Books in the Icons of America series

What do Americans think of when they think of the hamburger? A robust, succulent spheroid of fresh ground beef, the birthright of red-blooded citizens? Or a Styrofoam-shrouded Big Mac, mass-produced to industrial specifications and served by wage slaves to an obese, brainwashed population? Is it cooking or commodity? An icon of freedom or the quintessence of conformity?This fast-paced and entertaining book unfolds the immense significance of the hamburger as an American icon. Josh Ozersky shows how the history of the burger is entwined with American business and culture and, unexpectedly, how the burgers story is in many ways the story of the country that invented (and reinvented) it.Spanning the years from the nineteenth century with its waves of European immigrants to our own era of globalization, the book recounts how German hamburg steak evolved into hamburgers for the rising class of urban factory workers and how the innovations of the White Castle System and the McDonalds Corporation turned the burger into the Model T of fast food. The hamburger played an important role in Americas transformation into a mobile, suburban culture, and today, Americas favorite sandwich is nothing short of an irrepressible economic and cultural force. How this all happened, and why, is a remarkable story, told here with insight, humor, and gusto.

Includes the entire text of "e;I Have A Dream"e;I have a dreamno words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. Kings speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the I have a dream speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justicedebates as old as the nation itselfand demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom.This book is the first to set Kings speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of Kings Second Emancipation Proclamation and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars havelabored to uncover the facts behind Chamberss shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage.In this highly original work,Susan Jacoby turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions. Unfettered by political ax-grinding, the author examines conflicting responses, from scholars and the media on both the left and the right, and the ways in which they have changed from 1948 to our present postCold War era. With a brisk, engaging style, Jacoby positions the case in the politics of the postWorld War II eraand then explores the ways in which generations of liberals and conservatives have put Chambers and Hiss to their own ideological uses. An iconic event of the McCarthy era, the case of Alger Hiss fascinates political intellectuals not only because of its historical significance but because of its timeless relevance to equally fierce debates today about the difficult balance between national security and respect for civil liberties.