Culture as history : the transformation of American society in the twentieth century

With amazing creativity, clarity, and wit, Warren Susman (1927-1985) takes us on a provocative tour of the highlights of American culture. By looking at all types of 20th-century culture—highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow—Susman shows how culture itself has become a battleground for competing visions of American life. Fourteen essays include such topics as the nature of American conservatism, the cultural contradictions of a consumer society, and the role of the urban experience in the development of American culture. "Bringing together for the first time the best of twenty-five years of unique critical work, Warren Susman takes Us on a startling tour through the conflicts and events which have transformed the social, political, and cultural face of America in this century. Probing a rich panoply of images from the mass media and advertising, testing prevalent intellectual and economic theories, linking the revolutions in communications and technology to the rise of a new pantheon of popular heroes, Susman documents and analyzes the process through which the older, Puritan-republican, producer-capitalist culture has given way to the leisure-oriented, consumer society we now inhabit the culture of abundance."--Publishers description.

Fourteen essays by Warren Susman (1927-1985) explore 20th-century American culture. Topics include, for example, the nature of American conservatism, the cultural contradictions of a consumer society, and the role of the urban experience in the development of American culture. Susman was a professor of history at Rutgers University. Written over the course of his career, the essays presented here appeared previously in various publications or were given at public forums. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A Smithsonian reprint of the edition published by Pantheon Books in 1973