The Guide to United States Popular Culture - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879728213 ISBN 13: 9780879728212

Publisher: Popular Press 3, 2001

Synopsis

"To understand the history and spirit of America, one must know its wars, its laws, and its presidents. To really understand it, however, one must also know its cheeseburgers, its love songs, and its lawn ornaments. The long-awaited Guide to the United States Popular Culture provides a single-volume guide to the landscape of everyday life in the United States. Scholars, students, and researchers will find in it a valuable tool with which to fill in the gaps left by traditional history. All American readers will find in it, one entry at a time, the story of their lives."—Robert Thompson, President, Popular Culture Association.

"At long last popular culture may indeed be given its due within the humanities with the publication of The Guide to United States Popular Culture. With its nearly 1600 entries, it promises to be the most comprehensive single-volume source of information about popular culture. The range of subjects and diversity of opinions represented will make this an almost indispensable resource for humanities and popular culture scholars and enthusiasts alike."—Timothy E. Scheurer, President, American Culture Association

"The popular culture of the United States is as free-wheeling and complex as the society it animates. To understand it, one needs assistance. Now that explanatory road map is provided in this Guide which charts the movements and people involved and provides a light at the end of the rainbow of dreams and expectations."—Marshall W. Fishwick, Past President, Popular Culture Association

Features of The Guide to United States Popular Culture:

1,010 pages

1,600 entries

500 contributors

Alphabetic entries

Entries range from general topics (golf, film) to specific individuals, items, and events

Articles are supplemented by bibliographies and cross references

Comprehensive index

About this title

About the Author:

Ray B. Browne, editor, founder of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, is the author or editor of more than seventy books on literature and popular culture.

Pat Browne, editor, is the Director of Bowling Green State University's Popular Press and the editor of the journal CLUES.

From Library Journal:

In the preface to this hefty guide, the editors define popular culture as "the way of life in which and by which most people in any society live." More than 1600 entries written by 500 contributors help explain and provide context for mostly 20th-century American phenomena (Dilbert, Seinfeld, Woodstock music festival), inventions (breakfast cereals, TV dinners, Marvel comics), heroes (the Lone Ranger, disk jockey Cousin Brucie, athlete Michael Jordan), creative geniuses (composer Cole Porter, musician Frank Zappa, film director Spike Lee), pastimes (professional wrestling, National Public Radio, rodeo, stockcar racing), and fads (the Macarena, self-help literature, cult films such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show). Some overlapping and related content areas could have been better coordinated, cross-referenced, and indexed. For example, the entries about radio evangelists and televangelism were written by different contributors and not referenced to each other. Libraries that already own NTC's Dictionary of the United States (1999) or The Complete, Cross-Referenced Guide to the Baby Buster Generation's Collective Unconscious (LJ 3/1/98) will want to purchase this new reference tool because of its currency, breadth of coverage, and number of entries. Elizabeth Connor, Univ. of South Carolina Medical Lib., Charleston

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Popular Press 3
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0879728213
• ISBN 13: 9780879728212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1024
• Editor: Browne Ray B., Browne Pat