At a Victorian dinner party, woe betide the fool who used his pickle fork to eat his duck—or his strawberry fork to eat asparagus. By the time that era’s famous fussiness made its way to the table, any given meal might require as... Read More

“Gilligan’s Island must be the most successful bad show in the history of television,” asserts the author in this collection of interrelated essays exploring the relevance of pop icons in “the age of globalization.” Providing... Read More

“Football is everything America is—fast, young, colorful, complex, efficient, aggressive,” wrote Life magazine in November 1955. “Sitting in the stadium, watching the pretty coeds, singing the stirring old fight songs and yelling... Read More

In France, one of the first famous bearded ladies was Clémentine Delait: Being hirsute from an early age, she simply shaved until she and her husband visited a traveling circus. On spotting an inferior specimen of a hairy gal, she... Read More

Technology transforms the present into the future, sometimes luring the willing into new realms of capability, often yanking the reluctant into new means of productivity. In the entertainment sector, the strength of technology is... Read More

There is an undercurrent of emotion running through all the contributions to this work on sexual liberation, but it isn’t enthusiasm for the subject or even optimism for the future of romantic relationships; it’s anger that bubbles... Read More

“Back in those days, we didn’t have the dime-store variety playthings. Sticks and boards would be carved into machine guns and used in war games. As usual, no one wanted to play the Indians.” In this book, a companion piece to a... Read More

“I compiled this volume to help preserve a dying culture,” states the author, a Kent State professor and storyteller. Offodile’s threatened culture is the “traditional moonlight storytelling culture of the agrarian society” of... Read More