Bücher von Alan Trachtenberg

A classic examination of the roots of corporate culture, newly revised and updated for the twenty first centuryAlan Trachtenberg presents a balanced analysis of the expansion of capitalist power in the last third of the nineteenth century and the cultural changes it brought in its wake. In America's westward expansion, labor unrest, newly powerful cities, and newly mechanized industries, the ideals and ideas by which Americans lived were reshaped, and American society became more structured, with an entrenched middle class and a powerful business elite. Here, in an updated edition which includes a new introduction and a revised bibliographical essay, is a brilliant, essential work on the origins of America's corporate culture and the formation of the American social fabric after the Civil War.

"A book of elegance, depth, breadth, nuance and subtlety." --W. Richard West Jr. (Founding Director of the National Museum of the American Indian), The Washington PostA century ago, U.S. policy aimed to sever the tribal allegiances of Native Americans, limit their ancient liberties, and coercively prepare them for citizenship. At the same time, millions of new immigrants sought their freedom by means of that same citizenship. Alan Trachtenberg argues that the two developments were, inevitably, juxtaposed: Indians and immigrants together preoccupied the public imagination, and together changed the idea of what it meant to be American. In Shades of Hiawatha, Trachtenberg eloquently suggests that we must re-create America's tribal creation story in new ways if we are to reaffirm its beckoning promise of universal liberty.

Winner of the Charles C. Eldredge PrizeIn this book, Alan Trachtenberg reinterprets some of America's most significant photographs, presenting them not as static images but rather as rich cultural texts suffused with meaning and historical content. Reading American Photographs is lavishly illustrated with the work of such luminaries as Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Walker Evans--pictures that document the American experience from 1839 to 1938. In an outstanding analysis, Trachtenberg eloquently articulates how the art of photography has both followed and shaped the course of American history, and how images captured decades ago provocatively illuminate the present.

"Lincoln's Smile demonstrates why Alan Trachtenberg has been the leading scholar in American studies for more than four decades." -Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University Alan Trachtenberg has always been interested in cultural artifacts that register meanings and feelings that Americans share even when they disagree about them. Some of the most beloved ones-like the famous last photograph of Abraham Lincoln, taken at the time of his second inaugural-are downright puzzling, and it is their obscure, riddlelike aspects that draw his attention in the scintillating essays of Lincoln's Smile and Other Enigmas. With matchless authority, Trachtenberg moves from daguerreotypes to literary texts to subjects as diverse as Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the early works of Lewis Mumford.