6 May
This was handed out in class today to 1 and 5 hour and will be given to 2 hour tomorrow.
This has been very useful according to previous test-takers’ feedback….
See which ones you already know before googling, you little sneaky petes, and MAKE SURE YOU NOTE THE SIGNIFICANCE.
23 Apr
One of the most important folk singers (and inventive guitarists) of the 1960s and 1970s, Richie Havens passed away on April 22, 2013, at the age of 72. One of his most famous moments was when he opened the Woodstock Music festival on August 15, 1969. Here is one of his most beautiful songs, “Follow.”
Here is a celebration of his life from the NPR blog: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/04/23/178470389/richie-havens-folk-singer-who-opened-woodstock-has-died
Here is his “High Flyin’ Bird.”
5 Apr
Some songwriters continued to explore the Vietnam War as a theme into the 1980s and 1990s.
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English artist Paul Hardcastle used sampling and voice tracks to create his song 19 which was released in 1985. I would strongly suggest that you listen to this song as you prepare for both the AP Exam and for your test over the 1960s and 1970s, since it is made up of facts about the soldiers who fought in the war.
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Bruce Springsteen’s iconic “Born in the U.S.A.” was the title song to his album. It was later cited by conservative columnist George Will as a possible song to be used by the Reagan re-election campaign in 1984– who apparently had never actually listened to the lyrics:
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R.E.M.’s song “Orange Crush” was a song released in 1988 about a young man becoming a soldier in Vietnam. “Orange Crush” was slang for Agent Orange, the defoliant used to burn off the vegetation in the jungle.
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Johnny Cash, an American icon, wrote “Drive On” in 1993 about a veteran’s perspective decades after the war was over. In this video he explains his inspiration for the song (16s are M-16s).
18 Mar
You will complete a project on one of these books by May 14. You may only do this extra credit project if all assignments have been turned in. This can be worth up to 3% of your final grade.
Many of these are also available on Kindle and/or iBooks or Nook, and are often cheaper and readily available that way.
Alan Taylor– American Colonies: The Settling of North America
Arthur M. Schlessinger– The Cycles of American History
Nathaniel Philbrick– Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
David D. Hall– A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England
Michael Klarman– From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality
Kenneth T. Jackson– Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization fo America
Joshua E. London– Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation
Christopher Tomlins– Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865.
Gary B. Nash– History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past
Fred Anderson– The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War
Daniel J. Boorstin- The Americans: The Democratic Experience
Daniel J. Boorstin- The Americans: The National Experience
Robert Middlekauff– The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789
Jon Butler– Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776
Jon Meacham– American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
Mary Beth Norton– Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society
Joseph J. Ellis– Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Gordon S. Wood– The Radicalism of the American Revolution
Bernard Bailyn– The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Melvyn Leffler– For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War
C. Vann Woodward– The Strange Career of Jim Crow
Joseph Wheelan– Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress
David M. Kennedy– Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
Grant Foreman– Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians
Daniel Rasmussen– American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt
Sean Wilentz– The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
Harry L. Watson– Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America
Bernard De Voto- The Course of Empire
Bernard De Voto- The Year of Decision: 1846
Sylvia D. Hoffert– When Hens Crow: The Woman’s Rights Movement in Antebellum America
Steven E. Woodworth– Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War
Elliott West- The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado
Edmund S. Morgan- American Slavery, American Freedom
Bruce Levine– Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War
Richard Hofstadter– Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
Eric Foner- The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
Eric Foner- Reconstruction
Drew Gilpin Faust– Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
Daniel Walker Howe–What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815–1848
Robert Morgan– Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of Westward Expansion
Ira Berlin– Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation
James M. McPherson– Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
Gary W. Gallagher– The Union War
Winthrop D. Jordan–The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States
Emory M. Thomas– The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865
Andrew F. Smith– Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War
Harriet Beecher Stowe– Uncle Tom’s Cabin
David S. Reynolds– Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America
Amanda Foreman– A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
John Lewis Gaddis– We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
John Lewis Gaddis– The Cold War: A New History
1 Mar
Read the story behind the paintings here: http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/norman-rockwell-and-the-four-freedoms/
Although Norman Rockwell was not liked very much by the art critics, he was enormously popular. His work was far too sentimental to be critically acclaimed. However, as a draftsman he was quite skilled, and he was very adept at using small details to get his point accross.
The first freedom was the freedom from want. This poster became the most famous and was also known as “The Thanksgiving painting.” Notice how he draws the observer into the painting by having the man in the lower right corner looking back outside the painting at you, thus placing the observer in the family gathered around the table. As a poster (not in the original painting), this painting is being used to encourage enlistment and support of the military.
Another freedom was freedom of worship. Notice the inclusion of the German-looking woman who is obviously Roman Catholic, since she is praying the rosary. This one also includes an African-American.
A third freedom was freedom from fear. Mom and dad tucking the kids into bed– and yes, siblings shared beds and bedrooms all the time in those days, even though this is a two-story house.
And a final freedom was freedom of speech. As the link explained this was based on a real incident at a school board meeting in the town where Rockwell was staying. The man speaking was opposed by almost everyone in the room in what he proposed, but they still respected his right to speak. And class distinction does’t matter– he’s in work clothes, while nearly everyone else is in a suit and tie. Those were the days!
Notice how three of these paintings were turned into posters to encourage buying war bonds.
12 Feb
There’s part one, from Fantasia 2000. Make sure you turn up the sound if you have crummy little speakers like mine….
Here’s part two…
George Gershwin combined the jazz harmonies and syncopations with orchestral arrangements.
11 Feb
Music to set you in the mood to study, part one:
Here’s the Cab Calloway version, recorded in 1958:
Here’s the Blues Brothers version (audio, only, sorry)
8 Feb
Before reading the poems, read this brief introduction. Then read this poem, complete with explanation.
Mental Cases
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
————————–Wilfred Owen
Links for More Information:
More of Owen’s poetry
The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Archive
7 Feb
A diagram of trench warfare:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWtrenchsystem.htm
The poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” by Wilfred Owen: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen2.html
“In Flanders’ Fields” set as a choral musical piece:
Great Movies about World War I and its effects:
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Lost Battalion
The African Queen
Gallipoli
Lawrence of Arabia
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
Footage from the real site of the Battle of Gallipoli, restored by Peter Jackson for ANZAC Day:
7 Feb
I want you to read the annotated version of this poem by Wilfred Owen, so go here: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
Here is the story of Owen and Sassoon: http://theredanimalproject.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/poets-of-the-great-war-siegfried-sassoon-and-wilfred-owen/
