The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress

Gertrude Stein

Dalkey Archive Press, 1995 - Fiction - 925 pages

In "The Making of Americans," Gertrude Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of "The Making of Americans," and on America.

What people are saying

THE MAKING OF AMERICANS

User Review  - Kirkus

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS introduced Gertrude Stein to many readers who had not been able to break through the complexities of her medium of expression previously. So it is timely to ...

The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress (American Literature Series)

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

From the "I can't believe this is out of print" file comes Stein's monster of a novel, which was initially serialized by Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford in the Transatlantic Review. Although Stein does ...

About the author

Famous writer Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, PA and was educated at Radcliffe College and Johns Hopkins medical school. Stein wrote Three Lives, The Making of Americans, and Tender Buttons, all of which were considered difficult for the average reader. She is most famous for her opera Four Saints in Three Acts and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which was actually an autobiography of Stein herself. With her companion Alice B. Toklas, Stein received the French government's Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise for theory work with the American fund for French Wounded in World War I. Gertrude Stein died in Neuilly-ser-Seine, France on July 27, 1946.

William Howard Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota on July 30, 1924. During World War II, he served as an ensign in the Navy. He received an A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947 and a PhD in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954. He taught at several universities including The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis. He wrote novels, collections of short stories and novellas, and collections of criticism. His novels included Omensetter's Luck, Middle C, and The Tunnel, which received the American Book Award. His other works of fiction included In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Willie Master's Lonesome Wife, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, and Eyes: Novellas and Stories. His collections of criticism included Tests of Time; A Temple of Texts, which won the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism; and Habitations of the Word and Finding a Form, which both won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His essay collections included Fiction and the Figures of Life, The World Within the Word, and Reading Rilke. He died from congestive heart failure on December 6, 2017 at the age of 93.

Steven Meyer is Associate Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress; American Literature (Dalkey Archive) Series; American literature series; Dalkey Archive paperbacks
• Author: Gertrude Stein
• Contributors: William H. Gass, Steven Meyer
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1995
• ISBN: 1564780880, 9781564780881
• Length: 925 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Family Life / General; Fiction / General