Waller (who teaches film and popular culture at the University of Kentucky) uses the movies and their commercial reception in Lexington, Ky., as a lens through which to examine the evolution of the entertainment business in small-city America, and to see how racial divisions affected that development. When movies arrived in 1896, Lexington was a ``small city with little heavy industry, few first-generation immigrants, a substantial African-American community, a preponderance of native Kentuckians, and a sense of itself as being southern.'' That was a time when the mere use of Thomas Edison's name could constitute a selling point, a time of high-diving horse acts and embalmed curiosities. From the start, though, movies were an attraction that crossed class, education, age, race, and gender lines in Lexington. By 1911 the motion picture was the city's most popular form of commercial entertainment. But Waller shows that the price of that ascendancy was controversy, from protests against the showing of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation to repeated assaults on Sunday showings by religious leaders. Taking the history of Lexington's movie-going up to the coming of the sound film, Waller is able to trace how other forms of entertainment competed for an audience and how local exhibitors fended them off. The result is a valuable portrait of how a city and its culture were altered by the forces of technology, as well as an instructive history of early 20th- century culture wars that anticipated our own heated battles of today. Regrettably, Waller tells this fascinating story in academic prose that will probably limit his book's readership. That said, it is a useful work that earns a place on the shelf next to Scribner's superb History of the American Cinema series and the pioneering work of film historian Douglas Gomery. (34 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56098-504-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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