1895

The Cotton States Exposition of 1895 was a world's fair in Atlanta held to stimulate foreign and domestic trade for a region in an economic depression. Theda Perdue uses the exposition to examine the competing agendas of white supremacist organizers and the peoples of color who participated. Close examination reveals that the Cotton States Exposition was as much about challenges to white supremacy as about its triumph.

First Published in 1993. Written specifically for students and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, David Trotter’s The English Novel in History 1895-1920 provides the first detailed and fully comprehensive analysis of early twentieth-century English fiction. Whereas all previous studies have been rigorously selective, Trotter looks at over 140 novelists across the whole spectrum of fiction: from the innovations of Joyce’s Ulysses through to popular mass-market genres such as detective stories and spy-thrillers. By examining the novels in both stylistic and historical terms, David Trotter looks at the ways in which writers responded to contemporary preoccupations such as the spectacle of consumption and the growth of suburbia, or to anxieties about the decline of Empire, racial ‘degeneration’ and ‘sexual anarchy’. He also challenges the view that literature of the period can be interpreted as a neat procession from realism to Modernism.

This project contributes to our understanding of rural Midwesterners and farm newspapers at the turn of the century. While cultural historians have mainly focused on readers in town and cities, it examines Midwestern farmers. It also contributes to the "new rural history" by exploring the ideas of Hal Barron and others that country people selectively adapted the advice given to them by reformers. Finally, it furthers our understanding of American farm newspapers themselves and offers suggestions on how to use them as sources.

Our continued use of the combustion engine car in the 21st century, despite many rational arguments against it, makes it more and more difficult to imagine that transport has a sustainable future. Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present “car society.” Combining social, psychological, and structural explanations, the author concludes that the ability of cars to convey transcendental experience, especially for men, explains our attachment to the vehicle.