Welcome to Twentieth Century Advice Literature:
North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family

Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family allows students and researchers to immerse themselves in the values and behaviors of Americans of the past. The collection provides a window into American social history by bringing together the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century. When complete, the collection will contain 150,000 pages of fully searchable handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave. The collection currently includes 96,001 pages. Learn more >>


FEATURED


"If" A Guide to Bad Manners, by James Montgomery Flagg
"If you're a perfect gentleman, not merely one in name And in the little courtesies are versed Don't let your wife take second place, no matter what occurs Your Motto should always be Ladies First." — page 13.


Marriage Made Easy, by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins
"Does it sometimes seem funny to you that other women admire your husband so much? They'd sing a different song if they had to live with him all the time. Anybody could get along with him for a week —a decade's another matter" — page 91.


How the Negro Can Start His Own Business, by Thomas B. Jones
"The most serious domestic problem today is the ghetto. The question facing those concerned with America's future is how to bring its residents into the main-stream of American Life. One new tool that can play an important role in builiding a healthy minority cummunity is the franchise concept" — page 7.


Always Say Maybe: A Modern Girl's Guide to Almost Everything - But Mostly Men!, by Sandra Gould
"Because most girls are better off with men than with anything. Of course, sometimes girls with Siamese cats and black and white apartments want men, too. So that leave practically nobody who doesn't want men, unless it's the Siamese cats" — page 13.