Journal of American Culture back issues from April 1998:
Supralegal justice: Are real juries acting like fictional detectives?
Apr 01, 1998; ... We scarcely bat an eye when heroes of mystery and detective tales engage in illegalities for a greater good-roughly identifiable as "justice." Richard Schickel, commenting on the issue of vigilantism in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry movies, reminds us that the eponymous cop's nickname derived not ...
The romantic collector in China: Nathan Dunn's ten thousand Chinese things
Apr 01, 1998; ... In 1795, A.E. van Braam Houckgeest, a former Dutch consul in the American South, journeyed from Canton to Peking as a part of a European Embassy to the Qing Court (Loehr 181). Conveyed in a sedan chair shouldered by coolies, Houckgeest had plenty of time to sketch the Chinese countryside. He ...
The monster in the home: True crime and the traffic in body parts
Apr 01, 1998; ... In the language of the man on the street, he was a monster. He would always be a monster.1 Here fiction and fact are both fantasy. Here the Police Gazette meets the National Enquirer and neither can any longer be trusted.2 The genre of "True Crime" is a mode of popular writing ...
Faulkner, Hemingway, et al.: The emersonian test of American authorship
Apr 01, 1998; ... It is impossible to be a great Southern writer and a great American one, too; for the very essence of America is a natural, victorious hypervisuality which has superseded the hyperverbal pathology and failure of the South. Here, Faulkner may be a greater writer or word-smith than Hemingway; but ...
The riddles of individualism and community in American and Dutch society
Apr 01, 1998; ... Introduction In his three-volume work The Rise of the Dutch Republic, first published in 1855, the American historian John Lothrop Motley compared the Dutch struggle for independence from the Spanish Habsburgers during the Eighty-Years War (1568-1648) with that of the United States from ...
Covers of the Saturday Evening Post: Seventy Years of Outstanding Illustration from America's Favorite Magazine
Apr 01, 1998; ... Covers of the Saturday Evening Post: Seventy Years of Outstanding Illustration from America's Favorite Magazine. New York: Viking Studio Books, 1995. 298 pp. $60.00. ISBN 0-670-84962-6. Each made to serve for a week, the covers of the Saturday Evening Post have come to represent for ...
A Measure of Memory: Storytelling and Identity in American Jewish Fiction
Apr 01, 1998; ... A Measure of Memory: Storytelling and Identity in American Jewish Fiction. Victoria Aarons. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Notes, Bib., Index. $35.00. The dilemma of how memories are passed from generation to generation is a fascinating one. Do we tell what we want ...
Beyond the Mafia: Italian Americans and the Development of Las Vegas
Apr 01, 1998; ... Beyond the Mafia: Italian Americans and the Development of Las Vegas. Alan Balboni. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1996. $27.95 cloth. In the wake of such published and filmed blockbusters of modified history as Bugsy and Nicholas Pileggi's Casino comes Beyond the Mafia by Alan ...
Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture
Apr 01, 1998; ... Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture. S. Elizabeth Bird, ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. S. Elizabeth Bird has edited a wonderful collection of essays in Dressing in Feathers. This well-illustrated and varied volume offers detailed ...
Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century
Apr 01, 1998; ... Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century. Fergus Bordewich. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Killing the White Man's Indian is a powerful book that takes readers well beyond the long-held myths, what the author calls the "patina of ...
Against the Tide: Women Reformers in American Society
Apr 01, 1998; ... Against the Tide: Women Reformers in American Society. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. Against the Tide: Women Reformers in American Society is actually a shorter, paperback version of American Reform and Reformers: A Biographical Dictionary ...
The Comedy of Democracy
Apr 01, 1998; ... The Comedy of Democracy. James E. Combs and Dan Nimmo. Westport: Praeger, 1996. 204 pp. This is the central thesis of this pungent, witty book: politics, like life, is too important a thing to take seriously. Our dauntless duo of Combs and Nimmo follow in the wake of Mark Twain, Will ...
alt.Culture: An A-to-Z Guide to the '90s-Under-ground "on-line, and over-the-counter."
Apr 01, 1998; ... alt.Culture: An A-to-Z Guide to the '90s-Underground "on-line, and over-the-counter" Steven Daley and Nathaniel Wice. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 300 pp. alt. culture, the authors point on the very first page, "is one of the first non-computer reference books to assume a degree of ...
What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence Against Wives
Apr 01, 1998; ... What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence Against Wives. David Peterson Del Mar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. $39.95 cloth. What Trouble I Have Seen by David Peterson Del Mar weaves together an extraordinary mix of contradictory threads in the histories of violence, ...
The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America
Apr 01, 1998; ... The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Paul N. Edwards. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996. xx, 440 pp. $40.00 cloth. Paul Edwards undertakes a very daunting task in this work. He attempts to explore American twentiethcentury international ...
Virtual Archaeology: Re-creating Ancient Worlds
Apr 01, 1998; ... Virtual Archaeology: Re-creating Ancient Worlds. Maurizio Forte and Alberto Siliotti, eds. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. This handsome and impressive volume is Judith Toms's British English translation of an Italian publication Archeologia: percorsi ...
Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in Small-Town America
Apr 01, 1998; ... Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in Small-Town America. Richard V. Francaviglia. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1996. In Main Street Revisited, Richard Francaviglia examines one of America's most cherished images through the material culture and artifacts ...
A Visit with Harlan Hubbard
Apr 01, 1998; ... A Visit with Harlan Hubbard. Wade Hall. Lexington: University of Kentucky Libraries, 1996. Artist, writer, and back-to-nature philosopher and practitioner Harlan Hubbard (1900-1988) grew up in Bellevue, a small Kentucky town across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. He then spent his teen ...
The Archaeology of the Donner Party
Apr 01, 1998; ... The Archaeology of the Donner Party. Donald L. Hardesty, with contributions by Michael Brodhead, Donald K. Grayson, Susan Lindstrom, and George L. Miller. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History and the Humanities, 1997. Among the events of ...
Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America
Apr 01, 1998; ... Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. From national environmental policies to campuswide recycling programs, the "greening" of America is certainly an active drama played ...
Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process
Apr 01, 1998; ... Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., New York: Oxford UP, 1996. In the late 1970s, renowned legal scholar, A. Leon Higginbotham completed In the Matter of Color, the first book in his series "Race and the American ...
Outsiders in 19th-Century Press History: Multicultural Perspectives
Apr 01, 1998; ... Outsiders in l9th-Century Press History: Multicultural Perspectives. Frankie Hutton and Barbara Straus Reed, eds. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1995. $35.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. As editors, Frankie Hutton and Barbara Straus Reed write in their ...
Women of the Far Right. The Mothers' Movement and World War II
Apr 01, 1998; ... Women of the Far Right. The Mothers ' Movement and World War II. Glen Jeansonne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1996. Scholars of collective action and social movements have long been aware of two lacunae in the literature: the participation of women in collective action (other ...
The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States
Apr 01, 1998; ... The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States. Michael. Kammen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.496 pp. This is a major book about a major, but long neglected, American pioneer critic, who played a leading role in the ...
Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement
Apr 01, 1998; ... Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement. Caren Kaplan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. Paper, $16.95; cloth, $49.95. 238 pp., indexed. Questions of Travel is about critical thinking about travel and related questions of exile, boarders, and the relation of ...
White Widow
Apr 01, 1998; ... White Widow. Jim Lehrer. New York: Random House. 1997. Jim Lehrer will be familiar to most in PCA/ACA, if not as an author, at least as half of the old McNeillLehrer Report. His comic detective stories, featuring a one-eyed lieutenant governor of Oklahoma who has too much time on his ...
Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller
Apr 01, 1998; ... Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. Janet Leigh and Christopher Nickens. New York: Harmony Books, 1995. The woman who brought Marion Crane to lifeand to a brusque death-has penned the latest noteworthy installment about one of the film community's most prized possessions, ...
Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines
Apr 01, 1998; ... Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines. Robert Lesser. New York: Grammercy Books, 1997. Finally, fans of pulp magazines have another attractive collection of cover images to drool over. Unlike The Pulps, edited by Tony Goodstone in 1970, and Danger Is ...
Big Trouble
Apr 01, 1998; ... Big Trouble. J. Anthony Lukas. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Interested in murder? Political conspiracies? Social revolutionaries? Government repression? High powered political and legal personalities? Secret agents and double agents? Potential class warfare? A murder trial ...
Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution
Apr 01, 1998; ... Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution. Holly A. Mayer. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1996. For the general cultural historian and especially for the student of popular culture, this is an informative and useful book. The ...
Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman
Apr 01, 1998; ... Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman. David Morgan, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 248 pp. "Whom say you that I am?" Jesus asked his disciples. We have been asking the question ever since. Millions of Americans have ended up accepting the visual ...
Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness
Apr 01, 1998; ... Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness. Brendan O'Flaherty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. $39.95 cloth. ISBN 0-6745432-4. Over the past fifteen years, homelessness has become a central topic in popular discourses concerning politics, social trends, morals, charity, ...
Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America
Apr 01, 1998; ... Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America. Kathleen Pyne. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1996. $50.00 cloth. Today the word "evolution" is bound to the legacy of Charles Darwin. It evokes Clarence Darrow battling William ...
From Virute to Character: American Childhood, 1775-1850
Apr 01, 1998; ... From Virtue to Character: American Childhood, 1775-1850. Jacqueline S. Reiner. New York: Twayne, 1996. 258 pp. $26.95 cloth. The history of childhood in America is really the history of America itself, for it embraces key issues of ongoing concern: education and the formation of ...
American Women Historian, 1700s-1990s
Apr 01, 1998; ... American Women Historians, 1700s-1990s. Jennifer Scanlon and Shaaron Cosner. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. Jennifer Scanlon, Women's Studies Director at SUNY Plattsburgh, and Shaaron Cosner, a writer and high school teacher from Arizona, have written biographical sketches of 200 ...
Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies
Apr 01, 1998; ... Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies. James Seaton. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. This well-wrought well-researched book tackles one of the major academic battles of our times: the culture wars. The purpose is set forth in the ...
Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity 1800-1865
Apr 01, 1998; ... Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity 1800-1865. Helen Small. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. In this excellent study, Helen Small traces the literary convention of women who go mad after the loss of their lovers. She concentrates on the British novel rather than ...
John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity
Apr 01, 1998; ... John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity. Garry Wills. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. More than any other Hollywood icon, John Wayne continues to resonate in the American psyche. As recently as 1995, Garry Wills notes in John Wayne's America, Wayne was voted America's ...
Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in American's Sea Services
Apr 01, 1998; ... Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. James E. Wise, Jr., and Anne Collier Rehill. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997. When motion picture stars who served their country during wartime are mentioned, many people inevitably think of the late actor Jimmy Stewart ...
The Anatomy of Prejudices
Apr 01, 1998; ... The Anatomy of Prejudices. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Cambridge: Harvard UP 1996. To remedy the conceptual and methodological problems that have beset studies of prejudice, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl analyzes the historical progression of psychological and sociological prejudice scholarship in ...
Art Carney: A Biography
Apr 01, 1998; ... Art Carney: A Biography. Michael Seth Starr. New York: Fromm International Publishing, 1997. When most Americans think of Art Carney, they remember him for his role as Ed Norton in the classic 1950s comedy series, The Honeymooners. While this role earned Carney an important place in ...