As a counterpart to research on the 1930s that has focused on liberal and radical writers calling for social revolution, David Welky offers this eloquent study of how mainstream print culture shaped and disseminated a message affirming conservative middle-class values and assuring its readers that holding to these values would get them through hard times. Through analysis of the era's most popular newspaper stories, magazines, and books, Welky examines how voices both outside and within the media debated the purposes of literature and the meaning of cultural literacy in a mass democracy. He presents lively discussions of such topics as the newspaper treatment of the Lindbergh kidnapping, issues of race in coverage of the 1936 Olympic games, domestic dynamics and gender politics in cartoons and magazines, Superman's evolution from a radical outsider to a spokesman for the people, and the popular consumption of such novels as the Ellery Queen mysteries, Gone with the Wind, and The Good Earth. Through these close readings, Welky uncovers the subtle relationship between the messages that mainstream media strategically crafted and those that their target audience wished to hear.| Part One: Newspapers i. The Press Encounters the New Deal 17 2. Kidnapping America's Child 28 3. Olympic Feats of Americanism 45 4. The Gumps: America's Comic-Strip Family 67 Part Two: Magazines 5. How to Slant a Magazine 83 6. Life, the War, and Everything 96 7. Defining Womanhood in the Ladies' Home Journal 114 8. Patriot Number One, the Man of Steel 130 Part Three: Books 9. Mainstreaming the Book Industry 149 to. Finding Security in Best Sellers 16o 11. Ellery Queen Restores Order 177 12. Gone With the Wind, but Not Forgotten 193 Conclusion: "Everything Was Better in America" 215 Notes 221 Index 251 |"A welcome addition to the history of twentieth-century print culture, one that teachers and students of American studies will find useful and thought-provoking."—Journal of American Studies
"A launching pad for students' own exploration of values projected by mass media both today and in the past."—Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
"General readers will find the discussion of topics such as Superman, Gone with the Wind, Ellery Queen, and the Lindbergh baby fascinating. Everything Was Better in America is also an excellent choice for classes on twentieth-century America, especially those focusing on the Depression."—Steven Riess, author of Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era
|David Welky is a professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas. His books include A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier.