Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (Cultureamerica)
by Susan Sessions Rugh
List Price:
Our Price: $18.76
You Save: $11.19 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $12.48 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Susan Sessions RughEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-12
ISBN: 0700615881
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Book Reviews of Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (Cultureamerica)
Book Review: more like a business trip than a vacation
Summary: 2 Stars
With its snappy title, I expected a lively, conversational work in the spirit of Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry, perhaps with a few celebrity reminiscences or interviews with retired tourist attraction operators mixed in with a broad discussion of the vacation trends that waxed and waned during the period in question (1947-1973). What we have instead is a college history professor who has taken her unedited research notes and thrown them on the page. There is not even the most rudimentary attempt to shape a narrative - reading this is literally like reading 184 pages of footnotes, with all the tedium that implies.
Summary of Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (Cultureamerica)
When TV celebrity Dinah Shore sang "See the USA in your Chevrolet," 1950s America took her to heart. Every summer, parents piled the kids in the back seat, threw the luggage in the trunk, and took to the open highway. Chronicling this innately American ritual, Susan Rugh presents a cultural history of the American middle-class family vacation from 1945 to 1973, tracing its evolution from the establishment of this summer tradition to its decline.The first in-depth look at post - World War II family travel, Rugh's study recounts how postwar prosperity and mass consumption - abetted by paid vacation leave, car ownership, and the new interstate highway system - forged the ritual of the family road trip and how that ritual became entwined with what it meant to be an American. With each car a safe haven from the Cold War, vacations became a means of strengthening family bonds and educating children in parental values, national heritage, and citizenship.Rugh's history looks closely at specific types of trips, from adventures in the Wild West to camping vacations in national parks to summers at Catskill resorts. It also highlights changing patterns of family life, such as the relationship between work and play, the increase in the number of working women, and the generation gap of the sixties.Distinctively, Rugh also plumbs NAACP archives and travel guides marketed specifically to blacks to examine the racial boundaries of road trips in light of segregated public accommodations that forced many black families to sleep in cars - a humiliation that helped spark the civil rights struggle. In addition, she explains how the experience of family camping predisposed baby boomers toward a strong environmental consciousness.Until the 1970s recession ended three decades of prosperity and the traditional nuclear family began to splinter, these family vacations were securely woven into the fabric of American life. Rugh's book allows readers to relive those wondrous wanderings across the American landscape and to better understand how they helped define an essential aspect of American culture. Notwithstanding the rueful memories of discomforts and squabbles in a crowded car, those were magical times for many of the nation's families.1945 - Present Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in 1945 - Present Books
Harry S. Truman: The American Presidents Series: The 33rd President, 1945-1953 (The American Presidents Series)by Robert Dallek
Times Books; Published: 2008-09-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.95
Price in other shops:
The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008by Sean Wilentz
Harper; Published: 2008-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
The Nightingale's Songby Robert Timberg
Free Press; Published: 1996-09-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.94
Price in other shops:
The Best and the Brightestby David Halberstam
Ballantine Books; Published: 1993-10-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.55
Price in other shops:
The Great Depression: America 1929-1941by Robert S. Mcelvaine
Three Rivers Press; Published: 1993-12-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Communityby Robert D. Putnam
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2001-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.89
Price in other shops:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIAby Tim Weiner
Anchor; Published: 2008-05-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.01
Price in other shops:
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of Americaby Rick Perlstein
Scribner; Published: 2008-05-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.98
Price in other shops:
Boom!: Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrowby Tom Brokaw
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2008-10-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.79
Price in other shops:
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faithby Jon Krakauer
Anchor; Published: 2004-06-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.96
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Home: A Novelby Marilynne Robinson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-09-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.88
Price in other shops:
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Idealsby Jane Mayer
Doubleday; Published: 2008-07-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Working At Play: A History of Vacations in the United Statesby Cindy S. Aron
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2001-05-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.48
Price in other shops:
The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Groundsby Marilyn Yalom
Houghton Mifflin; Published: 2008-05-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Familyby Annette Gordon-Reed
W.W. Norton & Co.; Published: 2008-09-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.17
Price in other shops:
From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford History of the United States)by George C. Herring
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2008-10-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.94
Price in other shops:
Blueberry Summers: Growing Up at the Lakeby Curtiss Anderson
Borealis Books; Published: 2008-05-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.95
Price in other shops:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Societyby Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
The Dial Press; Published: 2008-07-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.67
Price in other shops:
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)by Tom Vanderbilt
Knopf; Published: 2008-07-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.90
Price in other shops:
How the States Got Their Shapesby Mark Stein
Collins; Published: 2008-06-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.70
Price in other shops: