American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style

by Peter N. Stearns

Cool. The concept has distinctly American qualities and it permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American culture. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to West Side Story (Keep cool, boy.) and urban slang (Be cool. Chill out.), the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary.
Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? From whence came American Cool?
These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume.
American Cool focuses extensively on the transition decades, from the erosion of Victorianism in the 1920s to the solidification of a cool culture in the 1960s. Beyond describing the characteristics of the new directions and how they altered or amended earlier standards, the book seeks to explain why the change occured. It then assesses some of the outcomes and longer-range consequences of this transformation.

Genres: History

378 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

Peter Nathaniel Stearns is a professor at George Mason University, where he was provost from January 1, 2000 to July 2014.
Stearns was chair of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University and also served as the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (now named Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences) at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, he founded and edited the Journal of Social History. While at Carnegie Mellon, he developed a pioneering approach to teaching World History, and has contributed to the field as well through editing, and contributing to, the Routledge series, Themes in World History. He is also known for various work on the nature and impact of the industrial revolution and for exploration of new topics, particularly in the history of emotions.
He is active in historical groups such as the American Historical Association, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Social Science History Association and the International Society for Research on Emotion.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emotionology beginning with Victorian age to shift in the 1920s and how both emotional cultures appear in our experience in today's society. Characterizes Victorian culture as one that channeled emotions and characterized men and women as separate breeds with separate prescriptions to a shift in emotion management by dampening intensity of all emotions. This dampening occurred in context of increased interaction between genders on more equal playing field and large scale industrial and corporate work atmospheres in which being nice and getting along were more useful attributes than hotheadedness or courage utilized in Victorian time period. Emotional outlets then transferred to more acceptable areas such as material consumption, sexual promiscuity, therapy, diaries as places for ventilation, emotional spectatorship of sports and other performances of emotion by others, and leisure activities that offered an alternative reality.

Was an enjoyable book to read although at times the interest of the topic felt restricted by its systematization: checking off points made, summation offered, introduction to next topic, repeat.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

got where this book was going--the focus on avoidance of emotion in the 20th century, shift from Victorian style which focused more on sublimation (emotion has to be there in order to be sublimated, whereas avoidance means never having the emotion in the first place). Stearns' book is weaker on implications for "cool" in the second half of the 20th century. How does this kind of cool relate to the other kind(s)/meanings of "cool"? That's another book -- a valid historical question, though.