American Culture in the 1910s (Twentieth-Century American Culture)

With the publication of this volume, Edinburgh University Press closes out its extremely successful culture history series, which writes the story of the twentieth century through the cultural and intellectual movements of each decade. The 1910s were mostly dominated by the horrors of the first modern war, but it also witnessed the flowering of modernism, the birth of Hollywood, and the rise of progressive interpretations of culture and society. Mark Whalan investigates this decade through achievements in fiction and poetry; art and photography; film and vaudeville; and music, theater, and dance. He incorporates detailed commentary and directed case studies of influential texts and events and includes chronologies and bibliographies. He considers Tarzan of the Apes, The Birth of a Nation, the radical modernism of Gertrude Stein, the Provincetown Players, and jazz music's earliest recordings. A concluding chapter explores the impact of the First World War on cultural understandings of nationalism, citizenship, and propaganda.