Research Catalog

Out of the ordinary : how everyday life inspired a nation and how it can again

Title

Out of the ordinary : how everyday life inspired a nation and how it can again / Marc Stears.

Author

Stears, Marc

Publication

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.
©2021

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFD 21-1015	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

236 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

"This is an age of polarization. It's us vs. them. The battle lines are clear, and compromise is surrender. As Out of the Ordinary reminds us, we have been here before. From the 1920s to the 1950s, in a world transformed by revolution and war, extreme ideologies of left and right fueled utopian hopes and dystopian fears. In response, Marc Stears writes, a group of British writers, artists, photographers, and filmmakers showed a way out. These men and women, including J. B. Priestley, George Orwell, Barbara Jones, Dylan Thomas, Laurie Lee, and Bill Brandt, had no formal connection to one another. But they each worked to forge a politics that resisted the empty idealisms and totalizing abstractions of their time. Instead they were convinced that people going about their daily lives possess all the insight, virtue, and determination required to build a good society. In poems, novels, essays, films, paintings, and photographs, they gave witness to everyday people's ability to overcome the supposedly insoluble contradictions between tradition and progress, patriotism and diversity, rights and duties, nationalism and internationalism, conservatism and radicalism. It was this humble vision that animated the great Festival of Britain in 1951 and put everyday citizens at the heart of a new vision of national regeneration. A leading political theorist and a veteran of British politics, Stears writes with unusual passion and clarity about the achievements of these apostles of the ordinary. They helped Britain through an age of crisis. Their ideas might do so again, in the United Kingdom and beyond"--

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: A Britain forgotten -- Getting out of the whale -- A little holding of ground -- The properties of my memory remain -- All nations are odious, but some less odious than others -- The socialists in power -- Brief city -- Acquaintance plus wonder -- Conclusion: The magic of everyday life.

Call Number

JFD 21-1015

ISBN

9780674743878
0674743873

LCCN

2020021000

OCLC

1192303409

Author

Stears, Marc, author.

Title

Out of the ordinary : how everyday life inspired a nation and how it can again / Marc Stears.

Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.

Copyright Date

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Creator/Contributor Characteristics

Gender group: Men

Nationality/regional group: Britons

Occupational/field of activity group: University and college faculty members

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

JFD 21-1015

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