Resultados Editorial "Charles River Editors" en América

Few things have captured the American imagination like the “Wild West,” which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorfully portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind.

Among America’s most infamous “public enemies” and, perhaps, the most unique and controversial was Kate Barker. With her prominent, hawk-tipped nose and plump, doughy face, framed by a classic dark, curly coif and frilly day dresses to match, Ma Barker was as nonthreatening as they come. Nary a second glance was given to this grandmotherly figure by those who crossed her path, perhaps, at most a polite tip of the hat. Of course, as the age-old adage goes, appearances are often deceiving.

Dozens of books are published each year trying to instruct parents on how to raise good, responsible children, but things still go wrong from time to time. Of course, it’s rare that children turn out like Lyle and Erik Menendez did. For weeks in 1993, Americans were glued to their television, watching as the lurid testimony was given and refuted on Court TV. The Menendez Brothers: The History of the Family Murders that Shocked America looks at one of the most famous true crime cases of the 20th century.

Ellis Island and Angel Island: The History and Legacy of America’s Most Famous Immigration Stations examines how these islands became immigration inspection centers and what life was like for those who landed in each place.

Outbreaks of disease, much like wars, inevitably produce a series of public figures who serve as emblematic heroes or villains of the era and event. In the case of Mary Mallon, now known around the world as “Typhoid Mary", only a few deaths and a relatively small group of infections actually occurred before she was arrested. That her small but deadly outbreak incited such a firestorm among New York’s health agencies was certainly driven by the fact that the “ghetto disease” had suddenly appeared in New York City’s wealthy neighborhoods.

"I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us." - Louisa May Alcott, Rose in Bloom Louisa May Alcott (1832 - 1888) was one of the best authors of her day, but even though she's remembered primarily for being a late 19th century novelist, she was also a progressive Transcendentalist.

By his mid-20s Graham was a Baptist pastor in the Midwest, and throughout the 1940s he began traveling across the country to spread his ministry and message through large gatherings that he termed "crusades". In time these crusades would take place in nearly 200 nations and attract hundreds of millions of people, helping to catapult him to international prominence and making him a household name.

The 1920s in the United States were known as the "Roaring '20s" and the Jazz Age, a time in the nation that glorified hard and fast living. Nobody personified the age or wrote so descriptively about it better than F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), whose name became synonymous with the times after penning the epic The Great Gatsby.

In the space of just a few years, Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, rose from the obscurity of a small Minnesota town to a position of royalty atop the folk music landscape. Not content to remain for long within that niche, however, he went on to conquer rock with elements of blues, jazz, pop, country, gospel, rockabilly, and ethnic music of the British Isles, not to mention authoring several books, working in film soundtracks, acting, and holding international art exhibits of his work along the way.

"TV had much more impact back in the '70s than it does today. Charlie's Angels got huge numbers every week - nothing really dominates the television landscape like that today. Now there are so many channels and so many more shows it's hard for anything to get the audience, or amount of attention, that Charlie's Angels got. Farrah was a major TV star when the medium was clearly dominant." - Larry King

By the 1920s English comic Stan Laurel had been in dozens of films, and American Oliver Hardy had appeared in hundreds, but it was not until they formed a duo together in 1926 that they began to truly be noticed. Once they did, however, Laurel and Hardy became one of the most famous comedy teams in American history, with a career that spanned four decades and included over 100 combined shorts and feature films.

When it comes to Hollywood and the entertainment industry, perhaps nobody catapulted to fame as quickly or as strangely as Orson Welles, but it would also be safe to say that few produced such critically acclaimed work either. Though he had worked on stage productions from an early age and seamlessly transitioned into radio, few were familiar with his work until a legendary 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, during which some people who heard Welles narrating the work truly believed that an alien invasion was underway.

There has been no shortage of shocking crimes and trials that generated frenzied coverage across America, but few can lay claim to the "crime of the century" like the murder carried out by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924. While studying as young adults at the prestigious University of Chicago, Leopold and Loeb devised a meticulous plot to kidnap and murder a child while managing to get away with ransom money, thereby perpetrating what they considered a "perfect crime".

Near the end of the 20th century, the American Film Institute ranked the greatest actors and actresses who worked during the Golden Era of Hollywood and the first half of the 1900s, and Sidney Poitier was ranked 22nd among the men. Given the company he was surrounded by, such a distinction could be considered honor enough, but Poitier also happened to be the only minority on the list, an accomplishment made all the more incredible given the systematic discrimination he faced within the industry and the land where he grew up.

Mexico City is not a new place. Mexico City instead has much in common with cities like London, Delhi or Cairo in the East in that it is an ancient city dating back centuries before the arrival of Colombus in Hispañola. For, while much (including the name) has changed, Mexico City is the mighty Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire and the great American metropolis of the Spanish Empire. There has been no break in occupation, and despite much devastation, the city was never fully destroyed.

In 1948, American polls rated Bing Crosby "the most admired man alive", and it's no surprise given how popular he was across every major form of entertainment during the decade. With a string of major hits, Crosby was the most popular singer in the country during that era, with classic songs like "White Christmas" helping pave the way for other singers as varied as Bob Hope, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra. In fact, young Sinatra modeled his clothing and style after Crosby, who was his idol growing up.

Woodstock, more accurately entitled the Woodstock Music Festival; An Aquarian Exposition: Three Days of Peace and Music, represents one of the most enduring symbols of the youth movement of America's late 1960s and early '70s. As the public pinnacle of that social phenomenon, the giant festival that overwhelmed a section of an upstate New York farm for a week during a time of national and international upheaval evolved from a typical speculative financial venture to a defining historical monument.

If Billie Holiday wanted to become a jazz singer, she chose the best of all eras in which to attempt it. A wave of great jazz and jazz/pop crossover artists swept over the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s, generating a golden age for the genre. Emerging from such a powerful group of talented vocalists was not easy. The woman who has come to represent a model of great, instinctive jazz singing came from nowhere, had nothing, and virtually had no one. She was raw and untrained, but went forward with limited and quirky vocal gifts.

No history of American pop culture in the 1940s would be complete without mention of Betty Grable, the most popular pin-up girl of the World War II era. Grable possessed the outstanding fortune of not only having an ideal body but arriving at the most fortuitous time imaginable; the famous pin-up photo of her, taken by Frank Powolny, made her the highest-earning actress in Hollywood from 1943 to 1951.

One of the most famous Transcendentalists, and possibly its most ardent practitioner, and possibly its most ardent practitioner, was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau took the values of the movement to heart and was particularly interested in the interconnection between man and nature, writing in Walden, "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."