American Traits


Book Description

[I]f the diffusion of American wealth is accentuated, can it be denied that the extremes are greater here than anywhere else, -that the army of the unemployed is swelling while the billion-dollar trusts are formed, that the richest men are richer than any European, while the slums of New York show a misery that is unknown in Berlin?-from "American Democracy"As a psychologist and an innovator of experimental psychology, Hugo M nsterberg was a powerful influence on thinking in both the medical and social arenas at the turn of the 20th century, developing practical applications of psychology to industry, medicine, education, the arts, and criminal investigation. Here, though, in this 1901 work, M nsterberg turns his scientific eye on American culture at large, offering the perspective of an educated and observant immigrant on the New World experience in the Gilded Age.From the delusions of American democracy to the condition of women, M nsterberg's commentary tells us much not just about the United States in the pre-World War I period, but also about the mind of a man whose work continues to impact today's philosophy of the mind and how it shapes human behavior.Also available from Cosimo Classics: M nsterberg's Psychology and Social Sanity, The Eternal Life, The War and America, and PsychotherapyOF INTEREST TO: readers of American history, students of cultural psychologyGerman-American psychologist and philosopher HUGO M NSTERBERG (1863-1916) was professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1892 until his death. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1898.










German Culture in Nineteenth-century America


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"This volume examines the circulation and adaptation of German culture in the United States during the so-called long nineteenth century - the century of mass German migration to the new world, of industrialization and new technologies, American westward expansion and Civil War, German struggle toward national unity and civil rights, and increasing literacy on both sides of the Atlantic. Building on recent trends in the humanities and especially on scholarship done under the rubric of cultural transfer, German Culture in Nineteenth-Century America places its emphasis on the processes by which Americans took up, responded to, and transformed German cultural material for their own purposes. Informed by a conception of culture as multivalent, permeable, and protean, the book focuses on the mechanisms, agents, and means of mediation between cultural spaces."--BOOK JACKET.




American Traits


Book Description

Excerpt from American Traits: From the Point of View of a German The following essays are not scholarly studies, but light sketches drawn in leisure hours by a German who has pitched his tent among the Americans and become interested in the differences between the Americans and the Germans. But my interest in that contrast is not merely a theoretical one: I believe that these two nations can and ought to learn from each other, and that in this case even the protectionists of national civilization ought not to favor a prohibitive tariff on foreign ideals. Such mutual instruction has been hindered by prejudices and misunderstandings: the two nations do not know each other sufficiently, although they are connected by innumerable ties from the past and will need each other's good will still more in the years to come. To root out such prejudices and to facilitate mutual benefit, it becomes a duty to measure critically the culture of the one country by the ideals of the other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Images of Germany in American Literature


Book Description

Although German Americans number almost 43 million and are the largest ethnic group in the United States, scholars of American literature have paid little attention to this influential and ethnically diverse cultural group. In a work of unparalleled depth and range, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz explores the cultural and historical background of the varied images of Germany and Germans throughout the past two centuries. Using an interdisciplinary approach known as comparative imagology, which borrows from social psychology and cultural anthropology, Zacharasiewicz samples a broad spectrum of original sources, including literary works, letters, diaries, autobiographical accounts, travelogues, newspaper reports, films, and even cartoons and political caricatures. Starting with the notion of Germany as the ideal site for academic study and travel in the nineteenth century and concluding with the twentieth-century image of Germany as an aggressive country, this innovative work examines the ever-changing image of Germans and Germany in the writings of Louisa May Alcott, Samuel Clemens, Henry James, William James, George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Dewey, H. L. Mencken, Katherine Anne Porter, Kay Boyle, Thomas Wolfe, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Styron, Walker Percy, and John Hawkes, among others.




The American School


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The Literary News


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The Literary World


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Germany and the Americas [3 volumes]


Book Description

This comprehensive encyclopedia details the close ties between the German-speaking world and the Americas, examining the extensive Germanic cultural and political legacy in the nations of the New World and the equally substantial influence of the Americas on the Germanic nations. From the medical discoveries of Dr. Johann Siegert, surgeon general to Simon Bolivar, to the amazing explorations of the early-19th-century German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, whose South American and Caribbean travels made him one of the most celebrated men in Europe, Germany and the Americas examines both the profound Germanic cultural and political legacy throughout the Americas and the lasting influence of American culture on the German-speaking world. Ever since Baron von Steuben helped create George Washington's army, German Americans have exhibited decisive leadership not only in the military, but also in politics, the arts, and business. Germany and the Americas charts the lasting links between the Germanic world and the nations of the Americas in a comprehensive survey featuring a chronology of key events spanning 400 years of transatlantic history.