Word: american
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...also came to understand the different methods of centralization that caused such a huge difference between French and American societies. The astounding French bureaucracy and central decision-making process in Paris meant that French communes “vegetated in invincible apathy.” By contrast, Tocqueville saw that the American system of umbrella federal governance with state and local administration and enforcement allowed citizens to come up with and execute innovative new ideas via “local initiative.” As Josiah Quincy, then President of Harvard and previously Mayor of Boston, informed Tocqueville, the lack...
...enormous labor to present a tableau of a society as vast and un-homogenous as this one.” Damrosch’s careful labor in recreating Tocqueville’s journey is not unlike his subject’s work in dissecting the vast and varied American culture...
...flaws in his most recent book—the simply and aptly titled “Theatre.” A collection of 27 brief chapters, Mamet’s book is an exposition of his opinions on everything from Constantin Stanislavsky’s method to the Great American Play and a host of other subjects relating to theatre...
Even when he praises other artists, the compliments seem oddly back-handed. In a chapter about Great American Plays, he lauds many authors, but gives special credit to Thornton Wilder for “Our Town.” Mamet has some intriguing thoughts about how the play utilizes language with verisimilitude to American dialect. The problem is that he insists that “the vulgate, the actual language of the people can be found only in the cultural anathemas known as popular entertainment.” This argument is tenuously developed to a frustrating conclusion...
...Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “In the Heights”—came to speak at Harvard about his writing experiences and career. After his lecture at Professor Carol J. Oja’s course Literature and Arts B-85: “American Musicals and American Culture,” he sat down and talked with The Crimson about everything from the “Heights” and new musicals he’s currently working on to his creative process...