Showing results by narrator "Ryan Durham" in All Categories

Can a nation spend lavishly on music and still fail to develop a musical voice of its own? In Music, American composer and critic Deems Taylor takes a sharp, often humorous look at the state of American musical culture in the early twentieth century. Taylor argues that the United States has...

In Radicalism, journalist and economist George Soule examines the political, economic, and psychological roots of American radical thought in the years following World War I. Soule argues that genuine radicalism is not simply a demand for greater material wealth. At its core lies a deeper desire...

In Nerves, physician and psychoanalytic writer Alfred B. Kuttner examines the psychological tensions he believed were shaping American life in the early twentieth century. Kuttner challenges the familiar explanation that modern nervous disorders are simply the result of business pressure...

What does the family reveal about the society that created it? In The American Family, Katherine Anthony takes a sharp, provocative look at one of America’s most enduring—and most debated—institutions. Examining family life during a period of dramatic social and economic change, Anthony...

What happens to the American small town when the wider world finally comes within reach? In this incisive essay from *Civilization in the United States*, journalist Louis Raymond Reid examines the provincial culture, restless ambition, and growing dissatisfaction that shaped rural American life...