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"Wrestling to Rasslin'" traces the roots of one of man's oldest competitive sports. Beginning in sporting bars in the late 1800s and graduating to Barnum sideshow tents, wrestling has thrilled the world over with such early athletes as William Muldoon, George Hackenschmidt, and Tom Jenkins. After World War II and the advent of television, wrestling took a turn toward the dramatic, emphasizing conflicts between good and evil.

Called the King of the Pulps, Frederick Schiller Faust, aka Max Brand, wrote nearly 400 Westerns from The Untamed to Destry Rides Again a total of more than 220 books in this genre. Yet Max Brand also created Dr. Kildare (of books, films, and television) and wrote under twenty-one pseudonyms, in another dozen genres. This book removes the mask, with deeply personal memoirs from family, friends and fellow writers, taking us through his orphaned boyhood on the brutal ranches of California, his frustrating decades in Italy, as both a classical poet and a fast-action pulpist, to his heroic death as a war correspondent on the World War II battlefields. Faust s life story is augmented by a complete bibliography of his work over a thousand books, stories, and films plus the first listing of works about Faust."

This book is an argument for a particular point of view toward theatre, not a summary or survey of dramatic theory and criticism. The argument centers on the concept of form, a concept that is the rock on which all theoretical and critical works are built, or against which they shatter.

A comprehensive study of jazz great Charlie Parker, including details of record dates, more than 200 musical illustrations, and biographical material arranged chronologically and linked with Parker's recordings. The "Bird Stories" are all here, from Parker's Kansas City roots to his untimely death, as well as the seminal journal article on Parker's music, "Ornithology" that appeared in the Journal of Jazz Studies.

German science fiction offers a most interesting contribution to the history and criticism of science fiction. William B. Fischer examines two writers, Kurd Lasswitz and Hans Dominik. He concludes that German science fiction is in distinct contrast to the normative tradition of modern Anglo-American science fiction and to many other literary traditions as well. His book demonstrates vividly the social relevance and enduring cultural vitality of science fiction."

Mulford Sibley, for many years a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, used to frequently quote Plato's complaint in the Laws "that man never legislates but accidents of all sorts . . . legislate for us in all sorts of ways. The violence of war and the hard necessity of poverty are constantly overturning governments and changing laws." But even if most legislation is a result of accident, Mulford Sibley holds out to us the idea that politics is a sphere of human freedom, in which men and women can collectively determine the conditions of their common life.

In this pioneering work Victor Neuberg has assembled a wealth of information about popular literature, from the invention of the printing press to the present. This guide, by judicious selection, gives a vivid picture of the range and variety of popular literature and its producers. Besides describing the main genres, the author has also included the social, cultural and commercial background to the production of popular literature, factors that were crucial in influencing the forms it took.

This book includes a chronological listing of issues of the "Dime Novel Roundup," which was published for over fifty years. It also features an index to the contents of the "Dime Novel Roundup." .

This volume, which examines the special contributions of a number of women mystery writers, sheds light on this significant example of common interests in recreational reading among women and men and the reasons behind the early and continuing uncharacteristic near-equality of both sexes in this field of endeavor.

This collection of essays examines various rituals and ceremonies in American popular culture, including architecture, religion, television viewing, humor, eating, and dancing.

This book discusses the figure of the unchaste woman in a wide range of fiction written between 1835 and 1880; serious novels by Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Meredith, and George Eliot; popular novels that provided light reading for middle-class women (including books by Dinah Craik, Rhoda Broughton, and Ouida); sensational fiction; propaganda for social reform; and stories in cheap periodicals such as the "Family Herald" and the "London Journal," which reached a different and far wider audience than either serious or popular novels.

Nadya Aisenberg discusses the potentialities of the crime novel, its implications, principles, and scope, and its analogy of myth and the fairy tale. She proposes that the detective story and the thriller have made an unacknowledged contribution to "serious" literature. Her discussion of Dickens, Conrad, and Green indicate that each borrowed many important ingredients from the formulaic novel.

A short history of Dame Agatha's life, criticism of her works, and a summary of how critics and reviewers view her work. This book includes a bibliography of all the works of Christie; an alphabetical list of Christie detective and mystery book and short-story titles; a short-story finder for Christie collections; and more.

Detective stories should be examined from a literary point of view, with special attention to literary history and to materials and patterns from which the writers created their fictions. This book sheds new light into the fascinating field of detective fiction.

The Middle English romance has elicited throughout the centuries a curious mixture of indifference, hostile apprehension, and contempt that perhaps no other literature except its most likely offspring, modern best-sellers has provoked."

A collection of twenty-five essays from eight countries, illustrating the many approaches to science fiction.

In her fiction, Jessie Brown Pounds preserved the flavor of Ohio s rural village culture as the nineteenth century drew to a close. This anthology rediscovers Pounds s varied works and reminds modern students that Middle-Western culture included women writers as social critics and mythmakers. Included are short stories, sketches, one undated short story published posthumously in 1921, and Rachael Sylvestre, a first-person historical novel written in 1904."

Love Valley is a small town in rural North Carolina. Its genesis in 1954 marked the fulfillment of a dream for founder Andy Barker. Barker cultivated two visions as a young man he wanted to build a Christian community, and he wanted to be a cowboy. The result of his vision is Barker s utopian experiment. "

Contributors examine the literature that challenges widely held assumptions about the form of the family, familial authority patterns, and the function of courtship, marriage, and family life from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Topics include: the family as a microcosm of the larger political sphere in Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Elizabeth Fenwick, Mrs. Opie, and Mary Shelley, and alternatives to the nuclear patriarchal family in Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mary Louisa Molesworth.

William Darby gives us a comprehensive and (mostly) sympathetic reading of over fifty novels and a few movies from the 1950s. He examines titles such as "Mandingo, The Invisible Man, I the Jury, Catcher in the Rye, Battle Cry, The Caine Mutiny, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, The Manchurian Candidate, Hawaii, The Bramble Bush, Peyton Place, Ten North Frederick, A Stone for Danny Fisher, The Bad Seed, Not as a Stranger, The Blackboard Jungle, From Here to Eternity, "and" Compulsion. "

Children s series fiction comprises tales incorporating innocence and hard reality along with romance, wit, and character. Heavy streaks of morality diminished as the entertainment element increased. Heroes performed in a wide range of adventures, but restrictions often kept heroines close to home. Series fiction peaked, then waned, but such writers as Beverly Cleary and Madeleine L Engle carried on the style."

Examines the broad and far-ranging sympathies of this versatile and least parochial of contemporary American writers.

A neglected genre that promises to shed light on the culture of consumption appears in the form of the daytime television game shows whose hegemonic message seems to convey and to justify a widespread obeisance to the mandate of materialism. A close analysis of the longest running game show, "The Price Is Right," suggests that all facets of this program combine to reinforce its central meaning as a ritualistic validation of consumption-oriented greed.

The roles of Africans have changed over time in detective/mystery fiction, reflecting their changing real roles in the continent. These studies provide an entertaining way to follow that changed reality.

This anthology offers a sampling of fiction and poetry by veterans and non-veterans, seasoned writers and those who used their war experience as an incentive to begin writing.

Artist James Tissot compiled photographs of his work in three albums, which are reproduced in this book.

Religious discourse has become alien to the secular and skeptical western societies of the twentieth century. There is real discomfort when religious discourse appears either in the popular press or in society. But even in a secular society, there is still a psychological need (one might even use the stronger word will), if not to believe, then at least to hope. Dr. Filmer states this need is met in the literature of fantasy.

Through detailed analyses of documentary photography and radical literature, Silent Witnesses explores how working-class identity has been repressed and manipulated to fit the expectations of liberal politicians, radical authors, Marxist historians, feminist academics, and contemporary cultural theorists.