Perceptive, subtly nuanced study of how Americans' perceptions of TV have developed over the past five decades. Drawing on magazine and newspaper articles, novels and short stories, advertisements, cartoons, and other material, Tichi (Vanderbilt Univ.) takes a close look at the often maligned, frequently misinterpreted medium, offering far more insights than did Watching America (p. 585), by Linda Lichter, S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, whose statistical approach yielded little that was revelatory or unpredictable. Tichi investigates such matters as the early antipathy to the electronic medium expressed by print- oriented commentators like Bennett Cerf, the impact of the cold war on public reactions to TV, and the ways in which TV has come to be accepted by younger writers who grew up in the Television Age. She is particularly effective in analyzing how TV was marketed in the late 40's and early 50's, explaining that TV manufacturers emphasized the technology of the new medium when aiming their marketing efforts at male consumers but appealed to women buyers by stressing the decorative or ``furniture'' aspects of the TV set. Tichi explores our attitudes toward leisure and finds ``that leisure is antithetical to the ideology of the United States''- -here, as elsewhere, her thinking is original, her arguments convincing. Fresh and fascinating.
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-19-506549-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | WORLD | HISTORY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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The debut book from “one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard.”
In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn’t invent or embellish. But as she notes, “this book is not a traditional nonfiction book….I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes.” Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered “illegal” in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author’s candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories.
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-59268-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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