From Homicide to Slavery Studies in American Culture

New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Very Good+ in Very Good dust jacket. 1986. 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Hardcover. 0195040899 . This book is in Very Good+ condition and has a Very Good dust jacket. The spine ends and corners of the book covers have some light bumping. The text pages are clean and bright. There is a previous owner's embossed name stamp to the front endpaper, along with an inked name and date. "In an essay in the 1968 American Historical Review entitled "Some Recent Directions in American Cultural History", Davis urged historians to devote more attention to the cultural dimension to enhance understanding of social controversies, political decision-making, and literary expression. At a time when social history was ascendant, and cultural history was associated with the study of the arts, taste, and popular culture, and intellectual history with the study of abstract ideas largely divorced from specific social contexts, he called for a history that focused on beliefs, values, fears, aspirations, and emotions. Antebellum American Culture (1979) , his panoramic look at the cultural discourse surrounding ethnicity, gender, family, race, science, and wealth and power in the pre-Civil War United States, advanced the argument that American culture needs to be understood in terms of an ongoing "moral civil war". Diverse groups of Americans debated "what was happening, who was doing what to whom, what to fear and what to fight for." He suggests that a relatively small group of Northeastern writers, preachers, and reformers in the 19th century United States ultimately succeeded in defining a set of middle-class norms regarding education, taste, sex roles, sensibility, and moral respectability." (from Wikipedia) .