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"Murphy and Abbotson have pulled together
an assortment of materials that would otherwise be hard to find
and put them in an easy-to-use format. [T]his book will come in
quite handy at report time."
—School Library Journal (print)
This collection of social, cultural, and historical
documents and popular materials will help the reader to study the
play in the context of its time and cultural background. The collected
materials are designed to work with the play to highlight inherent
conflicts within American society which lie at the heart of Death
of a Salesman, and to explore how the play affects and is affected
by social mores and beliefs. Salesmanship and the changing face
of business, along with perceptions of sports, gender, and
families, are explored through selections drawn from a rich
variety of sources that provide forceful evidence of the play's
influence. Sixty-nine primary documents include essays, articles,
and fiction, which have created or explored the social expectations
of a typical American family in the late 1940s. Unusual selections
such as a self-analysis chart, an obituary, and a diary, help trace
the history of salesmanship from the nineteenth century to the present
day. Advertisements, song lyrics, speeches, how-to books, and other
readings promote an interdisciplinary study of the play.
In addition, this online sourcebook provides
the user access to:
- Audio interview with Arthur Miller, including excerpted dialogue
from various productions of the play, featuring actors Brian
Dennehy and Dustin Hoffman
- New York Times opening night review - February 11, 1949
- Database containing the complete dialogue from Arthur Miller's
play Death of a Salesman in a full concordance format
- Biographical profiles of: Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Lee J.
Cobb, Horatio Alger, Dale Carnegie, Elbert Hubbard, Lewis Mumford,
Ashley Montagu, Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Ford, Henry Adams,
Thorstein Veblen, Walter Camp and others
- E-texts including:Tragedy and the Common Man; Poor Richard's
Almanack; Bound to Rise: The Story of a Country Boy; Babbitt;
Democracy in America; The Education of Henry Adams; Life without
Principle; The Theory of the Leisure Class; This Side of Paradise
and more
- American Pioneers and Cowboys Online Exhibition - a
history of westward expansion and development
- Online journal entry and story of James Guild, an early 19th
century Yankee Peddler
- Audio of cowboy songs from the John Lomax Collection
- Cultural database of America in the 1940s
- Advertisement Database: Images and database information for
over 7,000 advertisements printed between 1911-1955
- Glossary of cultural references and historical idioms from
Miller's Death of a Salesman
- Web-based study questions
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