Word: americana
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...period after World War I was a time of both modernism and nostalgia. Americans were exhilarated by a sense of the new but also yearned for the traditional. In the '20s newly minted products were routinely labeled STRICTLY AMERICAN. Collecting Americana -- "antiqueering," as it was known -- become a national hobby. Henry Ford filled warehouses with what he called "American stuff": Duncan Phyfe tables, endless volumes of McGuffey Readers and Thomas Edison memorabilia. John D. Rockefeller Jr. set about restoring colonial Williamsburg, Va., in the painstaking detail that only a billionaire could afford. In the '30s the New Deal was sponsoring...
Blue Highways was a delight, and so, in a darker and deeper way, is PrairyErth (Houghton Mifflin; 624 pages; $24.95). In kind and quality, it somewhat resembles Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, and it will not look out of place on the same shelf of great Americana as its betters, Mark Twain's Roughing It and Life on the Mississippi. The author's visceral decision to explore one American locality was an intuitive leap from the restlessness of Blue Highways. And it was a leap toward the nation's center. He had seen Chase County's Flint Hills...
...romantic aura of the mighty Mississippi provides additional appeal. By harking back to the time of frock-coated dandies and hoopskirted belles, the modern riverboats evoke memories of an era at once more daring and less threatening. "A riverboat is nostalgia, Americana," says John Connelly, owner of the gaudy President, a 297-ft. five-decker that docks in Davenport, Iowa. "A gambling casino is something completely different...
...poor. The self-proclaimed "Education President" whose record on education is dismal at best, can try to mend the consequences of a failed education system. Those potentially tempted by the prospect of crime should be given the opportunity and the training for the job market. With this new "Pax Americana" at hand, the country has the resources...
...would crack the anti-Saddam coalition in other ways as well, it was feared. During the inevitably long war, Bush would be more willing to act unilaterally in an idiotic attempt to restore Pax Americana--thereby destroying the possibility for future collective security in the region, which would already be endangered by Israel's participation...