From dime novels to comic books to digital media, Cassidy illustrates the ways children have used old media when they were first introduced as new media. Exploring the history of American children and media, this text presents a portrait of the way in which children and adults adapt to a constantly changing media environment.

Introduction: Play -- Childhood and play in colonial America -- Domesticating children, 1800-1850 -- The arrival of toys, 1850-1900 -- The invasion of children's play culture, 1900-1950 -- The golden age, 1900-1950 -- The commercialization of children's play, 1950 to the present -- Children's play goes underground, 1950 to the present -- Conclusion

Printed poison. Pernicious stuff. Since the nineteenth century, these are some of the many concerned comments critics have made about media for children. From dime novels to comic books to digital media, Cassidy illustrates the ways children have used "old media" when they were first introduced as "new media." Further, she interrogates the extent to which different conceptions of childhood have influenced adults’ reactions to children’s use of media. Exploring the history of American children and media, this text presents a portrait of the way in which children and adults adapt to a constantly changing media environment.

Full-color maps, photographs, and paintings illustrate a comprehensive reference guide to American history.

A collection of feminist cultural studies essays on children's television.

American Media History is the story of a nation and of the events in the long battle to disseminate information, entertainment, and opinion in a democratic society. It is the story of the men and women whose inventions, ideas, and struggles shaped the nation and its media system and fought to keep both free. The text is organized chronologically and emphasizes the role the press played in the American Revolution to the present. Each chapter presents a story about media development, featuring a colorful and impressive cast of characters that includes, among others, James Franklin, Ida Tarbell, Bob Woodward, Margaret Bourke-White, Walter Cronkite, and Tarana Burke. Some of the players set standards for aspiring media professionals and others reveal tales of triumph, deceit, and the undeniable importance of freedom of speech and a free press. The fourth edition features new chapters that cover women's rights, civil rights movements, significant moments in media history (such as 9/11 and the 2020 pandemic), fake news, bias news, and the social media presences of Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. The text includes a streamlined introductory chapter, expanded coverage of women journalists during the Civil War, new American Media Profiles and timelines, new chapter opening quotations from famous communicators, and probing History Matters boxes that relate historical events and effects to the present day. At once an enjoyable and highly compelling text, American Media History is ideal for introductory courses in journalism, mass communication, and media history.

Like Huck’s raft, the experience of American childhood has been both adventurous and terrifying. For more than three centuries, adults have agonized over raising children while children have followed their own paths to development and expression. Now, Steven Mintz gives us the first comprehensive history of American childhood encompassing both the child’s and the adult’s tumultuous early years of life. Underscoring diversity through time and across regions, Mintz traces the transformation of children from the sinful creatures perceived by Puritans to the productive workers of nineteenth-century farms and factories, from the cosseted cherubs of the Victorian era to the confident consumers of our own. He explores their role in revolutionary upheaval, westward expansion, industrial growth, wartime mobilization, and the modern welfare state. Revealing the harsh realities of children’s lives through history—the rigors of physical labor, the fear of chronic ailments, the heartbreak of premature death—he also acknowledges the freedom children once possessed to discover their world as well as themselves. Whether at work or play, at home or school, the transition from childhood to adulthood has required generations of Americans to tackle tremendously difficult challenges. Today, adults impose ever-increasing demands on the young for self-discipline, cognitive development, and academic achievement, even as the influence of the mass media and consumer culture has grown. With a nod to the past, Mintz revisits an alternative to the goal-driven realities of contemporary childhood. An odyssey of psychological self-discovery and growth, this book suggests a vision of childhood that embraces risk and freedom—like the daring adventure on Huck’s raft.

Presents stories of significant events and people in American history, patriotic songs, and American folk tales and poems.

“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

Media and the American Child summarizes the research on all forms of media on children, looking at how much time they spend with media everyday, television programming and its impact on children, how advertising has changed to appeal directly to children and the effects on children and the consumer behavior of parents, the relationship between media use and scholastic achievement, the influence of violence in media on anti-social behavior, and the role of media in influencing attitudes on body image, sex and work roles, fashion, & lifestyle. The average American child, aged 2-17, watches 25 hours of TV per week, plays 1 hr per day of video or computer games, and spends an additional 36 min per day on the internet. 19% of children watch more than 35 hrs per week of TV. This in the face of research that shows TV watching beyond 10 hours per week decreases scholastic performance. In 1991, George Comstock published Television and the American Child, which immediately became THE standard reference for the research community of the effects of television on children. Since then, interest in the topic has mushroomed, as the availability and access of media to children has become more widespread and occurs earlier in their lifetimes. No longer restricted to television, media impacts children through the internet, computer and video games, as well as television and the movies. There are videos designed for infants, claiming to improve cognitive development, television programs aimed for younger and younger children-even pre-literates, computer programs aimed for toddlers, and increasingly graphic, interactive violent computer games. - Presents the most recent research on the media use of young people - Investigates the content of children's media and addresses areas of great concern including violence, sexual behavior, and commercialization - Discusses policy making in the area of children and the media - Focuses on experiences unique to children and adolescents