Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana - Softcover

Susan Jonas; Marilyn Nissenson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811802922 ISBN 13: 9780811802925

Publisher: Chronicle Books Llc, 1994

Synopsis

Describes things that are disappearing, including automats, bridge parties, carbon paper, the draft, drive-in movies, girdles, leisure suits, telegrams, and vinyl records

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Jonas and Marilyn Nissenson live across the street from each other in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

Jonas and Nissenson ( The Ubiquitous Pig ) slyly present nostalgia with a subtext--many of their examples of phenomena which are disappearing, or already have disappeared, are gender-related. Each entry has a short descriptive essay and black-and-white photographs. For example, the treatise on blue laws--which kept businesses closed on Sundays--outlines their Puritan roots and points out that with women in the work force, Sunday shopping became a necessity. Quotes from popular literature also enhance these often ironic presentations, such as the segment from a 1939 Harper's Bazaar article included in the section on girdles. On a more serious note, sexual assault is shown to have caused the demise of hitchhiking; the end of men's clubs like Yale University's Skull and Bones is chronicled by its members; and comments on the decrease in the number of nuns include anecdotal evidence such as film director Martin Scorsese's belief that "most of the nuns who taught him were hopelessly ignorant and politically conservative" and an unnamed artist's comment that nuns made parochial school students believe that Protestant friends would "put a microscopic sliver of bacon in a cupcake and give it to us on Friday."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chronicle Books Llc
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0811802922
• ISBN 13: 9780811802925
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 175