Helen Lynd

2: Literature Review John F. Rooney Jr. of Oklahoma State University is the leading sports geographer and his research from 1974 in his book A Geography of American Sport from Cabin Creek to Anaheim is the foundation of sport geography research. In 1974, when Rooney did his research, he determined “The region encompassing Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and spilling over into several adjacent states is truly phenomenal as a player source region” (Rooney, 1974 p. 156). Rooney defined a player being…

The Great Depression in the 1930’s was a wearisome time for Americans, mostly due to the stock market crash on October 29th, 1929. While people struggled financially during 1930s, there were social aspects that corresponded with the obstruction of American lives. As men were without jobs, women were often forced to conform into more than “homemaker” to keep with family demands. In the United States, women felt the social bearing of misfortunes between 1929 and 1939 through discrimination upon…

Entrepreneur Dana Severson spent a week in tears after failure of his crowdfunding startup: Wahooly. The tears led him to an idea that has proven more successful than Wahooly. Severson launched Startups Anonymous, now a popular site for founders’ anonymous gripes, worries and stresses and since January, it has gathered more than 700 confessions, questions and stories (Financial Times). Well emotional factors depend on the individual personality of entrepreneur but some of them broke at failure…

Warren Susman believes that in the early twentieth century, there was a transition period of a “culture of character” to a “culture of personality.” In today 's culture, people are led to believe that following the ins and outs of society are what get you further in life rather than the culture of their individual person. We all have an uncanny predilection for observing personality traits in people. From there, we then assume likely character traits. With relatively new variables in our society…

John Steinbeck wrote the novel The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. He grew up with a fairly stable childhood and went on to study at Stanford. Although he did not experience the atrocities that many of the lower class Americans did during the Depression first hand, he wrote about them. The San Francisco News asked Steinbeck to investigate the conditions of the migrant camps in 1936 which resulted in his interest in the migrant families.When Steinbeck saw how the migrant families lived he was appalled…

1. How did consumerism affect the meaning of American freedom in the 1920s? During the first quarter of the 20th century, American industry skyrocketed. Production and consumption was at an all-time high, and “…Americans spent more and more of their income on leisure activities” (Foner 762) such as vacations and going to the movies. However, as Andre Siegfried has observed, a “new society” was forming in the United States due to the increase in mass consumption. Consumerism had led to a set…

Bourke-White who was an American born in 1904 and died in 1971. This picture depicts “single-family” residential homes in one of Indiana’s largest cities, Muncie. This neighborhood had thrived due to the homegrown business intelligence. Sociologists Helen and Robert Lynd both classified the town as a true representation of “Middletown” United States around the 1920s. LIFE magazine sent White to go cover the story of the Muncie residency. White gathered information that the families were…