Recommendations for 19th century US Cultural History

[meowmeowmix]

Hi y'all,

I've been lurking in the history forums for awhile and I was hoping you guys could help me with something. My friend's birthday is coming up and she's someone who is considering graduate school. Her interest is in 19th century US Cultural History... which is unfortunately outside my field. Do you guys know of any "must reads" in that time period that aren't too boring/off-putting? Thanks in advance!

[natsteel]

The subject matter might be a bit morbid but Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering is an impressive, relatively recent work of cultural history that argues Americans' coping with the large-scale death of the Civil War had a profound impact on their relationship to the government and also spurred the emergence of American bureaucracy.

[meowmeowmix]

Thanks =)

[Riotbeard]

Not to keep with dead theme but... A Traffic of Dead Bodies by Michael Sappol is pretty amazing. I also really enjoyed Anne Fabian's new book The Skull Collectors.

[meowmeowmix]

Gracias =)

[Sigaba]

I recommend Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.

[natsteel]

I recommend Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.

That's on my summer reading list. Really looking forward to it.

[HistThrift]

This one is late 18th century to turn of the 19th century, but I'd be remiss to not mention it -- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale. It's a little boring for a while, but it will leave you (read: your friend) absolutely stunned by the end. Very good book on colonial medical/rural culture, too.

[BCHistory]

Gail Bederman's Manliness and Civilization is an excellent cultural history of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S.

[New England Nat]

I'd really recommend Holly Brewer's By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority. It's five years old, but describes the birth of the social definition of childhood.

To continue the depressing theme. Hendrick Hartog's Someday All This Will Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age is just an amazing piece of work and came out in Feburary. A lot more people should be reading it across disciplines. I was amazed that it wasn't in the book room at the history of medicine conferencce this year because it should have been.