Character is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age AmericaUniversity of North Carolina Press, 1997 - 210 páginas In late nineteenth-century America, a new type of book became commonplace in millions of homes across the country. Volumes sporting such titles as The Way to Win and Onward to Fame and Fortune promised to show young men how to succeed in life. But despite their upbeat titles, success manuals offered neither practical business advice nor a simple celebration of the American Dream. Instead, as Judy Hilkey reveals, they presented a dire picture of an uncertain new age, portraying life in the newly industrialized nation as a brutal struggle for survival, but arguing that adherence to old-fashioned virtues enabled any determined man to succeed. Hilkey offers a cultural history of success manuals and the industry that produced and marketed them. She examines the books' appearance, iconography, and intended audience--primarily native-born, rural and small-town men of modest means and education--and explores the genre's use of gendered language to equate manhood with success, femininity with failure. Ultimately, argues Hilkey, by articulating a worldview that helped legitimate the new social order to those most threatened by it, success manuals urged readers to accommodate themselves to the demands of life in the industrial age. |
Contenido
The Success Manual of the Gilded Age | 13 |
Success Manual Authors and Their World | 55 |
The Possibility | 74 |
Derechos de autor | |
Otras 4 secciones no mostradas
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Character is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America Judy Arlene Hilkey Vista previa limitada - 1997 |
Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America Judy Hilkey Vista previa limitada - 2000 |
Character is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America Judy Arlene Hilkey Vista de fragmentos - 1997 |
Términos y frases comunes
Acres of Diamonds advice American audience authors Bates battle book agents called career century cess manual chap chapter entitled claimed Conwell Culture Dale economic example failure Fame and Fortune farm feminine gender genre Gilded Age America Haines and Yaggy Ibid idea of success ideology illustrations Imperial Highway important Incorporation of America industrial order Knights of Labor labor manhood manly Marden Masters Mathews means middle class moral nineteenth nineteenth-century Norbert Elias offered Onward to Fame opportunity Organization of American Orison Swett Marden Owen P. T. Barnum popular Portraits and Principles professional published readers Royal Path rural and small-town Russell Conwell Samuel Smiles Self-Help self-made sexual Smiles social social Darwinism society sold subscription book subscription trade succeed success writers Thayer Tilley tion titles Trachtenberg wealth William William Makepeace Thayer willpower women wrote success manuals York Public Library young