Inventive and entrepreneurial Americans have left their indelible mark on American history through the hundreds of brand name products available on today's market shelves. What are these products? How did they get their start? Why have they endured over the course of history? Did their success have to do with the quality of the product or its recognition factor?

Through primary source documents from the American Memory collections, this activity introduces students to a sampling of "famous" American brands originating in communities across the United States and offers insight into their origin and staying power

"BECOMING MODERN presents an expansive collection of primary sources designed to enhance classroom study of the 1920s—a brief but defining period in American history, perhaps the first that seems immediately recognizable to us in the 21st century.

Organized in five themes, each with six to eight sections, BECOMING MODERN includes a multiplicity of genres to represent the broad expansion of media in the Twenties. Films, newsreels, animated cartoons, comic strips, radio broadcasts, and sound recordings are offered in addition to informational texts, fiction selections, visual art, photographs, and music selections. Nine collections of political cartoons and twenty-one collections of contemporary commentary provide unique overviews of the decade's most debated issues.

Headnotes and discussion questions guide study and analysis of the resources, reflecting Common Core Curriculum Standards for reading and writing. Individual texts are amply annotated to facilitate student understanding and inquiry."