Radical Visions and American Dreams
Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years
A special edition of the classic work of American intellectual history, with a new preface
Paper – $30
978-0-252-06743-3
Publication Date
Paperback: 10/13/2004
About the Book
A special edition of the classic work of American intellectual history, with a new prefaceThe Great Depression of the 1930s was more than an economic catastrophe to many American writers and artists. Attracted to Marxist ideals, they interpreted the crisis as a symptom of a deeper spiritual malaise that reflected the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, and they advocated more sweeping social changes than those enacted under the New Deal.
Richard H. Pells discusses the work of Lewis Mumford, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, Edmund Wilson, and Orson Welles, among others. He analyzes developments in liberal reform, radical social criticism, literature, the theater, and mass culture, and especially the impact of Hollywood on Depression-era America. By placing cultural developments against the background of the New Deal, the influence of the American Communist Party, and the coming of World War II, Pells explains how these artists and intellectuals wanted to transform American society, yet why they wound up defending the American Dream.
About the Author
Richard H. Pells is a professor emeritus at the University of Texas-Austin. His books include Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture and The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s.Reviews
"The best explanation I have seen of why Marxism attracted so many intelligent people forty years ago."—Newsweek
"A rich, satisfying, well-written book. It is not only an analysis but also an astute critical assessment of how the intellectuals of the thirties understood and tried to change their world, and what it did to them."
—John Higham, author of Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture
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