Constructing American Lives

Constructing American Lives
Author: Scott E. Casper
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2018-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469649047

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Nineteenth-century American authors, critics, and readers believed that biography had the power to shape individuals' characters and to help define the nation's identity. In an age predating radio and television, biography was not simply a genre of writing, says Scott Casper; it was the medium that allowed people to learn about public figures and peer into the lives of strangers. In this pioneering study, Casper examines how Americans wrote, published, and read biographies and how their conceptions of the genre changed over the course of a century. Campaign biographies, memoirs of pious women, patriotic narratives of eminent statesmen, "mug books" that collected the lives of ordinary midwestern farmers--all were labeled "biography," however disparate their contents and the contexts of their creation, publication, and dissemination. Analyzing debates over how these diverse biographies should be written and read, Casper reveals larger disputes over the meaning of character, the definition of American history, and the place of American literary practices in a transatlantic world of letters. As much a personal experience as a literary genre, biography helped Americans imagine their own lives as well as the ones about which they wrote and read.

Libraries to the People

Libraries to the People
Author: Robert S. Freeman
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2003-01-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780786413591

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With today’s technology, anyone anywhere can access public library materials without leaving home or office—one simply logs on to the library’s website to be exposed to a wealth of information. But one of the concerns that arises is the lack of access for groups isolated by socioeconomic, geographical, or cultural factors. This problem is not a new one. For almost two centuries, public libraries and other organizations have been trying to bring library services to isolated populations. This book is a collection of fourteen essays examining the contributions of librarians, educators, and organizations in the United States who have endeavored to bring library services to groups that previously did not have access. There are three sections: Benevolent and Commercial Organizations, Government Supported Programs, and Innovative Outreach Services. The essays discuss reading materials for two centuries of rural Louisianians, shipboard libraries for the American Navy and merchant Marine, library outreach to prisoners, the Indiana Township Library Program, tribal libraries in the lower forty-eight states, open-air libraries, electronic outreach, and the use of radio in promoting the Municipal Reference Library of the City of New York, to name just a few of the essay topics.