Product Description
The motion picture industry in its earliest days seemed as ephemeral as the flickering images it produced. Considered an amusement fad even by their exhibitors, movies nevertheless spread quickly from big-city vaudeville houses to towns and rural communities across the nation. Small-town audiences, looking for more than the lurid melodramas and slapstick comedies popular in cities, often lined up to see films with conservative and educational themes: scenic panoramas, biblical tableaux, newsreels, and manufacturing scenes.

In this social history of the cinema during the silent-film era, Kathryn H. Fuller charts the gradual homogenization of a diverse American movie audience as itinerant shows gave way first to nickelodeon theaters and then to more luxurious picture palaces.

Fuller suggests that fan magazines helped to reduce the distinctions between rural and urban moviegoers and created a nationwide popular culture of film consumption. Analyzing the articles, advertisements, and letters in such publications as Motion Picture Story Magazine and Photoplay, Fuller shows that these fan magazines--which initially catered to adult readers--shifted their focus by the late 1910s to young women who, entranced by Hollywood glamour, eagerly bought products endorsed by the stars.

Although the transformation of the movies into big-time entertainment had multiple sources, Fuller argues that ultimately the maturation of the film industry depended on the support of both urban and rural middle-class audiences. Providing the fullest portrait to date of the small-town audience's changing habits and desires, At the Picture Show demonstrates for the first time how a fan culture emerged in the United States, and enriches our understanding of mass media's relationship to early twentieth-century American society. ... Read more

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Using post–Civil War Richmond, Virginia, as a case study, Hoffman explores the role of race and class in the city building process from 1870 to 1920. Richmond’s railroad connections enabled the city to participate in the commercial expansion that accompanied the rise of the New South. A highly compact city of mixed residential, industrial and commercial space at the end of the Civil War, Richmond remained a classic example of what historians call a "walking city" through the end of the century. As city streets were improved and public transportation became available, the city’s white merchants and emerging white middle class sought homes removed from the congested downtown. The city’s African American and white workers generally could not afford to take part in this residential migration. As a result, the mixture of race and class that had existed in the city since its inception began to disappear.

The city of Richmond exemplified characteristics of both Northern and Southern cities during the period from 1870 to 1920. Retreating Confederate soldiers had started fires that destroyed the city in 1865, but by 1870, the former capital of the Confederacy was on the road to recovery from war and reconstruction, reestablishing itself as an important manufacturing and trade center. The city’s size, diversity and economic position at the time not only allows for comparisons to both Northern and Southern cities but also permits an analysis of the role of groups other than the elite in city building process. By taking a look at Richmond, we are able to see a more complete picture of how American cities have come to be the way they are. ... Read more

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Material Culture in Anglo-America examines the extent to which regions project cultural identities through the material forms of objects, buildings, and constructed environments. Utilizing more than 130 illustrations and essays by scholars representing a variety of disciplines, this volume explores the material constitution of the West Indies, Carolina lowcountry, and Chesapeake Tidewater—three historically related regions that shared strong likenesses in culture, commerce, and political development in the colonial through antebellum eras, yet also cultivated the distinctive regional flair with which they are now associated. Without reducing regionality to iconic signatures of place, the essays in this volume explore broadly the built and crafted artifacts that define and confine cultural identity in these geographic areas, locating regionality in the distinctive uses of objects as well as in their design and creation.

The contributors—an impressive and international array of historical archeologists, art historians, literary historians, museum curators, social historians, geographers, and historians of material culture—combine theoretical reflections on the poetics of representative material culture with empirical studies of how things were made and put to use in specific locales. They argue that there was a “presence of place” in the built environments of these regions but that boundaries were imprecise. The essays illustrate how the material culture of urban and rural settings interpenetrated each other and discuss the complications of class, race, religion, and settler culture within developing regions to reveal how all of these factors influenced the richness of crafted artifacts. The study is further grounded in several striking case studies that dramatically demonstrate how constructed things can embody communal self-understanding while still participating in an overarching transatlantic cultural community.

In addition to Shields, the contributors are Benjamin L. Carp, Bernard L. Herman, Paul E. Hoffman, Laura Croghan Kamoie, Eric Klingelhofer, Roger Leech, Carl Lounsbury, Maurie D. McInnis, Matthew Mulcahy, R. C. Nash, Louis P. Nelson, Paula Stone Reed, Jeffrey H. Richards, Natalie Zacek, and Martha A. Zierden. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

A cautionary tale
This is an excellent book about the decline and fall of Basic Steel in the 1970s and 1980s.The book is focused on Unions demanding too much in wages, benefits and restrictive work practices, and Employers giving too much in all three areas, all the while confident in the knowledge the other big steel makers would agree to the same package (a "Me too contract"), and then they all would pass the costs on to the Big Three Automakers, who would in turn pass them on to the American consumer.
Economists and others warned that this spiral couldn't continue its climb, but they were pooh poohed, and compared to the old fable of the boy who cried wolf.

And the wolf finally came in October, 1973, dressed as the Oil Embargo.Basic Steel died then, and Big Auto whistled past the graveyard, at least until recently.

... and it ate voraciously and completely, like an avenging angel.
This is a detailed and heartbreaking story of the failure and collapse of the American steel industry. Sometimes the details are more than one needs to know, but this book will serve as an excellent case history on the underlying reasons for the transfer of the "rust-belt" jobs overseas, and now America's reliance of foreigners to produce the goods we use, in return for pieces of paper (Bonds) giving them claims on American wealth.

Mr. Hoerr tries to write a dispassionate history, but it is difficult in the face of such monumental stupidity and greed."A vibrant forty-six mile stretch of river valley, providing primary jobs for over thirty-five thousand steel employees... would be devastated and expunged from economic memory in less than five years." "After that, the opportunities are limitless... from here to there where McDonald's needs someone to serve the one-trillionth burger." (p12-13).

The author was a reporter during this period, and apportions blame to both the steel company management and the unions, but clearly reserves his primary animus for management. They saw labor as an undifferentiated mass of dumb "hunkies", the pejorative term for people of Slavic origins, who only needed to take orders. That attitude was repaid, as Mr. Hoerr says:"I have known only two major corporations that actually engendered feelings of hatred among their employees, GM and US Steel." (p206)Management eventually acquiesced to the form, but not the substance of labor participation by forming "Labor-Management Participation Teams," but usually ignored their recommendations. There was also a willful neglect in spending the capital to modernize the operations - USX finally proposed building the first continuous caster plant in the Mon Valley in 1986! - at the very end. (p550) Instead it infuriated the labor force by spending its capital in buying Marathon Oil.

The author had access, and draws telling portraits of the principal actors involved, from the USW's I.W. Abel, Lloyd McBride, Lynn Williams, Bernard Kleiman and Edmund Ayoub. On the management side there was David M. Roderick, Thomas Graham and David Hoag.

I worked in US Steel's Homestead Works for two summers during my college years - '65 and '66.At the time I thought this work was the most "real", and those mills would be eternal - America would always need steel, and would obviously need to produce it. Fortunately the avenging angel passed me by, as I decided this work was not for me.Once again another "wolf" has finally come to America - this time high (and higher still) gas prices, which will force more economic dislocations that prudent planning could have avoided.Will American society be able to organize its economy prudently, to truly meet the real needs of its citizens, and minimize massive dislocations?This book is an excellent story of previous follies - can we learn from them?

Thank you!
My dad - who died a couple of years ago - published this book.He was very proud of it, and I think he would have been very pleased to see that Amazon customers are responding to it favorably.

Sad, true, and cautionary
I read this years ago, and I thought it was an excellent analysis of the collapse of the steel industry in Pittsburgh, filled with compelling tales of individual people.

The books feels like a Greek tragedy, in which the protagonists are doomed to a slow slide towards the edge of a cliff. Institutionalized conflict overcomes the efforts of people from both labor and maangement to halt, or at least slow the inevitable slide.

For people who think that the current dot.com crash is a serious downturn, this book offers a very good counter-perspective.When an area loses 100K jobs in 10 years, and whole towns essentially close, that's a *real* downturn.

On the other hand, there's always hope.Pittsburgh has bounced back, and has a much more diversified economy. The last time I visited, I could see the sky, which was more difficult in the steel days.To grasp those days, either see the early Tom Cruise movie "All The Right Moves", or for depth, read this book.

good book
This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn about what went wrong in this basic industry.Not only a study of the collapse of the steel industry in the Mon Valley, the book is also a study of the pain ofpostindustrialization that swept the country in the 1980's.Esentially,the author is writing about a national trend, but focuses on the Pittsburgharea, which is really a microcosm. It is also a good look at what happenswhen unions and management can't get their acts together. ... Read more

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The celebrated black Harvard scholar offers a heartwarming, poignant portrait of growing up in a West Virginia hill town, presenting a richly textured study of his family, his childhood icons, and the social institutions and mores of the time. 40,000 first printing. Tour. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (109)

Colored People
Colored People, a memoir by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is certainly a story worth telling. Set in the 1950s and 1960s, Gates depicts his childhood in the small town of Piedmont, West Virginia. Much of the content relies on the description of author's extended family, the Colemans and the Gates, to depict the significance of family ties in a time period of strained desegregation. While the copious amounts of relatives strains the reader's memory, they provide for an intimate view of the author as well as the society itself. The reality of segregation is not sugarcoated and one receives an unadulterated view of the past. Gates not only makes it possible for the reader to share the frustration he experienced at such a young age with the treatment of African Americans, but also explains practices and ideologies one wouldn't expect at the time- like the way the Coleman men would be served by the women at their family get together- the latter eating scraps in the kitchen. But Gates goes even further than society, becomingincreasingly personal through descriptions of his mother's depression and of his candid emotions throughout the novel.

If there is criticism to be had, some of it must lie in the organization of the book. While the reader could generally follow the sequence of events, no real timeline existed, and the reader was forced, on some level, to assume its order. Another bothersome detail was the way in which Gates' wife was never fully explained. While many of his other encounters with relationships had been thoroughly documented and all foreshadow the unveiling of Gates' wife, the reader is left with the introduction of this same woman in the ceremony of Gates' name changing, her name thrown in offhandedly with no further explanation. Even so, the book is worth reading as its emotion hugely overcomes its slight pitfalls and the reader gains an understanding of the time period as well as the individual.

A warm and honest, if not all that remarkable, memoir
I admit, I only bought this book to make a political statement in support of Professor Gates after the incident with Cambridge Police last summer (and I bought it half price at a used book store because I didn't need to make that much of a statement).I hoped for a well-told memoir with insight into the life of someone who grew up in a much different way than I did, and Professor Gates really delivered.This book focuses on the author's childhood, from the early days absorbing the details of his extended family and tight African American community within a small town in West Virginia.The book also follows his journey through recently desegregated schools, restaurants, hotels, and department stores, with a few inter-racial romantic relationships along the way to keep everything interesting, but I found the early observations much more compelling.Essentially, this is a rich and warm recollection of a childhood spent in a quirky but loving community, and although the occasionally frank sexuality will likely make some readers uncomfortable, I recommend it.Even for readers who aren't interested in making political statements.

Deep Down in Piedmont - the Real-Rated Version!
Loved Mr. Gate's word choice. So prominently square, yet eloquently fashionable. Almost started this pitch off naming him Sir Gates, following the way he tells on `Colored People' in rather ascot form. Informing some, and reminding others, he graduates us on an annotated history of Piedmont, (a place I'd never heard of), on out to population count and who lived where, did what, and how so, to soufflé us on `prime time' history and familial dealings.

My biggest peeve was wishing Mr. Gates had not changed suits so abruptly and frequently. For instance, he spent a good minute on good hair/bad hair and complexion, but wouldn't treat the `one time when this or that happened' to the same good minute. Dang it! I wanted the longer versions about his parents and the Gates' and Coleman, and even a little more about him, before moving on to the next `prime time' sport.

I really had to get used to that aspect of the storytelling, though too, which I now adore, I love the fact that I can pick up Colored People any time and start reading any section, over and over! Certainly very well done. It's raw and real. A Must, Must Read now sitting on my keeper shelf!

A Letter to My Children
This book in many ways took on the flow and the cadence of a letter for his daughters Maggie and Liza. It is in the prefacethat he writes of the fears that his childhood home would cease to exist, that this place, the village of Piedmont, West Virginia snuggled in the Allegheny mountains across the way from what was referred to as the Tri-Towns, three cities not more than a mile or so apart, Luke, Maryland; and Westernport, Maryland.This was the place in which the stories that he has related in this book, originate.In time as this village, this town, whose people saw, taught and mentored him, a time and place that molded and shaped him, that groomed and grew him, would cease to exist , that it would be vaporized by time and space, by growing on and growing old, by an industry that saw and rode through the changes and served as the life blood, the life force of the town, the fears and concern that his town could become a ghost town, a place to be from, and in many respects it is not there anymore, except in the memories of the inhabitants present and former, it rests in the memory of what once was.Because the industry in which was the centre of activity for the town had decided that it would be better off else where. Piedmont still stands, it remains in place, and however it has become a smaller village still, suffering mergers and consolidation of the school system.
As each book is a journey, and as a result you come away from each page a changed person and when the journey is complete, you are different, you are changed.

In all there was much in this book, a very short one I might add, was quite enjoyable and refreshing to read. In some ways this book is no linear, meaning it did not start exactly when the writer was born, it started somewhere a little after the fact and jumped around through his life as if going through a series of flash backs, he gently describesthe change of life for a very small town and its inhabitants adeptly, the relationship he has with several of his friends is special, I especially enjoyed how he relates his growing apart from a girl that he went to school with, how they were in a manner of speaking friendly rivals, how similar that they were and still very different, and how they got on famously until she was taught that she should not have that kind of relationship with a black male. This was a story that reflected what many of us take for granted, however when the author does relate how he started in an integrated school, how his father came to finally purchase a house with the assistance of him and his older brother, how he was not really any good at sports, but he later adapted and found something that was equally important to the sports world in order to be closer to his father and older brother. There was a little bit of talk about Marcus Garvey, the record store that they would frequent.There were many, many other instances in which Louis Gates became he, the person that he has become today, from the range of reading material, the suggestion that he change the difficulty level in what he was reading and it changed him as a person. To his religious upbringing, if you think about it, almost all people of African descent attended church, at least while they were young, it's in our DNA.I would highly recommend this book to everyone

A Book to Learn and Remember By
Colored People is a wonderful book.It has humor, sadness and illuminates a specific period of time.I liked how his family and town shaped his values and made him what he is today.We are using this book as a Common Reading and also a One Book, One Community Program with the small university town of Shepherdstown.The author is coming and will meet the students who will have all read the book.The topic of race and the civil rights movement are highlighted and will be the topic of many discussions.I highly recommend the book.You will enjoy reading it and if you learn from it, so much the better. ... Read more