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This title looks at the evolution and cultural significance of daytime talk shows, concluding that they are more than harmless entertainment.

This book shows how Ford's first large automotive plant - the Crystal Palace - transformed the sleepy village of Highland Park, Michigan, into an industrial boomtown that later became an urban ghetto, and the first American city whose life and well-being depended entirely upon the employment and production policies of the automotive industry. It shows how in the process of attempting to create a workforce in the likeness of Henry Ford himself, the Ford Motor Company used "scientific management" as the basis for redefining the relations between labor and management, and as the basis for attempting to manage the quality of life of those who worked in the factory, and of those who lived in its shadows. This innovative work makes an important contribution to the study of the quality of life of the pioneers of modern industrial production. Given the recent developments in the automotive industry, Life in the Shadows provides a timely examination of this important episode in the history of American workers, along with significant details and interpretation of the earliest mass production facility and the local community that resulted from it. The author discusses such issues as what the community was like before the coming of the Crystal Palace, the evolution of the production processes, the development of a new "manager class", and the work of Ford's Sociological Department.

"Rednecks" have long been subjects of scorn and ridicule, especially in the South because of an antebellum caste and class system, parts of which persist to this day. In A Question of Class, Carr probes the historical and sociological reasons for the descent of "rednecks" into poverty, their inability to rise above it, and their continuing subjugation to a stereotype developed by others and too often accepted by themselves. Carr also records the progress in southern fiction of this negative stereotype - from antebellum writers who saw "rednecks" as threats to the social order, to post-Civil War writers who lamented the lost potential of these people and urged sympathy and understanding, to modern writers who reverted, in some sense, to Old South attitudes, and finally, to contemporary writers who point toward a more democratic acceptance of this much maligned group.

Gift Giving brings together 21 scholars from a variety of disciplines - including consumer behavior, communications, and sociology - who are dedicated to the understanding of what motivates gift selection, presentation, and incorporation of a gift into a person's life. The text explores the role of values in gift exchange; the influence of ethnic, generational, and subcultural differences in gift exchange; how gifts to the self are manifested; and new directions and topics in gift giving. In these essays, gift giving occasions are probed for the meanings that can be illuminated with respect to this pervasive, yet not always positive, phenomenon. For anyone interested in gift giving behavior, this volume should prove both enlightening and provocative.

The Great Depression was one of the most traumatic eras of recent American history. The author has analyzed, and provided context for, the vast collection of poetry and song lyrics in the Hoover and Roosevelt presidential libraries to assess another aspect of American public opinion. The poets voiced their opinions about New Deal agencies.

The educational opportunities of the new millennium are endless if our efforts are informed. If not, they will be catalogs of failures or half-successes. The essays in this collection, written by some of the leading scholars in Popular Culture Studies, turn the page on the new millennium to see what are the directions of approach and the opportunities to be gained in recognition of the compelling need for studies in everyday cultures. These essays help chart the course for themes and directions of such studies into the new world that is waiting to be born. Their value is indispensable.

The author of this book describes in detail the chronology of the year 1927, when the great New York Yankees became The Wonder Team - probably baseball's best team ever. That club included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Waite Hoyt, Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs, Herb Pennock, Bob Meusel, and Wilcy Moore. Also part of the narrative are owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert, manager Miller Huggins, business manager Ed Barrow, and scout Paul Krichell. No participant of that great team is omitted. The author's chronicle is thoroughly buttressed by interviews, research, and records. In detailing the events leading to the 1927 World Series, Trachtenberg weaves players' profiles and histories, along with those of the Yankee owner, management, coaches, scouts, trainer, and batboy/mascot. The reader becomes acquainted with players' personalities, baseball skills, records, and hijinks on and off the field. Players' backgrounds, how they became involved in the great ball club, how they were viewed by the press, how their careers flourished and waned - all of this is covered in The Wonder Team. Also included are 1927 stats, photos from Yankee archives, and biographical sketches.

This volume contains fourteen essays by authoritative academics studying the field of mystery and detective fiction. The essays all concentrate on the first novels in established series, analyzing ways in which the opening books of the series do or do not create patterns followed in succeeding novels.

This is the first study of Hollywood by an anthropologist. Jorja Prover examines how different groups of individuals, separated from one another superficially by ethnicity, race, and sex, function as writers in Hollywood. She describes the white "majority" Hollywood writers and explores their concerns and creative processes, and then discusses other writers who, until recently, have been virtually invisible in the entertainment industry--women, the physically challenged, gays, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. In detailing their efforts at gaining professional acceptance, these writers introduce new, previously unmentioned issues involving access, advancement, talent, sexual harassment, and discrimination.

Even before the 1889 baseball season began, battle lines had been drawn. In the National League, the Players Brotherhood, challenged the insulting classification system devised by league owners. While American Association players had no Brotherhood, they proved capable of organizing impromptu responses to abusive treatment by owners.

This work emphasizes the particularly American variant of this marginal youth movement and the damage it has caused to society.

A great American institution; the bane of feminist ideology; a cornucopia of corn--few are neutral about the Miss America Pageant. Live from Atlantic City traces the pageant's history from its birth as pseudo-event in 1920 through its emergence as American popular culture icon.

The doctor as the main character of a novel is largely a phenomenon of the 1900s. Noting the great popularity of the doctor novel and its contribution to literature, the author of this study characterizes and examines a significant subtype the medical research novel, whose protagonist is the doctor or medical student searching for answers to underlying medical questions or for cures or pain relief through research. Through close examination of seven novels and citations from eleven others, the author illustrates how this subtype of literature deals with basic psychological, moral, and metaphysical questions as well as medical and scientific ones."

The twenty essays in this effort to bring new vitality to the humanities range through fields familiar in life but unfamiliar in the humanities canon. They include leisure, folk cultures, material culture, pornography, comics, animal rights, Black studies, traveling, and, of course, the bugbear of academics, television.

This book looks at the character types and plot patterns found in the urban stories of William Potter (known as O. Henry), analyzing how these elements structure his tales and contribute to his popular formulas. Karen Charmaine Blansfield considers how the turbulent conditions of New York at the turn of the century helped to launch his career.

This volume is about puppetry, an expression of popular and folk culture which is extremely widespread around the world and yet has attracted relatively little scholarly attention. Puppetry, which is intended for audiences of adults as well as children, is a form of communication and entertainment and an esthetic and artistic creation. Of the many aspects of puppetry worthy of scholarly study, this book's focus is on a central and dominant feature humor and comedy."

The sexualized serial murder of women by men is the subject of this provocative book. Jane Caputi argues that the sensationalized murders by men such as Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, and the Yorkshire Ripper represent a contemporary genre of sexually political crimes.

Private Eyes is the complete map to what Raymond Bhandler called "the mean streets," the exciting world of the fictional private eye. It is intended to entertain current PIfans and to make new ones."

Ed McBain is a master of tone. He turns his material just a little off-axis. George Dove s study of McBain s imaginary city is both insightful and realistic. He gets at the heart of this major writer of police procedurals by examining the geography, the day-to-day happenings, and literary quality."

This is the first collection of short stories by W.T. Ballard. This volume is just a sampling of Ballard's most famous character Bill Lennox, a selection for both the connoisseur of crime and the lover of good, fast-moving crime/adventure stories.

Greyhound, the largest and most enduring bus company in the US, had its beginning in the 1920s in the frigid climes of northern Minnesota. This work shows how the Greyhound Corporation has turned into a multimillion-dollar company.

This work is a composite index of the complete runs of all mystery and detective fan magazines that have been published, through 1981. Added to it are indexes of many magazines of related nature. This includes magazines that are primarily oriented to boys' book collecting, the paperbacks, and the pulp magazine hero characters, since these all have a place in the mystery and detective genre.

A Pillar of Fire to Follow concerns the Indian dramas, a series of popular, nineteenth-century American melodramas that deal with the interaction of Indians and Anglo-Europeans. Priscilla Sears has analyzed these works from a mythological point of view, concentrating on the myths of Indian and Anglo-European identity and destiny and the ways in which they relieve the guilt emanating from contemporary Indian policy and the symbolic betrayal of fathers.