The Dallas Myth
The Making and Unmaking of an American City
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10020155 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alan Lessoff (Illinois State University, corresponding author), Alan H Lessoff, Harvey J Graff |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 96 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 298-298 |
| Publication date | 2009-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/27694880 |
| OpenAlex | W4230896610 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
This lively, frustrating book explicates and excoriates common myths that overshadow Dallas's complex, often-disturbing history. Citing an enormous variety of local sources he absorbed during many years spent documenting and teaching the city's history, the literary scholar Harvey J. Graff builds a plausible case that Dallas “is more prone” to distorting imagery than are other cities (pp. 24–25). Even among the Southwest's cities, famous for their history of oligarchic, commercial-civic rule and excessive preoccupation with business promotion, Dallas—Graff believes—has a “distinctive political economy and political culture” and is “disturbingly exceptional” in its practical and rhetorical marginalization of black and Latino residents (pp. 94, 98). In the book's first half, Graff takes apart Dallas's prevalent myths. Insecure about the city's distinctiveness and regional identity, image makers grasp at ersatz nicknames and symbols to escape such familiar but awkward identifying markers as the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Dallas Cowboys, and the television soap opera Dallas. Boosters manipulated this indistinctiveness to their advantage by promulgating the myths of a city with no geographic or economic limits—as great as entrepreneurship could make it—and of high-minded leadership by the civic and business elite organized into the self-perpetuating Dallas Citizens Council
Art · Elite · Literature · Media studies · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess · Representation (politics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · White (mutation · Classics · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |