No one did more to sanctify and enshrine the image of Abraham Lincoln than Walt Whitman. The poet never met the president, but he embraced his image and claimed him as his own. In his “Death of Abraham Lincoln” speech, delivered on numerous occasions during the last 20 years of his life, Whitman involved himself in the cultural work of national definition, of posterity and legacy. He helped bridge the gap between complex personal history and official public memory. In service to the larger, national idea of union, democracy and selfless Americanism, Whitman's Lincoln, when compared to, for example Herndon's Life of Lincoln (1889), razed the contours of ambiguity and established the exemplary image of the “Martyr Chief.” The connection is both apt and ironic. What Whitman did for Lincoln in the aftermath of his death, others would do for the poet. Since Whitman's death in 1892, the poet's life and ideas have often been radically simplified; on other occasions his words have been recontextualized and appropriated to support a variety of different causes, concerns and ideologies. A driving factor in this process has been that, like Lincoln, Whitman's name carries with it a certain legitimacy. To evoke the approval of Whitman is to learn of the authority of an ideal, more perfect, America. And where Lincoln's name is inseparable from the American Civil War, Whitman has become most strongly associated with the metropolitan idea of New York, and Brooklyn in particular.

The critical appraisal of the 1950s organised society is well established in such now-classic texts such as David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950), C. Wright Mills's White Collar (1951) and William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (1956). These works exposed the group-orientated, “other-directed” corporate personality, motivated by an extreme desire to belong, as a precarious foundation for individual security. If not considered from an explicitly masculine perspective, the emasculating connotations of this model of occupational identity were nevertheless evident in Mills's conception of the white-collar “little man,” Riesman's definition of the “limp” and “exceptionally sensitive” other-directed personality and Whyte's characterisation of the organisation man as the unobtrusive “man in the middle.” Collectively, the depiction of white-collar masculinity in these texts helped create the context for the stereotypical perception of 1950s business enterprise as a breeding ground for conformity and troubled male identity. Less appreciated, however, is the business community's response to this critical appraisal.

In 1964 US Surgeon General Luther L. Terry published a report on smoking and health which concluded that “Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.” Publication of this report marked the beginning of contemporary governmental efforts to control smoking. Over the next 40 years a range of legislative and regulatory action at all levels of government sought to restrict an activity that had become widely identified as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Warning labels were required on cigarette packages, restrictions placed on advertising, controls introduced on the sale of cigarettes, lists of additives in cigarettes submitted to the federal government, excise taxes increased, and restrictions introduced on smoking in public places. Efforts to assert some control over the content of cigarettes, however, were unsuccessful. Exemptions for tobacco products can be found in virtually all federal consumer safety laws.

Popular perceptions of Edna St. Vincent Millay do not generally see her as a poet interested in so-called “domestic poetry.” On the contrary, Millay is most commonly described as the female embodiment of the rebellious spirit that marked the 1920s, the “New Woman” of early twentieth-century feminism. Until the late 1970s, the subject of domesticity seemed incompatible with the celebrated images of Millay's “progressiveness,” “rebelliousness,” or “originality.” But then again, by the 1970s Millay was no longer seen as particularly rebellious or original, and the fact that she had also contributed to the tradition of domestic poetry was not to her advantage. Domesticity may have been an important issue for second-wave feminists, but it was discussed rather selectively and, outside feminist circles, Millay was hardly ever mentioned by literary critics. The taint of “traditionalism” did not help Millay's cause, and the poet's lifelong exploration of sexuality, femininity and gender stereotypes was somehow not enough to generate sophisticated critical analyses. Since Millay seemed to be a largely traditional poet and a “politically incorrect” feminist model, second-wave feminists preferred to focus on other figures, classified as more modern and more overtly subversive. Scholarly recognition of Millay's significance within the canon of modern American poetry did not really begin until the 1990s.

“How much longer,” Edith Wharton lamented in a July 1919 letter to Barrett Wendell, “are we going to think it necessary to be ‘American’ before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?” She was having her publishers send him her most recent book, French Ways and Their Meaning (1919), a collection of essays written in large part to instruct her compatriots in the ways of an exemplary civilization. Wharton's complaint found its way into her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, which she began working on soon after French Ways was published; though in this instance it was voiced from a different quarter and had potentially radical implications.

Considered by many to be the most American part of America, the Midwest occupies a unique place in the national psyche, and its residents have been called the archetypal or quintessential Americans. The region is – and was – anything but homogenous, and any adequate treatment of it needs to take into account its many variations, complexities, and paradoxes. Any search for the essential character of the region soon founders on recognition of its cultural diversity. Yet, acknowledgment of the hazards of advancing broad generalizations about a region extending from Ohio to the Dakotas and ranging as far south as Missouri should not bar us from inquiring into the qualities and characteristics of its people. Despite the contradictions and complexities attaching to the region, the Midwest possesses a distinctive cultural identity, joining its constituent elements in an unstable and constantly changing, but nevertheless recognizable, pattern.

The HBO television series The Sopranos, produced by David Chase, achieved unprecedented critical acclaim and quickly established itself on both sides of the Atlantic as cult viewing. The fourth series, shown in the UK on Channel 4 in spring 2003, had already attracted record audiences in America and received 13 Emmy Award nominations. Not surprisingly, The Sopranos has generated several web sites and a considerable amount of literature, ranging from the usual spin-offs of television series, cds, scripts, collected reviews, and a number of more academic studies ranging from cultural studies through to explorations of the psychological aspects of the programme. At least one MA has been written dealing with the portrayal of psychotherapy in this series and in films. This is not as remarkable as it might seem given that therapy is central to the whole story. The main character, Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), is the head of an Italian–American family living in New Jersey. However, like his name itself, “family” has a double meaning. Tony is also the head of a Mafia-style gang of mobsters, operating a “waste management company” and night club (The Bada Bing!). The two roles of family head are explored when Tony talks (or “sings”) to a psychiatrist (in addition to his gang-land counsellors) as a result of his anxiety attacks and depression. Thus, Tony Soprano, mobster, is presented as a troubled family man – troubled by his relationships with his wife, daughter, and son, and their futures, but also troubled by business rivalries and problems that arise from the nature of his “work” and colleagues. As one commentator writes, Tony is the subject of “profound moral ambiguity” and it is his struggle to come to terms with this that makes it possible for viewers to identify with him. It is also the focus of his sessions with the therapist, Dr Melfi (played by Lorraine Bracco).