A young woman attending college far away from home, she is a straight A student and an accomplished cellist; she has all of these things, but will she find love? Find out in the novel by Patricia A. Holt Abner
Obscene, libidinous, loathsome, lascivious. Those were just some of the ways critics described the nineteenth-century weeklies that covered and publicized New York City’s extensive sexual underworld. Publications like the Flash and the Whip—distinguished by a captivating brew of lowbrow humor and titillating gossip about prostitutes, theater denizens, and sporting events—were not the sort generally bound in leather for future reference, and despite their popularity with an enthusiastic readership, they quickly receded into almost complete obscurity. Recently, though, two sizable collections of these papers have resurfaced, and in The Flash Press three renowned scholars provide a landmark study of their significance as well as a wide selection of their ribald articles and illustrations. Including short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, and moralizing rants against homosexuality, these selections epitomize a distinct form of urban journalism. Here, in addition to providing a thorough overview of this colorful reportage, its editors, and its audience, the authors examine nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality and freedom that mixed Tom Paine’s republicanism with elements of the Marquis de Sade’s sexual ideology. They also trace the evolution of censorship and obscenity law, showing how a string of legal battles ultimately led to the demise of the flash papers: editors were hauled into court, sentenced to jail for criminal obscenity and libel, and eventually pushed out of business. But not before they forever changed the debate over public sexuality and freedom of expression in America’s most important city.
Follow a Michigan town from the time families from New York and Pennsylvania settled Potawatomi land in the 1830s to the Civil War. Cameron flourished as a farm market while Michigan grew rich on lumber. Local industries expanded when Detroit built automobiles, stoves and refrigerators. The diverse community suffered when conglomerates bought the plants, laid off workers, and then moved production to Mexico. Camerons history is the story of people who moved west or north, spent a few years or a few generations, then moved on. Potawatomi are now in Oklahoma and Kansas. Peabodys and Fitches were replaced by Germans and Dutch who remigrated from the Delaware river valley. Then came immigrants from Pomerania and Bavaria, followed by Italians and Ukrainians, then refugees from the Balkans and Baltics. Later, Blacks moved from Pensacola and Spanish speakers from Brownsville. Today, doctors arrive from India. Cameron, a microcosm of Michigan and Midwestern history. A special place, an anyplace that could be your hometown, your family. Patricia Averll has a BA in history from Michigan State Univerisy and a doctorate in American studies from the University of Pennsylvania. To contact her, go to xlibris.com/averill.html.
Under the leadership of Samuel Adams, patriot propagandists deliberately and conscientiously kept the issue of slavery off the agenda as goals for freedom were set for the American Revolution. By comparing coverage in the publications of the patriot press with those of the moderate colonial press, this book finds that the patriots avoided, misinterpreted, or distorted news reports on blacks and slaves, even in the face of a vigorous antislavery movement. The Boston Gazette, the most important newspaper of the Revolution, was chief among the periodicals that dodged or excluded abolition. The author of this study shows that The Gazette misled its readers about the notable Somerset decision that led to abolition in Great Britain. She notes also that The Gazette excluded anti-slavery essays, even from patriots who supported abolition. No petitions written by Boston slaves were published, nor were any writings by the black poet Phillis Wheatley. The Gazette also manipulated the racial identity of Crispus Attucks, the first casualty in the Revolution. When using the word slavery, The Gazette took care to focus it not upon abolition but upon Great Britain's enslavement of its American colonies. Since propaganda on behalf of the Revolution reached a high level of sophistication, and since Boston can be considered the foundry of Revolutionary propaganda, the author writes that the omission of abolition from its agenda cannot be considered as accidental but as intentional. By the time the Revolution began, white attitudes toward blacks were firmly fixed, and these persisted long after American independence had been achieved. In Boston, notions of virtue and vigilance were shown to be negatively embodied in black colonists. These devil's imps were long represented in blackface in Boston's annual Pope Day parade. Although the leaders of the Revolution did not articulate a national vision on abolition, the colonial anti-slavery movement was able to achieve a degree of success, but only in drives through the individual colonies.
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