Looking for cultural histories
December 7, 2011 9:40 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for some great cultural histories.
Having recently enjoyed And the Show Went On (about French culture during the Nazi Occupation) and The Rest is Noise (about 20th-century classical music), I'm looking for more well-written cultural histories. I'm open to works about any art form (music, literature, cinema, visual arts, etc.), covering any place and time period. I'm not looking for biographies of individuals.
Having recently enjoyed And the Show Went On (about French culture during the Nazi Occupation) and The Rest is Noise (about 20th-century classical music), I'm looking for more well-written cultural histories. I'm open to works about any art form (music, literature, cinema, visual arts, etc.), covering any place and time period. I'm not looking for biographies of individuals.
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser.
posted by caek at 11:00 PM on December 7, 2011
posted by caek at 11:00 PM on December 7, 2011
The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman is a history of the period before WWI.
Rite of Spring by Modris Ekstein is a great cultural history of WWI era.
Paul Fussell's Great War and Memory is a great social and literary history of WWI.
posted by Pantalaimon at 11:07 PM on December 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
Rite of Spring by Modris Ekstein is a great cultural history of WWI era.
Paul Fussell's Great War and Memory is a great social and literary history of WWI.
posted by Pantalaimon at 11:07 PM on December 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Before anyone else answers: the OP is asking about "works about any art form (music, literature, cinema, visual arts, etc.)"—i.e., culture in the sense of arts and entertainment. He isn't asking about "cultural history" in the anthropological sense, i.e. the customs and symbols of a social group. Darnton's Great Cat Massacre is cultural history in the latter sense.
Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age is a book that bridges the gap between the two, though it was somewhat old fashioned (deliberately so) when it was published.
I have only had a chance to read a little bit of it, but you might find Peter Watson, The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century to be engaging.
posted by brianogilvie at 3:02 AM on December 8, 2011
Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age is a book that bridges the gap between the two, though it was somewhat old fashioned (deliberately so) when it was published.
I have only had a chance to read a little bit of it, but you might find Peter Watson, The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century to be engaging.
posted by brianogilvie at 3:02 AM on December 8, 2011
Best answer: If you could expand culture to include philosophy, The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand is an incredible read. It's a history of the American pragmatist movement, but like any good cultural history it ties in surrounding artistic, political, and social events. It also won the Pulitzer.
posted by farishta at 3:52 AM on December 8, 2011
posted by farishta at 3:52 AM on December 8, 2011
A Womans View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960 is a great read.
posted by bardophile at 4:46 AM on December 8, 2011
posted by bardophile at 4:46 AM on December 8, 2011
Would Live From New York, the oral history of Saturday Night Live, do? It's the history of one cultural thing in particular, and was pretty damn engrossing (the power went out the night I received it, and I actually did the old-fashioned "light a candle to read by" thing just so I could keep reading it).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:28 AM on December 8, 2011
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:28 AM on December 8, 2011
Best answer: Yeah, this question is going to confuse people a little bit, because "cultural history" usually means something slightly different than what you're asking for here.
I really enjoyed Lawrence Levine's High Brow/ Low Brow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America and David Levering Lewis's When Harlem Was in Vogue, about the Harlem Renaissance. I'm a terrible judge of what other people find readable, though!
posted by craichead at 5:33 AM on December 8, 2011
I really enjoyed Lawrence Levine's High Brow/ Low Brow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America and David Levering Lewis's When Harlem Was in Vogue, about the Harlem Renaissance. I'm a terrible judge of what other people find readable, though!
posted by craichead at 5:33 AM on December 8, 2011
Response by poster: To clarify - yes, I am looking for books which trace one or more art forms over a period of time, such as the books that I mentioned originally. Or Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, which I just found on Amazon and which seems to use the phrase in the same sense that I did. Maybe "histories of culture" would have been less ambiguous?
Sorry about the confusion and thanks for the answers so far - keep 'em coming.
posted by Awkward Philip at 6:19 AM on December 8, 2011
Sorry about the confusion and thanks for the answers so far - keep 'em coming.
posted by Awkward Philip at 6:19 AM on December 8, 2011
OK, my first recommendation was off (it's Cultural History rather than the history of a culture), but I re-recommend "How The Hippies Saved Physics"!
posted by caek at 9:06 AM on December 8, 2011
posted by caek at 9:06 AM on December 8, 2011
Best answer: Similar to Dancing in the Dark but focused on the Cold War is Dr. Strangelove's America.
posted by perhapses at 11:11 AM on December 8, 2011
posted by perhapses at 11:11 AM on December 8, 2011
MetaAnswer: Peter Burke's What is Cultural History? is a good place to explore the question of what the term means and how that meaning has changed.
posted by brianogilvie at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2011
posted by brianogilvie at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:11 PM on December 7, 2011 [1 favorite]