Search results for ""Author Eric Burns""

Celebrities can come from many different realms: film, music, politics, sports. But what do all these major celebrities have in common? What elevates them to the status of household names while their equally talented peers remain in relative obscurity? Is it just a question of charisma, or does fame depend more on the collective fantasies of fans than the actual accomplishments of celebrities? In search of answers, cultural historian Eric Burns delves deep into the biographies of some of the most famous figures in American history, from Benjamin Franklin to Fanny Kemble, Elvis Presley to Gene Tierney, and Michael Jordan to Oprah Winfrey. Through these case studies, he considers the evolution of celebrity throughout the ages. More controversially, he questions the very status of fame in the twenty-first century, an era in which thousands of minor celebrities have seen their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. The Politics of Fame is a provocative and entertaining look at the lives and afterlives of America’s most beloved celebrities as well as the mad devotion they inspired. It raises important questions about what celebrity worship reveals about the worshippers—and about the state of the nation itself

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\u0022Thousands of years ago, before Christ or Buddha or Muhammad...before the Roman Empire rose or the Colossus of Rhodes fell,\u0022 Eric Burns writes, \u0022people in Asia Minor were drinking beer.\u0022 So begins an account as entertaining as it is extensive, of alcohol's journey through world-and, more important, American-history. In The Spirits of America, Burns relates that drinking was \u0022the first national pastime,\u0022 and shows how it shaped American politics and culture from the earliest colonial days. He details the transformation of alcohol from virtue to vice and back again, how it was thought of as both scourge and medicine. He tells us how \u0022the great American thirst\u0022 developed over the centuries, and how reform movements and laws (some of which, Burn s says, were \u0022comic masterpieces of the legislator's art\u0022) sprang up to combat it. Burns brings back to life such vivid characters as Carrie Nation and other crusaders against drink. He informs us that, in the final analysis, Prohibition, the culmination of the reformers' quest, had as much to do with politics and economics and geography as it did with spirituous beverage. Filled with the famous, the infamous, and the undeservedly anonymous, The Spirits of America is a masterpiece of the historian's art. It will stand as a classic chronicle-witty, perceptive, and comprehensive-of how this country was created by and continues to be shaped by its everchanging relationship to the cocktail shaker and the keg.

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A fresh and sensitive examination of Eleanor Roosevelt-one of the most remarkable Americans in history-and the tortured father who would inspire and shape her future leadership and advocacy.

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\u0022Thousands of years ago, before Christ or Buddha or Muhammad...before the Roman Empire rose or the Colossus of Rhodes fell,\u0022 Eric Burns writes, \u0022people in Asia Minor were drinking beer.\u0022 So begins an account as entertaining as it is extensive, of alcohol's journey through world-and, more important, American-history. In The Spirits of America, Burns relates that drinking was \u0022the first national pastime,\u0022 and shows how it shaped American politics and culture from the earliest colonial days. He details the transformation of alcohol from virtue to vice and back again, how it was thought of as both scourge and medicine. He tells us how \u0022the great American thirst\u0022 developed over the centuries, and how reform movements and laws (some of which, Burn s says, were \u0022comic masterpieces of the legislator's art\u0022) sprang up to combat it. Burns brings back to life such vivid characters as Carrie Nation and other crusaders against drink. He informs us that, in the final analysis, Prohibition, the culmination of the reformers' quest, had as much to do with politics and economics and geography as it did with spirituous beverage. Filled with the famous, the infamous, and the undeservedly anonymous, The Spirits of America is a masterpiece of the historian's art. It will stand as a classic chronicle-witty, perceptive, and comprehensive-of how this country was created by and continues to be shaped by its ever-changing relationship to the cocktail shaker and the keg.

Read more less