Bøker av Kerry Segrave

Payola is as old as the music industry and continues today. Contrary to popular belief, the acceptance of payola is legal. The recipients of payola and the reasons behind it are discussed decade-by-decade. The early bribes to the minstrel groups and vaudeville players are traced, as are modern-day payments to disc jockeys and radio station programme directors. Particular attention is paid to 1959 and 1960 when federal investigators attempted to eradicate the practice.

Once the major Hollywood studios got over their loathing of television as an entertainment medium, they moved quickly to try to dominate both domestic and international programming. In the United States, the eight major studios controlled an overwhelming majority of all television programming by the early 1950s. Their efforts in foreign markets were not quite so successful, but by the 1990s U.S. distributors controlled about 75 percent of the international television trade. Hollywood's efforts in television were often thwarted by governments that recognized the airwaves as a public resource and intervened in varying degrees to keep the studios' programing off the air in their countries. Still the U.S. industry found various ways to provide American fare to foreign viewers. Even into the 1980s, for example, some Hollywood shows could be bought by foreign broadcasters for fees as low as $25 per segment. Despite these efforts the American studios have never been able to completely dominate foreign airwaves: Viewers usually prefer their own, domestic fare to that offered by Hollywood. This history fully documents the U.S. television industry's efforts in foreign markets and how it continues to look for new markets.

This work traces the history of the jukebox from its origins in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Alva Edison in the 1880s up to its relative obscurity in the year 2000. Other socially important elements of the jukebox's development are also covered.

The poverty that drives people to begging has been a pressing social issue in this country since its inception. This historical book explores begging and beggars in the period 1850 to 1940, with emphasis on how the police, the courts, the media and private charity organizations dealt with the issue. Efforts to suppress mendicancy are explored, including legislation, police crackdowns, and public vouchers for meals and shelter. Of particular interest is the way in which media portrayals have guided public perception of mendicants.

The case of Lizzy Borden stands out in the history of sensational criminal cases, but she was not the only person to be accused of killing her parents. This book examines 103 selected cases of individuals charged with parricide - the murder of a father or mother - in the United States.

The transition from stage to screen was not only a shift in popular entertainment, but a challenge for those working in the industry as well. This book looks at the attempts to organize film actors into a union, starting from the earliest attempt in 1912 when the Actors' Equity Association seemed the best platform for such an effort.

The polygraph, or lie detector, was created and refined by academics in university settings with support from a few early police agencies. This work is a history of the polygraph - from the experimental work of the late 1800s that led directly to its creation - until the present.

Between 1850 and 1950, at least 115 women were lynched by mobs in the US. The majority of these women were black. This examines the phenomenon of the lynching of women, which was a much more rare experience than the lynching of men. Of particular importance in this examination is the role of race in lynching, particularly the increase in the number of black lynchings as the century progressed.

Looks at the activity of shoplifting for the last 140 years: the types of people singled out as the principal offenders, retailers' ambivalent responses to the activity, selective prosecution, the utilization of high-tech antitheft devices, and suing shoplifters to recover costs.

The authors document the numerous attempts to ban or censor rock music, and dramatically show how it has been blamed for everything from anarchy and juvenile delinquency to drugs, deafness, teen pregnancy, suicide, abortion, pornography, and even murder. Here is the complete history of that "sick, repulsive, horrible, and dangerous" music as seen by its enemies.