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Sonoma, in turn, is known for its Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Chardonnay. But Napa and Sonoma are not the only wine regions within California creating buzz. Central Coast, for example, now boasts its own share of award-winning wineries. One of the new darlings of the wine world is Paso Robles, located approximately halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Washington State

Total wineries: 772

The state has a total of 14 different American Viticultural Areas (AVAs), with some of the more popular regions for wine production being Walla Walla and Columbia Valley. Since the 1960s, the state has rapidly increased its wine production capabilities, with wine exports going to more than 40 countries around the world. Washington is now No. 2 in the nation in terms of annual wine production, trailing only California. Popular grapes include Riesling, Chardonnay, Merlot, and Syrah.

Oregon

Total wineries: 774

Oregon has a much cooler climate than any of California’s wine regions, making it perfect for growing not just Pinot Noir, but also Riesling, Chardonnay, and Gamay. The premier wine region within Oregon is the Willamette Valley, which has gained a worldwide reputation for its stellar Pinot Noir wines. Interestingly, Willamette Valley is located along the same latitude as France’s famed Burgundy region, which is also famed for its Pinot Noir.

New York State

Total wineries: 395

There are two regions within New York State that have attracted the attention of wine aficionados – the Finger Lakes region and the North Fork. The North Fork is located in nearly the same part of Long Island as the famous Hamptons, which means that they attract many visitors and vacationers during the peak summer months. Further upstate, the Finger Lakes region is arguably the home of East Coast winemaking. A must-see destination on any trip to the Finger Lakes region is the winery of Dr. Konstantin Frank, who is credited with introducing grapes like Riesling and Gewürztraminer to the region. Overall, there are more than 100 wineries in the Finger Lakes region.

Virginia

Total wineries: 276

The most famous wine region within Virginia is located around the historic town of Charlottesville, perhaps best known as the home of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. The state is known for its nearly 200-day growing season, as well as the presence of premier wineries such as Barboursville Vineyards and Linden Vineyards. Winegrowing has been part of Virginia’s tradition since the Colonial era.

Texas

Total wineries: 319

Everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes the Texas Hill Country wine region, which spans 9 million acres, making it the second-largest wine region in the nation. The dry, sunny Texas Hill Country climate is well suited for growing grapes like Tempranillo, Syrah, Albarino, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Zinfandel. The Texas Hill Country is generally used to refer to all land in the winegrowing region north of San Antonio and west of Austin.

Pennsylvania

Total wineries: 261

The premier winegrowing region within Pennsylvania benefits from being situated between Lake Erie to the North and the Atlantic Ocean to the East. The state is now home to nearly 120 wineries and 5 different American Viticultural Areas (AVAs). One particularly noteworthy winery within the state is Waltz Vineyards.

Ohio

Total wineries: 208

The winemaking tradition in Ohio extends all the way back to the early 1820s. From 1823 to the mid-1860s, Ohio was home to one of the most popular wine industries in the nation and became particularly famous for its plantings of the Catawba grape. However, by the Prohibition Era, Ohio’s wine industry was headed on a downward trajectory and has never fully recovered, despite its proud tradition. One noteworthy winery within Ohio is Markko Vineyards. Overall, there are more than 110 wineries within Ohio.

Michigan

Total wineries: 184

The Lake Michigan Shore region is not only scenic – it is also home to a winegrowing region that has been called the “Napa of the Midwest.” The Lake Effect from Lake Michigan is what helps to moderate the climate of the region and produce such exceptionally complex wines. A local favorite tradition is to pair locally grown cheese with wines from local vineyards. Given the state’s colder climate, grapes such as the Austrian Blaufrankisch grape are able to thrive in Michigan.

Missouri

Total wineries: 149

Missouri is perhaps most famous for its “Missouri Rhineland” – a winegrowing region first settled by German immigrants more than a century ago. The first German immigrant winemakers appeared in 1837. By the 1880s, Missouri was the No. 1 wine-growing region in the nation – the Napa Valley of its day. Today, the state boasts more than 90 different wineries, 4 different AVAs, and even a “state grape” (the Norton grape).

Barrels - An Introduction to the Top 10 Wine Regions of the USA

However, these are not the only U.S. states with noteworthy wine regions. North Carolina (130 wineries), Colorado (106 wineries) and Illinois (100 wineries) all just narrowly missed being included on the list. And just about every frequent traveler has some favorite, completely off-the-radar region that produces great wines. It’s no longer uncommon for food & wine magazines to devote feature stories to the great wines of states like Idaho or Arizona.

In order to really enjoy these wines, it’s best to make a full weekend of it. Wine tourism is very much alive and well, not just in places you’d expect – like sunny California – but also in regions that might be colder (such as the Finger Lakes) but that boast a remarkably robust network of wineries, trails and outside adventure activities for the whole family.

Catalog
11 months ago
The 1960s was the decade America transformed from a country of conformity to a land of political, cultural, and social liberation. The events of that tumultuous ten-year period reshaped America to such an extent that it still remains an epoch of fascination today and every step of the way, television helped frame and enable that change.