Myth America
A Historical Anthology, Volume 2
2. Edition November 2006
272 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
The idea for Myth America grew out of our won teaching experiences.
In continuously dealing with students who for the most part were
beginning their collegiate study of American history, we found that
a thematic approach to the nation's past was stimulating. The
theme of myth as threads within the diverse tapestry of cultural
experience proved to be especially engaging.
The selected historical myths discussed and analyzed in Myth
America can best be understood as a series of false beliefs about
America's past. They are false beliefs, however, that have
been accepted as true and acted upon as real, and in that acting
they have acquired truth. Therefore, myths remain both true and
false simultaneously. In fact, the making of myths is a process by
which a culture structures its world and perpetuates its grandest
dreams.
While offering a strong foundation of classic historical writing
and interpretation, Myth America includes numerous fresh selections
on womens' history, southerners and American regionalism,
popular culture, African American stereotyping, urban America,
controversial leaders such as Booker T. Washington, progressivism
in relation to both conservation and ethnicity, the nature and
legacy of the Great War, World War II, and Vietnam, President
Kennedy and Reagan, mythic dynamics of the Cold War,
Asian-Americans, and multiculturalism. We have been guided in our
final selections by a desire to offer articles that voice our
mythic theme in a scholarly and provocative way: articles that
offer students readability and current interest without sacrificing
the demands of thorough historical scholarship. We occasionally
refer to historiography, for historians function as the
culture's preeminent storytellers and so maintain their
seemingly contradictory roles of mythmakers and myth-debunkers.
Acknowledgments.
Introduction.
I. Myths of Reconstruction & the Gilded Age.
Myth of Reconstruction (Eric Foner).
The Lost Cause Myth in the New South Era (Charles Reagan
Wilson).
The Agrarian Myth (Richard Hofstadter).
Frontierswomen: Myths and Realities (Glenda Riley).
Ten-Gallon Hero: The Myth of the Cowboy (David Brion Davis).
Andrew Carnegie and the Robber Baron Myth (Milton
Goldin).
II. American Myths at Century's End.
The Winning of the West and the Sioux: A Myth (Richard
White).
Myths of the American West: Missionaries, Entrepreneurs, and New
Identites (Patricia Nelson LimerickA).
Commanding Performance: Booker T. Washington's Atlanta
Compromise Address (David Lionel Smith).
The Horatio Alger Myth (Carol Nackenoff).
Mythology and Workers' Power (Herbert G. Gutman).
The 'May Day' Myth: The Emergence of the United
States as a World Power (Patrick Gerster and Nicholas
Cords).
III. Myths of Progressivism & the 1920s.
The Frontier Myth and Teddy Roosevelt's Fight for
Conservation (Leroy G. Dorsey).
Woodrow Wilson, Ethnicity, and the Myth of American Unity (Hans
Vought).
Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker (John Hope Franklin).
The Myth of the Disillusioned American Soldier (David M.
Kennedy).
What Sadie Knew: The Immigrant Working Girl and the Emergence of
the Modern Young Women (John McClymer).
The Mythic Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight (John William
Ward).
IV. Myths of Politics & Foreign Affairs.
The Lengthening Shadow of FDR: An Enduring Myth (William E.
Leuchtenburg).
The Myth of New Deal Radicalism (Paul K. Conkin).
The Myth of the Good War (Richard Polenberg).
The Myth of the Placid 1950s (Robert D. Marcus).
The Kennedy Myth (Herbert S. Parmet).
'With One Hand Tied Behind Their Back' ... and
Other Myths of the Vietnam War (Robert Buzzanco).
The Frontier Myth and the Reagan Presidency (Richard
Slotkin).
The Myth of Deterrence and the End of the Cold War (Richard Ned
Lebow and Janice Gross Stein).
V. Social Myths of Modern America.
The Myth of the Feminine Mystique (Joanne Meyerowitz).
Mythology and the Charismatic Leadership of Martin Luther King
(Clayborne Carson).
The Chicano Image and the Myth of Aztlan Rediscovered (John R.
Chavez).
Streets of Gold: The Myth of the Model Minority (Curtis
Chang).
Revolution in Indian Country (Fergus M. Bordewich).
Myth, the Melting Pot, and Multiculturalism (Carl N. Degler)