|
Also Recommended
|
|
|
A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation
Jim Cullen
£12.99
|
|
|
|
|
Homesickness
An American History
Susan J. Matt
368 pages
|
19 halftones
|
235x156mm
978-0-19-537185-7
|
Hardback
|
29 September 2011
|
|
|
|
|
- Takes on American history from a fascinating new thematic lens that considers how homesickness has affected us from the settler era to boomerang kids and social networking.
- Looks at homesickness as it affects key demographics such as soldiers, college students, summer campers, and immigrants.
- Challenges the common notion that Americans have been a naturally restless and mobile people by exploring their connection to home.
Homesickness today is dismissed as a sign of immaturity, what children feel at summer camp, but in the nineteenth century it was recognized as a powerful emotion. When gold miners in California heard the tune "Home, Sweet Home," they sobbed. When Civil War soldiers became homesick, army doctors sent them home, lest they die. Such images don't fit with our national mythology, which celebrates the restless individualism of colonists, explorers, pioneers, soldiers, and immigrants who supposedly left home and never looked back.
Using letters, diaries, memoirs, medical
records, and psychological studies, this wide-ranging book uncovers the profound pain felt by Americans on the move from the country's founding until the present day. Susan Matt shows how colonists in Jamestown longed for and often returned to England, African Americans during the Great Migration yearned for their Southern homes, and immigrants nursed memories of Sicily and Guadalajara and, even after years in America, frequently traveled home. These iconic representatives of the undaunted, forward-looking American spirit were often homesick, hesitant, and reluctant voyagers. National ideology and modern psychology obscure this truth, portraying movement as easy, but in fact Americans had to learn how to leave home, learn to be individualists. Even today, in a global society that prizes
movement and that condemns homesickness as a childish emotion, universities counsel young adults and their families on how to manage the transition away from home, suburbanites pine for their old neighborhoods, and companies take seriously the emotional toll borne by relocated executives and road warriors. In the age of helicopter parents and boomerang kids, and the new social networks that sustain connections across the miles, Americans continue to assert the significance of home ties.
By highlighting how Americans reacted to moving farther and farther from their roots, Homesickness: An American History revises long-held assumptions about home, mobility, and our national identity.Readership:
General readers interested in social history, who are compelled by what it means to be at home in America. People interested in the effects of separation - as experienced by soldiers, immigrants, and children.
|
|
|
Susan J. Matt, Presidential Distinguished Professor of History, Weber State University Susan J. Matt is Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University, in Ogden, Utah. She is the author of Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930.
|
|
|
Introduction
Chapter One: Emotions in Early America
Chapter Two: Painful Lessons in Individualism
Chapter Three: A House Divided
Chapter Four: Breaking Home Ties
Chapter Five: Immigrants and the Dream of Return
Chapter Six: Transferring Loyalties
Chapter Seven: Mama's Boys, Organization Men, Boomerang Kids, and the Surprising Persistence of the Extended Family
Conclusion Of Helicopter Parents, Facebook, and Wal-Mart: Homesickness in Contemporary America
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
|
|
|
|
The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
|
|
