Celebrating The American Home

Each house is showcased in four to six pages and shown from a variety of views, with a brief introductory text explaining what makes the house unique and color photographs illustrating the key design features. Sidebars elaborate why the architects selected each house.

It wouldn't be Christmas without the "things." How they came to mean so much, and to play such a prominent role in America's central holiday, is the tale told in this delightful and edifying book. In a style characteristically engaging and erudite, Karal Ann Marling, one of our most trenchant observers of American culture, describes the outsize spectacle that Christmas has become.

A history of the struggles over identity within the Japanese American community, using ethnic festivals to reveal the conflicts from the 1930s (a period of wealthy Japanese enclaves) through the WWII internment to the late 20th century influx of investment from Japan.

The former American History editor explores the creation and restoration of an essential part of a twentieth-century home’s identity—the American porch. “In this delightful look at an American icon, journalist and documentary scriptwriter . . . Dolan traces the history of the porch, using this history to explore subjects such as architecture, history, slavery, colonialism, trade, anthropology, sociology, consumer behavior, and publishing.” —Library Journal In 1981, Michael Dolan and his wife, Eileen O’Toole, bought a 1926 suburban bungalow in the Palisades area of Washington, DC. It was a fixer-upper and DIY project that consumed their lives for twelve years. As rooms were transformed with updated electrical wiring and plumbing, the house’s porch became a storage area, rotating appliances, furniture, and construction materials as they were used and discarded. After the interior renovation was completed, Michael finally turned his attention to the porch, working with contractors to resurrect it—a reconstruction that inspired him to uncover the history of porches and their significance as a symbolic piece of Americana. “In praise of the porch: Come up and sit a spell.” —USA Today “A wry, well-researched look at the place and the people who rocked, talked and courted on [the American porch] for three centuries.” —Parade “The porch is making a comeback, gradually replacing its humbler rival the deck, which the traditionalist Dolan refers to as the platform shoe or leisure suit of American architecture.” —Time “Dolan amply demonstrates that the porch is primarily a means of escaping the heat and, almost as important, a locus for casual social interaction.” —Publishers Weekly

Among the pioneers of television, Ernie Kovacs was one of the most original and imaginative comedians. His zany, irreverent, and surprising humor not only entertained audiences throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, but also inspired a host of later comedies and comedians, including Monty Python, David Letterman, much of Saturday Night Live, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, Captain Kangaroo, and even Sesame Street. Kovacs created laughter through wildly creative comic jokes, playful characterizations, hilarious insights, and wacky experiments. “Nothing in moderation,” his motto and epitaph, sums up well Kovacs’s wholehearted approach to comedy and life. In this book, Andrew Horton offers the first sustained look at Ernie Kovacs’s wide-ranging and lasting contributions to the development of TV comedy. He discusses in detail Kovacs’s work in New York, which included The Ernie Kovacs Show (CBS prime time 1952–1953), The Ernie Kovacs Show (NBC daytime variety 1956–1957), Tonight (NBC late-night comedy/variety 1956-1957), and a number of quiz shows. Horton also looks at Kovacs’s work in Los Angeles and in feature film comedy. He vividly describes how Kovacs and his comic co-conspirators created offbeat characters and zany situations that subverted expectations and upended the status quo. Most of all, Horton demonstrates that Kovacs grasped the possibility for creating a fresh genre of comedy through the new medium of television and exploited it to the fullest.

Pleck examines changes in the way Americans celebrate holidays like Christmas or birthdays.

In Volume 2 of Celebrating Canada, Raymond B. Blake and Matthew Hayday bring together emerging and established scholars to consider key moments in Canadian history when major anniversaries of Canada's political, social, or cultural development were celebrated.