Onze site gebruikt cookies om diensten te leveren, prestaties te verbeteren, voor analyse en (indien je niet ingelogd bent) voor advertenties. Door LibraryThing te gebruiken erken je dat je onze Servicevoorwaarden en Privacybeleid gelezen en begrepen hebt. Je gebruik van de site en diensten is onderhevig aan dit beleid en deze voorwaarden.
From the Publisher: In this groundbreaking book, noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free. In vivid portraits of renegades and their "respectable" adversaries, Russell shows that the nation's history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires - insiders versus outsiders, good citizens versus bad. The more these accidental revolutionaries existed, resisted, and persevered, the more receptive society became to change. Russell brilliantly and vibrantly argues that it was history's iconoclasts who established many of our most cherished liberties. Russell finds these pioneers of personal freedom in the places that usually go unexamined - saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, and even behind the Iron Curtain. He introduces a fascinating array of antiheroes: drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women's liberation, including "Diamond Jessie" Hayman, a madam who owned her own land, used her own guns, provided her employees with clothes on the cutting-edge of fashion, and gave food and shelter to the thousands left homeless by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; there are also the criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America's sexual culture. Among Russell's most controversial points is his argument that the enemies of the renegade freedoms we now hold dear are the very heroes of our history books - he not only takes on traditional idols like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, but he also shows that some of the most famous and revered abolitionists, progressive activists, and leaders of the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the vibrant energies of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the drag queens who founded Gay Liberation. This is not history that can be found in textbooks - it is a highly original and provocative portrayal of the American past as it has never been written before.… (meer)
This was an excellent book if a bit too anecdotal. Regardless, it will definitely get you looking at US history from a very different angle. The author challenges a great many of the traditional takes on things are varied as slavery, prostitution, the New Deal and the notion that US citizenship was not without some significant downsides. ( )
I'm inspired to go look up some of Russell's sources, as well as researching more of his subjects in depth. He makes minority history into something more nuanced than I'd expected, and I want to know more, especially about African-American history. Russell is white; I'd like to read some black history books written by African-Americans. Overall this book was very thought-provoking, and while I was left with more questions than answers, I greatly enjoyed it and want to learn more. ( )
Really revealing exploration which creates many questions for the conventionally educated. 'We have met the enemy and it is us'. But read this after you have read 'The People's History of the United States' by Howard Zinn'. This book gives me hope for survival against our current right wing advocates, although, reaching back into our history demonstrates a stunning sameness to the past. It seems to me that so many negative comments show a fear to 'question authority'. ( )
Wonderful, eye-opening view of American history from the grassroots level. Russell takes a broad view of how the freedom-loving "renegades" challenged the straight-laced American society that took hold after the American Revolution and has stayed with us ever since, giving ground only slowly. Irish and Italians and Jews were absorbed, gangsters in the 1920s set the styles for the times and provided what society rejected - booze, jazz fans and flappers thumbed their noses at traditional styles which traced to the staid minuet and "respectable" styles. Russell's view is that the renegades of society kindled the freedom that we espouse which loosening the strangle-hold of ultra conservative society. Very illuminating. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For Toby and his freedom
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
(Introduction): This is a new story.
In the spring of 1777, the great men of America came to Philadelphia for the fourth meeting of the Continental Congress, the de facto government of the rebel republic.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Indeed, if Americals throughout history had only sacrificed themselves and made themselves, "good," what kind of society would we live in now? To answer that question, you might count the things in this book that you value in your own life or wish to enjoy, then imagine them as impossibilities. Renegades made these illicit joys not only possible but real. They didn't intend their actions as gifts to us. But now is our chance to take them as gifts, take the side of the renegades when the guardians of social order to try to keep them down, and take more.
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
But now is our chance to take them as gifts, take the side of the renegades when the guardians of social order to try to keep them down, and take more.
From the Publisher: In this groundbreaking book, noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free. In vivid portraits of renegades and their "respectable" adversaries, Russell shows that the nation's history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires - insiders versus outsiders, good citizens versus bad. The more these accidental revolutionaries existed, resisted, and persevered, the more receptive society became to change. Russell brilliantly and vibrantly argues that it was history's iconoclasts who established many of our most cherished liberties. Russell finds these pioneers of personal freedom in the places that usually go unexamined - saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, and even behind the Iron Curtain. He introduces a fascinating array of antiheroes: drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women's liberation, including "Diamond Jessie" Hayman, a madam who owned her own land, used her own guns, provided her employees with clothes on the cutting-edge of fashion, and gave food and shelter to the thousands left homeless by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; there are also the criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America's sexual culture. Among Russell's most controversial points is his argument that the enemies of the renegade freedoms we now hold dear are the very heroes of our history books - he not only takes on traditional idols like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, but he also shows that some of the most famous and revered abolitionists, progressive activists, and leaders of the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the vibrant energies of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the drag queens who founded Gay Liberation. This is not history that can be found in textbooks - it is a highly original and provocative portrayal of the American past as it has never been written before.
)
)
)
Google Books — Bezig met laden...
(3.34)
Miscellaneous
2