Everything Was Better in America: Print Culture in the Great Depression

by David Welky

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252075049
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/02/2008
Series:	The History of Media and Communication
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: "A Time Not to Rock the Boat"     1
Newspapers
The Press Encounters the New Deal     17
Kidnapping America's Child     28
Olympic Feats of Americanism     45
The Gumps: America's Comic-Strip Family     67
Magazines
How to Slant a Magazine     83
Life, the War, and Everything     96
Defining Womanhood in the Ladies' Home Journal     114
Patriot Number One, the Man of Steel     130
Books
Mainstreaming the Book Industry     149
Finding Security in Best Sellers     160
Ellery Queen Restores Order     177
Gone With the Wind, but Not Forgotten     193
Conclusion: "Everything Was Better in America"     215
Notes     221
Index     251

Editorial Reviews

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

"Everything Was Better in America reminds us that most people reacted to the Great Depression not by stepping off a ledge, robbing a bank, or joining the Communist Party. Most often Americans responded to the crisis in culturally conservative ways, reconfiguring and reasserting old national beliefs and dreams. David Welky has read deeply in the newspapers and magazines and comic books of the 1930s, and through them, gives us a fascinating portrait of the era with important insights about culture and history. This is fine history and a good read."—Elliott J. Gorn, Brown University

"A welcome reminder of how much of the mainstream media reacted to the Depression by seeking to reaffirm platitudes about American democracy, individualism, and traditional values."—American Studies

"A significant contribution to our knowledge of everyday media culture and its relationship to change and stability at a pivotal moment in American history."—Journalism

“Provides a timely examination of the tension between conservative tendencies in the publishing business and the progressive liberalism that resulted from widespread disillusion directed at the capitalist system.”—American Historical Review

From the Publisher