USA

America's Home Front

Glen Jeansonne outlines how US involvement radically transformed American culture and society.

'Our Mr Sun' Religion and Science in 50s America

How did Hollywood screenwriter Frank Capra get involved in the sort of film projects that in his and other hands filled a generation of American servicemen with a fundamentalist world view? James Gilbert offers an explanation.

Women at Large: Travel in Antebellum America

How easy or safe was it for women who travelled - often alone - in the new American republic? Patricia Cline Cohen charts their progress - and perils - and the way in which public transport helped shape the gender system.

Bearing the Burden? Puritan Wives

Obedience, modesty, taciturnity – all hallmarks of the archetypal 'good woman' in colonial New England, But did suffering in silence invert tradition and give the weaker sex a new moral authority in the community? Martha Saxton investigates, in the first piece from a mini series examining women's social experience in the New World.

Crash-Course Americanism

Mark Meigs uncovers a fascinating initiative enacted in France at the end of the First World War designed to turn American soldiers into students empowered with all the virtues of the Progressive era.