American social history has many faces, and this in its frame of reference is a not unimportant one. For the old country store was the focus of much of the economic, political, commercial, and human activity over a hundred years and more of our history. The storekeeper, at the end of the War of Independence, faced disaster until the country's currency was stabilized. Barter was the rule and not the exception- and continued to reflect the pattern of progress, as commodities changed hands. T...

Americans have traveled a far piece since Goody Randall climbed over the back of a Bay Colony pew in defense of her social position, or a frontier Congressman tried to eat the doilies at a White House dinner, or, more recently, since the adjustable Emily Post interpreted the social law on whether a lady’s maid could appear in bobbed hair. (She could not!) With unfailing scholarship, great good humor and occasional overtones of irony when snobbery raises its ugly nose, Gerald Carson here po...

A high-spirited history of the role bourbon has played in American life and culture, "documented and full of folklore" ( Kirkus Reviews).The distinctive beverage of the Western world, bourbon is Kentucky's illustrious gift to the nation. While much has been written about whiskey, the particular place of bourbon in the American cultural record has long awaited detailed and objective presentation. A fascinating and informative contribution to Americana, ...

Bourbon, pronounced “ber-bun” in Kentucky where they ought to know, is the distinctive spirit of the Western world, the fine champagne cognac of the United States. Its place in American culture has long waited for objective treatment. The saga is a lively one, intimately associated with valor and splendor and the grace of life; with villainy, too, and folly and man’s inhumanity to man. And it has dramatic events such as the Whiskey Rebellion, the notorious “whiskey forts” of the fur trade,...

Crossbreeding folklore, myth and history, Carson, who has a flair for cultural oddities (The Polite Americans, 1966; The Social History of Bourbon, 1963), offers an arresting account of how men have treated their beasts from the Stone Age to the 20th century pet shop.

Absolutely hilarious—this is the captivating account of the Cornflake Crusade—that nineteenth-century evangelical movement of food faddists which brought ready-to-eat breakfast foods into every American home and put Battle Creek, Michigan, on the world map. This s the authentic story of our fantastic and insatiable interest in “scientific eating,” and is the obly book in print that will explain why the American child eats breakfast, while buried behind a fascinating cereal box. Strangely e...

A smooth and engaging narrative of the development of our most ubiquitous levy and an entertaining exegesis of its scripture, the Internal Revenue Code. Starting with history's earliest recorded taxes, Carson recounts the political and social forces which produced the Sixteenth Amendment and how that single fateful sentence has shaped American life for two generations. With each successive war, he shows, the personal income tax has grown more prepotent. In discussing the tax today, Carson ...

At various times there arises some extraordinary popular sorcerer to exploit the people in one or all of such potentially profitable fields as religion, politics and, of course, medicine. Such a man was John R. Brinkley, of Kansas, Texas, and Arkansas, medical maverick and potent radio personality, a physician and surgeon with sketchy training, lone-wolf ethics, a sense of glittering destiny and a free-wheeling spirit of adventure, who missed winning the governorship of Kansas twice by a m...

Personal intrigue and social history are combined in this fascinating account of an American dentist in nineteenth century Paris. Dr. Thomas W. Evans, a Philadelphia dentist of pioneering skill and great charm, moved in the highest circles of France's Second Empire. His expertise gave American dentistry a special distinction, while his discretion made him the confidant of Europe's reigning families. When they wished to communicate discreetly, they simply made an appointment with their dent...

Many factors contributed to the Protestant Reformation, but one of the most significant was the debate over the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In fact, Martin Luther argued that justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. This comprehensive volume of 26 essays from a host of scholars explores the doctrine of justification from the lenses of history, the Bible, theology, and pastoral practice—revealing the enduring significance of this pillar of Protestant ...

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of W. E. B. Du Bois’s birth, the chapters in this book reflect on the local, national, and international significance of his remarkable life and legacy in relation to his specific commitments to socialism and democracy.Written with contemporary conditions in mind, such as the current political period of economic inequality, the debilitating reality of exploitative economic conditions, an expansive and invasive surveillance state, the grotesque in...

Forbidden Fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold tales of ordinary men and women who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to be together**—**and defy a system that categorized blacks not only as servants, but as property.In the true love stories of Forbidden Fruit, you will meet sixteen couples who fought for love—love between slaves, between slaves and masters, and between slaves and...