Co-author: Dwight Teeter
Co-author info: Professor of Journalism
Publication Date: July 2009
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Synopsis: In the midst of the United States’ immense economic growth in the 1850s, Americans worried about whether the booming agricultural, industrial, and commercial expansion came at the price of cherished American values such as honesty, hard work, and dedication to the common good. Was the nation becoming greedy, selfish, vulgar, and cruel? Was there such a thing as too much prosperity? At the same time, the United States felt the influence of the rise of popular mass-circulation newspapers and magazines and the surge in American book publishing. The authors of this book examine how popular writers and widely read newspapers, magazines, and books expressed social tensions between prosperity and morality.