by Jenna Weissman Joselit ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2001
Useful reading in a time when, for Americans of whatever age, the rule of attire seems to be anything goes—and the sillier...
Fashion meets politics—and gets a little frayed in the encounter.
Cultural historian Joselit (The Wonders of America, not reviewed) examines American clothing styles from 1890 to 1930 as an expression not merely of the individual, but also of the body politic. With the advent of mass-produced garments and the decline in the domestic arts of sewing and mending, ready-to-wear clothing became the norm during this time, she observes, and with this norm came normative propaganda that proclaimed that “what one wore was a public construct, bound up with an enduring moral order.” This propaganda was generally mild and approving during an age when men could be expected to don their silk foulards and women their fox-skin gloves without protest, but it took on more strident tones when, in the 1920s, they began to experiment with odd colors and ever-higher hemlines, exciting prurient interest and theological condemnation in roughly equal measure. (Some years later, she writes, a Catholic priest even developed a line of clothing that, he argued, the Virgin Mary herself might wear were she to reappear on earth.) Drawing on insights from American and cultural studies, Joselit offers an account that is full of fascinating asides and historical oddments, one that gives due consideration to contemporary working-class and minority interpretations of just what constituted acceptable fashion. (As it happens, African-American and Jewish immigrant leaders, among others, urged their followers to dress respectably as a means of gaining status in the larger society.) Her study is marred somewhat by the author’s portentous and sometimes self-important tone—a characteristic of academic work in the field that is likely only to annoy general readers.
Useful reading in a time when, for Americans of whatever age, the rule of attire seems to be anything goes—and the sillier the better.Pub Date: June 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-5488-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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