An immensely readable, provocative, and entertaining exploration of the Titanic as cultural icon. "I suggest, henceforth, when a woman talks women's rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing morejust Titanic," wrote a St. Louis man to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was not alone in mining the ship for a metaphor. Everyone found ammunition in the Titanicsuffragists and their opponents; radicals, reformers, and capitalists; critics of technology and modern life; racists and xenophobes and champions of racial and ...
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An immensely readable, provocative, and entertaining exploration of the Titanic as cultural icon. "I suggest, henceforth, when a woman talks women's rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing morejust Titanic," wrote a St. Louis man to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was not alone in mining the ship for a metaphor. Everyone found ammunition in the Titanicsuffragists and their opponents; radicals, reformers, and capitalists; critics of technology and modern life; racists and xenophobes and champions of racial and ethnic equality; editorial writers and folk singers, preachers and poets. Protestant sermons used the Titanic to condemn the budding consumer society ("We know the end of . . . the undisturbed sensualists. As they sail the sea of life we know absolutely that their ship will meet disaster."). African American toasts and working-class ballads made the ship emblematic of the foolishness of white people and the greed of the rich. A 1950s revival framed the disaster as an "older kind of disaster in which people had time to die." An ever-increasing number of Titanic buffs find heroism and order in the tale. Still in the headlines ("Titanic Baby Found Alive!" the Weekly World News declares) and a figure of everyday speech ("rearranging deck chairs . . ."), the Titanic disaster echoes within a richly diverse, paradoxical, and fascinating America.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in Fine jacket. Book. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Light-green boards with black spine, 300 pp., vintage illustrations. Excellent condition; jacket protected by mylar cover.
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Seller's Description:
New in fine dust jacket. Sewn binding. Paper over boards. 300 p. Audience: General/trade. New York, NY, U.S.A. : W. W. Norton & Co. 1996, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1996. Hard Cover. Book Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition, full number line. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Hard Cover. New 1st Ed., 1st Printing, 300 pp., an unread copy, slight shelf rubbing on DJ. The book is the emergence of a major talent in history-writing. The author's masterful cultural analysis of the Titanic disaster is brimming over with wit and insight. He demonstrates that from the instant the Titanic sank, it became a vessel for Americans' most extreme notions about technology, theology, commerce, politics, gender, race, and class. AB63
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Seller's Description:
Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. "A cultural history of the Titanic disaster." This is a Near Fine copy of the First Edition. Green paper-covered boards with a black cloth spine titled in silver. Clean text; vii, 300 pages. Indexed. Small crease to one corner on front, else Fine. The dustjacket is unclipped. Some faint wrinkling at head and foot of the spine, else Fine. In a plastic protective cover.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good+/Very Good+ hard cover. 12mo, boards, 300pp, illus. edgewear, price clipped, dust jacket. bump front corner, cover. fold and pinch top page 93 near corner, stress at gutter title page, else tight, clean, text. history.
This book traces the social history of the Titanic during its time, when the bluestockings were agitating for the vote and social conservatives feared women's suffrage would mean the end of civilized society. The various uses to which the disaster was put, both at the time and in the present, are surprising and well documented in Biel's work. It is a quick and very interesting read.
