The Gilded Age (1875–1900)

The Gilded Age (1875-1900) Joel Shrock. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. The 1920s Kathleen Drowne and Patrick Huber. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. The 1940s Robert Sickels. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. The 1950s William H. Young with Nancy K. Young. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. This series from Greenwood Press, under the general editorship of Ray B. Browne, seeks "to trace the numerous ways in which popular culture has evolved throughout American history" with volumes by different authors treating historical eras before 1900 and each decade thereafter. The authors set out to "explore the specific details of popular culture that reflect and inform the general undercurrents of the time ... to present historical and analytical panoramas that reach both backward into America's past and forward to her collective future" (series foreword). The four volumes to hand admirably meet these stated goals. They also meet the implied goals of making this knowledge accessible to a general readership, who "will no doubt read, or perhaps more commonly consult, these volumes in school, public, and collegiate libraries. The writing is plain, clear, and free of jargon, and avoids those meticulous arguments and delicate distinctions that often send people -even the most earnest -packing to the computer terminal. These accounts of the popular culture of their respective eras and decades remain lively and engaging by maintaining a high ratio of examples and details to generalizations, including the concrete particulars that make popular culture such a fascinating interest in itself and an avenue to understanding history. All of the volumes are generously illustrated with black and white drawings and pictures. Experts in American cultural history, I am sure, will often find these accounts too brief or reductive, sometimes maddeningly so. And those who lived observant lives during one or more of the decades will doubtless find themselves muttering complaints on this point or that. But these books were not designed for academic experts, nor, I think, for those who "were paying close attention in the 1940s or 1950s and are blessed with remarkable memories. Rather, these volumes serve those who need to be reminded, and allow those who are too young or who were not yet born to better understand both the popular culture and the history of decades past. Moreover, cultural studies in the past two decades have discovered a great deal about how popular culture reflects and informs history, and so this series brings a sense of the meanings and influences of decades past different from those published thirty or forty years ago, particularly with regard to matters of race and gender. And those who wish to pursue an interest more fully are provided with good notes to sources for each chapter, and a list of further reading long enough to be useful, but not so long and detailed as to be off-putting. Each volume follows the same format. First is a brief introduction to orient the reader and to say those things that too often go without saying but still somewhere need to be said -for example, reminders of what a pervasive influence WWII had, implicitly and explicitly, upon everything that happened in the 1940s. Next is a timeline that lists significant events -social, political, and cultural year by year. …