From his celebrated appearance, hatchet in hand, in Parson Mason Locke Weems ?s Life of Washington to Booth Tarkington ?s Penrod, the all-American boy was an iconic figure in American literature for well over a century. Sometimes he was a ?good boy, ? whose dutiful behavior was intended as a model for real boys to emulate. Other times, he was a ?bad boy, ? whose mischievous escapades could be excused either as youthful exuberance that foreshadowed adult industriousness or as deserved attacks on undemocratic pomp and pretension. But whether good or bad, the all-American boy was a product of the historical moment in which he made his appearance in print, and to trace his evolution over time is to take a fresh view of America ?s cultural history, which is precisely what Larzer Ziff accomplishes in All-American Boy. Ziff looks at eight classic examples of the all-American boy ?young Washington, Rollo, Tom Bailey, Tom Sawyer, Ragged Dick, Peck ?s ?bad boy, ? Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Penrod ?as well as two notable antitheses ?Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield. Setting each boy in a rich cultural context, Ziff reveals how the all-American boy represented a response to his times, ranging from the newly independent nation ?s need for models of democratic citizenship, to the tales of rags-to-riches beloved during a century of accelerating economic competition, to the recognition of adolescence as a distinct phase of life, which created a stage on which the white, middle-class ?solid citizen ? boy and the alienated youth both played their parts.