Red Vienna, White Socialism, and the Blues Ann Tizia Leitich's America [Hardcover]

After the First World War, Vienna was overrun by jazz, Hollywood movies, and Fordism; its citizens were both fascinated and appalled by the waves of American ideas and products. To make sense of the American phenomenon, readers turned to Ann Tizia Leitich, the New York-based correspondent for Vienna's prominent daily Neue Freie Presse and other newspapers. Rob McFarland tells the story of Leitich's escape, occasioned by a personal crisis, from Austria to America in 1921, and of her rise as a journalist, cultural historian, and novelist. By the early 1930s, she had met President Coolidge, Senator Sol Bloom, the writer Upton Sinclair, and the critic H. L. Mencken. Her devoted readers - including the novelist Stefan Zweig and the Austrian chancellor Ignatz Seipl - sought in her witty, insightful descriptions of the United States some American vitality to invigorate their own moribund culture and economy. Chronicling Leitich's career as a journalist, cultural historian, and novelist and providing close readings of her writings about America, this book reveals her as an important cultural mediator between Austria and America. Rob McFarland is Associate Professor of German at Brigham Young University.Reveals Ann Tizia Leitich, American correspondent for Austrian newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s, as an important cultural mediator between the two countries.Introduction: Amerika in WienAncient People on New Ground: European Culture Meets American CivilizationNew Movies and Neue Menschen: From Red Vienna to Anatol on the Missouri Stefan Zweig's Giant Wave of Uniformity : Colonization, Class, and the Polemics of American Mass CultureBabbitt's Wives and Lovers: White Socialism, Gender, and the Poetry of the MachineHymns to Chicago: Progress, Myth, and the Music of the MetropolisThe Danube Blues: From American Mass Culture to Austrian Culture for the MassesEpilogue: Delightful Facts and Convenient Fictions; Reconsidering Ann Tizia Leitich's Austria in the Context of Her Amerilc`