| Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature Contributor(s): Matthews, Kristin L. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1625342357 ISBN-13: 9781625342355 Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press OUR PRICE: $29.65 Product Type: Paperback Published: December 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - Literary Criticism | American - General |
| Dewey: 810.900 |
| LCCN: 2016031023 |
| Series: Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6.1" W x 9.2" (0.70 lbs) 222 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: During the Cold War, the editor of Time magazine declared, A good citizen is a good reader. As postwar euphoria faded, a wide variety of Americans turned to reading to understand their place in the changing world. Yet, what did it mean to be a good reader? And how did reading make you a good citizen? In Reading America, Kristin L. Matthews puts into conversation a range of political, educational, popular, and touchstone literary texts to demonstrate how Americans from across the political spectrum--including great works proponents, New Critics, civil rights leaders, postmodern theorists, neoconservatives, and multiculturalists--celebrated particular texts and advocated particular interpretive methods as they worked to make their vision of America a reality. She situates the fiction of J. D. Salinger, Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and Maxine Hong Kingston within these debates, illustrating how Cold War literature was not just an object of but also a vested participant in postwar efforts to define good reading and citizenship. |