Ethnicity and the American Cemetery

Edited by Richard E. Meyer

The American lawn-park cemetery seeks consolation from the idea that the dead have been integrated into a beneficent natural order, represented by the depersonalized, manicured Forest Lawn-scape. This collection of academic essays examines immigrant grave-site ornaments and customs frequently at odds with the mainstream, Protestant-derived memorial park. Italian, Jewish, and brooding Ukrainian monuments seek to preserve the memory of the individual against the dilution of time, rather than celebrating its re-absorption by the natural order, while Gypsy family plots in Ohio are surprisingly restrained and inconspicuous. Also examined are Asian and Polynesian traditions in Hawaiian cemeteries, and assimilated Native American traditions in New Mexico. RP

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 239 pages
Illustrated

The Revival Styles in American Memorial Art

Peggy McDowell and Richard Meyer

From the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, the Revival Style dominated American memorial art. Harkening back to cultures of yore, Americans channeled their funereal energies into the creation of spectacular edifices and memorials to prominent citizens. Often designed by the leading sculptors and architects of their time, the great majority of these striking artifacts exist to this day for future generations and will provide a chronicle of our nation’s formative years. JAT

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 206 pages
Illustrated

Dance of the Sleepwalkers: The Dance Marathon Fad

Frank M. Calabria

Yowser! Yowser! “The colorful, if bizarre, story” of a phenomenally popular fad that magnetized the American public in the ‘20s and ‘30s, in which two-person teams were incarcerated for weeks at a time, deprived of sleep, and forced to run and walk daily in oddball races until they dropped—winner take all. “‘A Poor Man’s Nightclub,’ dance marathons were the dog-end of American show business, a bastard form of entertainment which borrowed from vaudeville, burlesque, nightclub acts and sports. What began as a craze soon developed into a money-making business which lasted thirty years… Dance marathons held a particular fascination for Americans since they projected traits and values pervasive in America then and now… [They] mirrored the sham side of American culture, its commercialism and opportunism.” This merry madness inspired Horace McCoy’s pulp classic They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? GR

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 215 pages
Illustrated

Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History

Norman Anderson

Is too much information a bad thing? This Ferris-wheel history has more information than you will ever need about this staple of amusement rides. There are examples of wooden, four-seat, human-powered wheels that are still used in India; descriptions of Ferris wheel-like rides that never caught on; Ferris wheels within other rides (like a roller coaster with mini-Ferris wheel on tracks). The last part of this book consists of reprints of what is hopefully every Ferris wheel-related patent ever issued. TC

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 407 pages
Illustrated

The TV Arab

Jack G. Shaheen

From cliché to archetype, mass media style. Born into a working, middle-class Arab/American family in 1950s Pittsburgh, “We never experienced the sting of today’s ethnic slurs,” says the author, who cites how the Arab world is shafted in hundreds of popular TV shows, from Johnny Quest to Scooby Doo, from Cannon to Cagney and Lacey, from PBS documentaries to CBS reports. The author interviews major television producers, and, embarassed, they cop to the medium’s “painting minorities with a broad brush… Television is shorthand,” they say. Here’s proof. GR

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 146 pages
Illustrated

Skinheads Shaved for Battle: A Cultural History of American Skinheads

Jack Moore

Seemingly having peaked in the late ‘80s, when the velcro-heads were a favorite subject of tabloid TV, skins are today an established part of American youth culture, still often associated with white power, and neo-Nazi hate groups.
The author traces the development of the skinhead phenomenon back to its English roots and examines how this quintessentially British youth cult crossed the Atlantic and how the cult has developed in ways unique to the United States. Using a wide range of sources, the author takes a critical look at previous studies of skinheads and adds the often amusingly distant perspective of an academic. NN

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 200 pages
Illustrated

Hardboiled in Hollywood

David Wilt

Meet five Black Mask pulp detective writers (who weren’t named Chandler, Gardner, Hammett, Halliday or L’Amour): Horace McCoy, who wrote Island of Lost Men for Paramount before he wrote They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; Eric Taylor, who penned Universal’s The Ghost of Frankenstein; Peter Ruric, who wrote Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat; Dwight V. Babcock, who scribed Jungle Captive and The Brute Man for Universal; and John K. Butler, who churned out westerns for Republic, and a rare horror movie, The Vampire’s Ghost. Did anybody say “auteur”? GR

Publisher: Bowling Green
Paperback: 189 pages
Illustrated