As business interests have commercialized the American West and publishers and studios have created compelling imagery, the expectations of readers and moviegoers have influenced perceptions of the cowboy as a hero. This book describes the evolution of the cowboy hero as a mythic persona created by dime novels, television and Hollywood. Much of our concept of the cowboy comes to us from movies and the book's main focus is his changing image in cinema. The development of the hero image and the fictional West is traced from early novels and films to the present, along with shifting audience expectations and economic pressures.
Miners, loggers, railroad men, and others flooded into the American West after the discovery of gold in 1848, and entertainers seeking to fill the demand for distraction from the workers' daily toil soon followed. Actors, actresses and traveling troupes crisscrossed the American frontier, performing in tents, saloons, fancy theaters, and the open air. This exploration of the heyday of popular theater in the Old West chronicles its emergence and growth from 1850 to the early twentieth century. Here is the story of the men and women who provided myriad types of entertainment in the Old West, and brought excitement, laughter and tears to generations of pioneers.
Sensationalistic stories have attracted readers for as long as reading has been a popular form of entertainment. Readers have been frightened, revolted, yet fascinated by stories of death, thievery, kidnapping, murder, rape, scandal, love triangles, and colorful miscreants. Starting in the 1830s this morbid interest in lurid stories fueled the unprecedented growth of sensationalist newspapers that titillated and shocked their many readers. This study of sensationalism describes how newspapers added lurid details to their coverage of news events in an effort to attract as many readers as they could. Employing hyperbole and exaggerated details, they meant to grab the attention of the reader and keep him or her reading. For the next hundred years this form of journalism continued, later spilling over into radio and television news. Along the way, the "yellow journalism" wars of the 1880s and 1890s produced bold headlines, eye-catching illustrations, exaggeration of news events, and even false quotes and misleading information. Sensational reporting continued with muckraking reporting in the early 1900s as journalistic crusaders worked to expose municipal corruption, corporate greed, and misconduct in American business.
The traditional narrative of the American West tells of a frontier settled by pioneers emigrating from the east to the Pacific coast. Yet Spanish conquistadors arrived in Central America 150 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. With them came missionaries who tried to convert the Pueblo and Plains Indians to Christianity by force, a suppression of native religious beliefs that led to cultural clashes and outright war. This is the story--fully documented--of how Spanish explorers, soldiers and men of the church pushed north from Mexico in the 1500s, seeking riches and establishing settlements from Texas to California 250 years before the influx of American settlers in the mid-1800s.
From the dime novels of the Civil War era to the pulp magazines of the early 20th century to modern paperbacks, lurid fiction has provided thrilling escapism for the masses. Cranking out formulaic stories of melodrama, crime and mild erotica--often by uncredited authors focused more on volume than quality--publishers realized high profits playing to low tastes. Estimates put pulp magazine circulation in the 1930s at 30 million monthly. This vast body of "disposable literature" has received little critical attention, in large part because much of it has been lost--the cheaply made books were either discarded after reading or soon disintegrated. Covering the history of pulp literature from 1850 through 1960, the author describes how sensational tales filled a public need and flowered during the evolving social conditions of the Industrial Revolution.
For many years, movie audiences have carried on a love affair with the American West, believing Westerns are escapist entertainment of the best kind, harkening back to the days of the frontier. This work compares the reality of the Old West to its portrayal in movies, taking an historical approach to its consideration of the cowboys, Indians, gunmen, lawmen and others who populated the Old West in real life and on the silver screen. Starting with the Westerns of the early 1900s, it follows the evolution in look, style, and content as the films matured from short vignettes of good-versus-bad into modern plots.
Western movies are full of images of swaggering outlaws brought to justice by valiant lawmen shooting them down in daring gunfights before riding off into the sunset. In reality it would not have happened that way. Real lawmen did not simply walk away from a gunfight--they had to face the legal system and justify shooting a civilian in the line of duty. Providing a more realistic view of criminal justice in the Old West, this history focuses on how criminals came into conflict with the law and how the law responded. The process is described in detail, from the common crimes of the day--such as train robbery and cattle theft--to the methods of apprehending criminals to their adjudication and punishment by incarceration, flogging or hanging.
This book explores the role and influence of drink and drugs (primarily opium) in the Old West, which for this book is considered to be America west of the Mississippi from the California gold rush of the 1840s to the closing of the Western Frontier in roughly 1900. This period was the first time in American history that heavy drinking and drug abuse became a major social concern. Drinking was considered to be an accepted pursuit for men at the time. Smoking opium was considered to be deviant and associated with groups on the fringes of mainstream society, but opium use and addiction by women was commonplace. This book presents the background of both substances and how their use spread across the West, at first for medicinal purposes--but how overuse and abuse led to the Temperance Movement and eventually to National Prohibition. This book reports the historical reality of alcohol and opium use in the Old West without bias.
The healing arts as practiced in the Old West often meant the difference between life and death for American pioneers. Whether the challenge was sickness, an Indian arrow, a gunshot wound, or a fall from a horse, a pioneer in the western territories required care for medical emergencies, but often had to make do until a doctor could be found. This historical overview addresses the perils to health that were present during the expansion of the American frontier, and the methods used by doctors to treat and overcome them. Numerous black and white photographs are provided, as well as a glossary of medical terms. Appendices list commonly used drugs and typical surgical instruments from the 1850-1900 era.
Prohibition was imposed by eager temperance movements organizers who sought to shape public behavior through alcoholic beverage control in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The success of reformers' efforts resulted in National Prohibition in America from 1920 to 1933, but it also resulted in a thriving illegal business in the manufacture and distribution of illegal liquor. The history of Prohibition and the resulting illegal drinking is frequently told through the lens of crime and violence in Chicago and other major East Coast cities. Often neglected are the effects of Prohibition on the Western part of the United States and how Westerners rose to the challenge of avoiding the consequences of illegal drinking. Illegal liquor was imported from abroad, made in stills using strange ingredients that were sometimes poisonous to the unlucky drinker. This history includes stories ranging from serious to quirky, and provides an entertaining account of how misguided efforts resulted in numerous unintended consequences.
Through the Victorian and Edwardian eras, various health movements emerged in the transition to the modern age of scientific medicine. Strange medical devices and quack cures were pushed, often using crude remedies based on simplistic beliefs and the placebo effect. Currently, some of these treatments appear absurd, even cruel. Because some were properly used as appropriate therapies, it is difficult to label them altogether as bogus. This book takes a thorough look at unconventional medical gadgets, as well as the strange devices and therapies used by both fringe and legitimate healers, and places them in the perspective of modern medicine. The author argues that quackery should not be defined by the ineffectiveness of a therapy, but rather be based on the fraudulent intent of the people who pushed dishonest and deceptive remedies.
Modern spas are wellness resorts that offer beauty treatments, massages and complementary therapies. Victorian spas were sanitariums, providing "water cure" treatments supplemented by massage, vibration, electricity and radioactivity. Rooted in the palliative health reforms of the early 19th century, spas of the Victorian Age grew out of the hydrotherapy institutions of the 1840s--an alternative to the horrors of bleeding and purging. The regimen focused on diet, rest, cessation of alcohol and foods that upset the stomach, stress reduction and plenty of water. The treatments, though sometimes of a dubious nature, formed the transition from the primitive methods of "heroic medicine" to the era of scientifically based practices.
Western films have often been tributes to place and setting, with the magnificent backdrops mirroring the wildness of the narratives. As the splendid outdoor scenery of Westerns could not be found on a studio back lot or on a Hollywood sound stage, the movies have been filmed in the wide open spaces of the American West and beyond. This book chronicles the history of filming Westerns on location, from shooting on the East Coast in the early 1900s; through the use of locations in Utah, Arizona, and California in the 1940s and 1950s; and filming Westerns in Mexico, Spain, and other parts of the world in the 1960s. Also studied is the relationship between the filming location timeline and the evolving motion picture industry of the twentieth century, and how these factors shaped audience perceptions of the "Real West.
This accessible text provides a comprehensive narrative and interpretative account of the entire history of the Communist International, 1919-1943. By incorporating the most recent Western and Soviet research the authors explain the legendary complexities of Comintern history and chart its degeneration from a revolutionary internationalist organisation into an obedient instrument of Soviet foreign policy. Key themes include: continuities and discontinuities between the Leninist and Stalinist phases, Bolshevisation versus national traditions, and the role of leading individuals in the Comintern apparatus. A selection of documents will elucidate these central themes.
What do you know about America’s vice presidents? An “altogether amusing” history filled with oft-forgotten names and fascinating anecdotes (AV Club). How many vice presidents went on to become president? How many vice presidents shot men while in office? Who was the better shot? Who was the first vice president to assume power when a president died? Why did he return official letters without reading them? What vice president was almost torn limb from limb in Venezuela? Which former VP was tried for treason for trying to start his own empire in the Southwest? How many vice presidents were assassinated? In the next presidential election, should you worry about the candidates for vice president? The vice presidency isn’t worth “a bucket of warm spit.” That’s the prudish version of what John Nance Garner had to say about the office—several years after serving as VP under FDR. Was he right? The vice presidency is one of America’s most historically complicated and underappreciated public offices. And Jeremy Lott’s sweeping, hilarious, and insightful history introduces the unusual, colorful, and sometimes shadowy cast of characters that have occupied it—their bitter rivalries and rank ambitions, glorious victories and tragic setbacks, revealed through hundreds of historical vignettes and drawn from extensive research and interviews. “Full of rich veep history.” —Baltimore Sun
What do you know about America’s vice presidents? An “altogether amusing” history filled with oft-forgotten names and fascinating anecdotes (AV Club). How many vice presidents went on to become president? How many vice presidents shot men while in office? Who was the better shot? Who was the first vice president to assume power when a president died? Why did he return official letters without reading them? What vice president was almost torn limb from limb in Venezuela? Which former VP was tried for treason for trying to start his own empire in the Southwest? How many vice presidents were assassinated? In the next presidential election, should you worry about the candidates for vice president? The vice presidency isn’t worth “a bucket of warm spit.” That’s the prudish version of what John Nance Garner had to say about the office—several years after serving as VP under FDR. Was he right? The vice presidency is one of America’s most historically complicated and underappreciated public offices. And Jeremy Lott’s sweeping, hilarious, and insightful history introduces the unusual, colorful, and sometimes shadowy cast of characters that have occupied it—their bitter rivalries and rank ambitions, glorious victories and tragic setbacks, revealed through hundreds of historical vignettes and drawn from extensive research and interviews. “Full of rich veep history.” —Baltimore Sun
What happens to migrants after they are deported from the United States and dropped off at the Mexican border, often hundreds if not thousands of miles from their hometowns? In this eye-opening work, Jeremy Slack foregrounds the voices and experiences of Mexican deportees, who frequently become targets of extreme forms of violence, including migrant massacres, upon their return to Mexico. Navigating the complex world of the border, Slack investigates how the high-profile drug war has led to more than two hundred thousand deaths in Mexico, and how many deportees, stranded and vulnerable in unfamiliar cities, have become fodder for drug cartel struggles. Like no other book before it, Deported to Death reshapes debates on the long-term impact of border enforcement and illustrates the complex decisions migrants must make about whether to attempt the return to an often dangerous life in Mexico or face increasingly harsh punishment in the United States.
Kinesiology for the Occupational Therapy Assistant: Essential Components of Function and Movement approaches the study of kinesiology by connecting function to the underlying components that make movement possible. Information is presented in a manner that enhances retention by incorporating applications in occupational therapy. With over 18 years of combined teaching experience, Jeremy Keough, Susan Sain, and Carolyn Roller present how aspects of movement enable or hinder function and engagement in daily activities using a top-down approach based on the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework, Second Edition. Benefits and Features: * Occupational profiles describing actual client conditions at the beginning of several chapters * Occupation/real-life based activities and questions at the end of each chapter * Emphasis on function and identification of how and why movement occurs * Range of motion and manual muscle testing, as well as kinesiological principles, now available in one text * More than 300 tables and figures throughout the chapters * Call out boxes that highlight and clarify key concepts * A seamless integration of theory, fact, and practice * Glossary of terms, Web resources, and range of motion norms * Instructors will benefit from ancillary PowerPoint presentations Instructors in educational settings can visit www.efacultylounge.com for additional materials to be used for teaching in the classroom. Kinesiology for the Occupational Therapy Assistant: Essential Components of Function and Movement provides occupational therapy assistant students with thorough explanations and learning activities that will put kinesiology into context. Students will also gain insight into the practice of occupational therapy through directed questions and problem solving to assist the client in achieving movement goals.
Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. But all, through their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires, uniquely illuminate our shared experience. William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) was a voice to millions, hosting the long-running “Firing Line” TV show, writing more than 50 books, and launching National Review magazine in 1955 to “fix the newly cast conservative cannons on the enemies of collectivism, liberalism, and Communism.” Jeremy Lott makes a nuanced case for the profound influence of Buckley’s faith—he was a Catholic with Irish-Protestant roots—on his emergence as a modern-day Jonah, warning of “the doom to come if America didn’t change course, quickly.” Buckley viewed the challenges of his era as ultimately religious in nature. Like the other members of his colorful family, he believed that God, family, and country—in that order—“demanded our unswerving loyalty.” Lott traces the thread of faith that ran through Buckley’s public life, from his call for a return to orthodoxy at Yale University to his doomed but entertaining run for mayor of New York, from his jaw-dropping verbal joust with Gore Vidal to his surprisingly fresh final thoughts on the end of the Cold War.
In the days and weeks following the tragic 2011 shooting of nineteen Arizonans, including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, there were a number of public discussions about the role that rhetoric might have played in this horrific event. In question was the use of violent and hateful rhetoric that has come to dominate American political discourse on television, on the radio, and at the podium. A number of more recent school shootings have given this debate a renewed sense of urgency, as have the continued use of violent metaphors in public address and the dishonorable state of America’s partisan gridlock. This conversation, unfortunately, has been complicated by a collective cultural numbness to violence. But that does not mean that fruitful conversations should not continue. In The Politics of Resentment, Jeremy Engels picks up this thread, examining the costs of violent political rhetoric for our society and the future of democracy. The Politics of Resentment traces the rise of especially violent rhetoric in American public discourse by investigating key events in American history. Engels analyzes how resentful rhetoric has long been used by public figures in order to achieve political ends. He goes on to show how a more devastating form of resentment started in the 1960s, dividing Americans on issues of structural inequalities and foreign policy. He discusses, for example, the rhetorical and political contexts that have made the mobilization of groups such as Nixon’s “silent majority” and the present Tea Party possible. Now, in an age of recession and sequestration, many Americans believe that they have been given a raw deal and experience feelings of injustice in reaction to events beyond individual control. With The Politics of Resentment, Engels wants to make these feelings of victimhood politically productive by challenging the toxic rhetoric that takes us there, by defusing it, and by enabling citizens to have the kinds of conversations we need to have in order to fight for life, liberty, and equality.
Senior archaeologist Jeremy Sabloff points students to ways in which archaeology is can be relevant to the understanding and amelioration of modern problems.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.