The Journal of American Culture back issues from December 2005:
Monstrous Ecology: John Steinbeck, Ecology, and American Cultural Politics
Dec 01, 2005; ... In the collection of essays, Steinbeck and the Environment: Interdisciplinary Approaches (1997), a range of scholars establish that Steinbeck was an environmentalist. They remain strangely uncomfortable with their assertion, however. Warren French, for instance, asks, "How green was John ...
"The Decisive Moment": The Metronome All-Stars, 1949
Dec 01, 2005; ... I Heralded as "the most famous photo in the history of jazz,"1 Art Kane's 1958 group portrait of fifty-seven of the leading musicians of the "golden age" of jazz has certainly attained iconic stature. The inspiration for Jean Bach's Oscarnominated documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem ...
Precursor to Modern Media Hype: The 1830s Penny Press
Dec 01, 2005; ... The expansion of television through a proliferation of channels on cable, the advent and popularity of talk radio, and the entry of major media companies and new upstarts on the Internet at the beginning of the twenty-first century heightened awareness of the necessary scramble for audience by ...
American Adaptation and Mrs. Charles Dickens's Plum Pudding
Dec 01, 2005; ... One may argue that the life-span of cultural traditions can be measured in generations, since everyday foods brought here by émigrés are often relegated to special occasions when celebrated by their offspring. For Anglo Americans, the recipes that head the list are what we non-Brits think of as ...
After the White House: Former Presidents as Private Citizens
Dec 01, 2005; ... After the White House: Former Presidents as Private Citizens Max J. Skidmore. New York: Palgrave, 2005. This enormously informative and interesting book is a stand-in for a book on each of the presidents who lived after office, not including those assassinated in office. Skidmore follows ...
Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia
Dec 01, 2005; ... Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia William Faricy Condee. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. My maternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant, died many years before I was born, but I had always known two things about him: he was a Pennsylvania coal miner, and he liked going to ...
Eve's Daughter/Modern Woman: A Mural by Mary Cassatt
Dec 01, 2005; ... Eve's Daughter/Modern Woman: A Mural by Mary Cassatt Sally Webster. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. In her introduction to this extremely wellwritten book, the author outlines the reason for the title and her frame of reference very clearly: "For Cassatt and other ...
Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery
Dec 01, 2005; ... Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery Virginia L. Blum. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Virginia Brum's book Flesh Wounds is a mustread for American culture students, prospective plastic surgery patients, and therapists. Written in a clear and engrossing manner, ...
Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity
Dec 01, 2005; ... Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity Amy G. Richter. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. In Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity, Amy G. Richter traces the effects of the emergence of the ...
Livestock Hotels
Dec 01, 2005; ... Livestock Hotels J'Nell L. Pate. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2005. For those of us who roamed the Old West with the cowboys driving the giant herds of longhorns to the cattle pens in the outposts or who wrangled with the animals and the frontier life, this is an informative book. I didn't say ...
Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A.
Dec 01, 2005; ... Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Eduardo Obregon Pagan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. In 1942, the "Sleepy Lagoon" murder trial in Los Angeles brought the conviction of seventeen young Mexican Americans for the murder of ...
One Nation Under Therapy: Why Self-Absorption Is Eroding Self-Reliance
Dec 01, 2005; ... One Nation Under Therapy: Why Self-Absorption Is Eroding Self-Reliance Christina Hoff Summers and Sally Satel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance Organized around a series of ...
Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America
Dec 01, 2005; ... Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America Marina Moskowitz. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. One evening in 1894, the philosopher John Dewey and his brother, the economist Davis Dewey, went "slumming" in Chicago. Both were interested ...
The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced: A Century of Change, 1899-2001
Dec 01, 2005; ... The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced: A Century of Change, 1899-2001 Thomas S. Litwin, Editor. Foreword by David Rockefeller, Jr. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2005. This is a beautiful but sad book. Its purpose is to count the changes-how many, what kind, and to what ...
True Women and Westward Expansion/Women of the Northern Plains: Gender and Settlement on the Homestead Frontier 1870-1930
Dec 01, 2005; ... True Women and Westward Expansion Adrienne Caughfield. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2005. Women of the Northern Plains: Gender and Settlement on the Homestead Frontier 1870-1930 Barbara Handy-Marcello. Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005. These two ...
"I'll Be Home for Christmas": Misrule and the Paradox of Gender in World War II-Era Christmas Films
Dec 01, 2005; ... In the present circumstances many people are asking, ought we celebrate Christmas at all? There can be no doubt that this is the very year when we should think, not less, but more about Christmas -not only as an escape from the horrors of war, but as a remembrance of nobler ...
A Superhero for Gays?: Gay Masculinity and Green Lantern
Dec 01, 2005; ... When I was a kid reading comics, I used to sometimes think "they saved the mother and kid from the falling building, but would they rescue me if they knew I was a fag?" I now have an answer for that. (Letter 17) The US comic book industry has addressed a number of pressing social and ...
The Ideology of Terror: Why We Will Never Win the "War"
Dec 01, 2005; ... Winner of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2005 American Culture Association Conference A few days after the criminal attacks on the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush declared a metaphorical war on terror. The word war was once again applied to a nebulous concept ...
Not Necessarily Not the News: Gatekeeping, Remediation, and The Daily Show
Dec 01, 2005; ... "I don't know if you are practicing an old form of parody or a new form of journalism." -PBS's Bill Moyers, interviewing Jon Stewart "He says in public what a lot of us say privately in the newsroom." - Peter Jennings, former host of ABC World News ...
A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture
Dec 01, 2005; ... The John G. Cawelti Award: Honorable Mention A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture Michael Kammen. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. I am particularly impressed with the comprehensive nature of Michael Kammen's book ...
Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture
Dec 01, 2005; ... Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture David Chidester. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Several years ago, I attended an American Academy of Religion annual conference held at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. While on a break, I was ...
Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball
Dec 01, 2005; ... Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball Jerrold Casway. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. In the age of soaring salaries, free agency, steroid abuse, and outsized egos, it is tempting for baseball fans to evoke a purer, simpler past. Such exercises in nostalgia ...
Exploring with Lewis and Clark: The 1804 Journal of Charles Floyd
Dec 01, 2005; ... Exploring with Lewis and Clark: The 1804 Journal of Charles Floyd James J. Holmberg, Editor. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. In many ways, Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery equals any other great adventure. For the development of the expanding nation, this expedition ...
Hit Records, 1950-1975
Dec 01, 2005; ... Hit Records, 1950-1975 David Lonergan. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005. As research into popular music becomes more pervasive, David Lonergan's Hit Records, 19501975 is a welcome resource. This reference book is organized in alphabetical order by song title. Each consecutively ...
Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book
Dec 01, 2005; ... Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book Michael Asimow and Shannon Mader. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Law is one of the most powerful forces driving and benefiting from popular culture, yet we know too little about it, do not study it directly, and only react with satisfaction or anger ...
Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation
Dec 01, 2005; ... Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation Martha Sigall. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. On July 13, 1936, Martha Sigall started work at Leon Schlesinger Productions, a producer of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, as an apprentice painter at a ...
New Black Man
Dec 01, 2005; ... New Black Man Mark Anthony Neal. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. "The Black Man is in crisis," Mark Anthony Neal begins his book, New Black Man. Centuries of being enslaved, then economically exploited, controlled by violence meted out by white men, as well as self-erupting from ...
Sex in the Heartland
Dec 01, 2005; ... Sex in the Heartland Beth Bailey. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. Beth Bailey's Sex in the Heartland brilliantly investigates issues such as race, gender, authority, and social control in the sexual revolution through the microcosm of the University of Kansas and the ...
Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society
Dec 01, 2005; ... Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society Danny Fingeroth. New York: Continuum/London, 2004. Books about superhero comics are typically written by fans, creators, or scholars. Danny Fingeroth's work transcends the usual limitations of ...
The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster
Dec 01, 2005; ... The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. This is an optimistic book. Its thesis is that cities, like people, show their deepest character after terrifying events. Throughout history, ...