American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century by Christine Stansell

From the Publisher

In the early twentieth century, an exuberant brand of gifted men and women moved to New York City, not to get rich but to participate in a cultural revolution. For them, the city's immigrant neighborhoods--home to art, poetry, cafes, and cabarets in the European tradition--provided a place where the fancies and forms of a new America could be tested. Some called themselves Bohemians, some members of the avant-garde, but all took pleasure in the exotic, new, and forbidden. In American Moderns, Christine Stansell tells the story of the most famous of these neighborhoods, Greenwich Village, which--thanks to cultural icons such as Eugene O'Neill, Isadora Duncan, and Emma Goldman--became a symbol of social and intellectual freedom. Stansell eloquently explains how the mixing of old and new worlds, politics and art, and radicalism and commerce so characteristic of New York shaped the modern American urban scene. American Moderns is both an examination and a celebration of a way of life that's been nearly forgotten.

Publishers Weekly

They were novelists, artists' models, secretaries and chess whizzes; their ranks included Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Margaret Sanger and John Reed. A few were wealthy, many were poor, and they gathered in shabby saloons to argue about free love and Nietzsche as they plowed through mounds of spaghetti, brisket and bratwurst. In her latest book, Princeton historian Stansell (City of Women) examines the politics and cultural impact of the turn-of-the-20th-century American "bohemia." Combining newly imported European political awareness (Stansell says refugees from the 1905-1907 Russian Revolution arrived with "their saber wounds still festering") with institutionally guaranteed free speech, these New York radicals were much more open to the inclusion of Jews and women than their Old World counterparts. And even though they generally ignored black aspirations, Stansell argues that the bohemians created "the first full-bodied alternative to an established cultural elite," which undermined "the smug faith that culture was the domain of the well-born and tasteful" and dug "channels between high and low culture, outsiders and insiders." By so doing--despite their racial blinders--they made possible the cultural course of much of the 20th century: pioneering feminist ideas, helping to make New York the cultural capital of the nation and laying the groundwork for the African-American crossover that took place during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. If Stansell's grasshopperish prose occasionally jumps from one topic to another, it's only because her thorough and engaging study abounds with the superabundant energy it describes. B&w photos. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

A Princeton historian on how Greenwich Village became Greenwich Village. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

The New York Times Book Review - Cohen

It sparkles with keen insights on nearly every page. It strives to ascend to the literary heights of its subjects and for the most part it succeeds...an artfully fashioned book, by turns elegant and breezy...'American Moderns is a pleasure to read

The New Yorker

What Villagers did, mostly, was talk; Stansell captures the tone and texture of their conversation—so exuberant that its traces can be felt to this day.

The Nation - Eunice Lipton

Stansell's book is a triumph. It is fun to read. It entirely remaps familiar terrain because of her feminism and sincere appreciation of difference.

The New York Observer - Linfield

In American Moderns, Christine Stansell beautifully and lucidly introduces us to the moral, political and artistic capaciousness of the New York bohemians...a lively, lyrical new book...

The Boston Globe - Robert Taylor

Stansell's vibrant cultural history…has captured the audacity of those who made New York the capital of modernity.

What People Are Saying

Brian Morton
A brilliant and beautifully written portrait of a generation of free thinkers, reformers, artists, and dreamers. This is intellectual history at its finest.
—(Brian Morton, author of Starting out in the Evening)

Michael Kazin
American Moderns is a fiercely intelligent and vividly rendered masterwork. It is the best book ever written about this era, these people, and the way they shook up our national culture for good.
—(Michael Kazin, author America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960's)

Katha Pollitt
A complex and exciting portrait of a crucial historical moment and the men and women who shaped it.
—(Katha Pollitt, author of Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism)

Jean Strouse
In this original, searching look at turn of the century bohemian New York, Christine Stansell explores the formative moment in American Modernity—a time of vivid personalities, high ideals, and political, aesthetic, and sexual turmoil. A captivating story, wonderfully told.
—(Jean Strouse, author of Morgan: American Financier)

Eric Foner
Christine Stansell has restored the pre World War I avant-garde to the central place they deserve in the creation of twentieth century American culture. A fascinating and important contribution.
—(Eric Foner, author of The Story of American Freedom)

Mike Wallace
A beautifully written evocation of bohemian Greenwich Village teeming with New Women and radical men dedicated to free speech, free love, free thought, and determined to emancipate American art, work, sex, and psyches from stifling Victorian constraints.
—(Mike Wallace, coauthor of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in History)

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