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Author: Sarah Churchwell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441145885
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
What is it about certain books that makes them bestsellers? Why do some of these books remain popular for centuries, and others fade gently into obscurity? And why is it that when scholars do turn their attention to bestsellers, they seem only to be interested in the same handful of blockbusters, when so many books that were once immensely popular remain under-examined? Addressing those and other equally pressing questions about popular literature, Must Read is the first scholarly collection to offer both a survey of the evolution of American bestsellers as well as critical readings of some of the key texts that have shaped the American imagination since the nation's founding. Focusing on a mix of enduring and forgotten bestsellers, the essays in this collection consider 18th and 19th century works, like Charlotte Temple or Ben-Hur, that were once considered epochal but are now virtually ignored; 20th century favorites such as The Sheik and Peyton Place; and 21st century blockbusters including the novels of Nicholas Sparks, The Kite Runner, and The Da Vinci Code.
Author: Sarah Churchwell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441145885
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Get Book Here
Book Description
What is it about certain books that makes them bestsellers? Why do some of these books remain popular for centuries, and others fade gently into obscurity? And why is it that when scholars do turn their attention to bestsellers, they seem only to be interested in the same handful of blockbusters, when so many books that were once immensely popular remain under-examined? Addressing those and other equally pressing questions about popular literature, Must Read is the first scholarly collection to offer both a survey of the evolution of American bestsellers as well as critical readings of some of the key texts that have shaped the American imagination since the nation's founding. Focusing on a mix of enduring and forgotten bestsellers, the essays in this collection consider 18th and 19th century works, like Charlotte Temple or Ben-Hur, that were once considered epochal but are now virtually ignored; 20th century favorites such as The Sheik and Peyton Place; and 21st century blockbusters including the novels of Nicholas Sparks, The Kite Runner, and The Da Vinci Code.
Author: Emily Satterwhite
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813130107
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 397
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Book Description
Much criticism has been directed at negative stereotypes of Appalachia perpetuated by movies, television shows, and news media. Books, on the other hand, often draw enthusiastic praise for their celebration of the simplicity and authenticity of the Appalachian region. Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878 employs the innovative new strategy of examining fan mail, reviews, and readers’ geographic affiliations to understand how readers have imagined the region and what purposes these imagined geographies have served for them. As Emily Satterwhite traces the changing visions of Appalachia across the decades, from the Gilded Age (1865–1895) to the present, she finds that every generation has produced an audience hungry for a romantic version of Appalachia. According to Satterwhite, best-selling fiction has portrayed Appalachia as a distinctive place apart from the mainstream United States, has offered cosmopolitan white readers a sense of identity and community, and has engendered feelings of national and cultural pride. Thanks in part to readers’ faith in authors as authentic representatives of the regions they write about, Satterwhite argues, regional fiction often plays a role in creating and affirming regional identity. By mapping the geographic locations of fans, Dear Appalachia demonstrates that mobile white readers in particular, including regional elites, have idealized Appalachia as rooted, static, and protected from commercial society in order to reassure themselves that there remains an “authentic” America untouched by global currents. Investigating texts such as John Fox Jr.’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker (1954), James Dickey’s Deliverance (1970), and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (1997), Dear Appalachia moves beyond traditional studies of regional fiction to document the functions of these narratives in the lives of readers, revealing not only what people have thought about Appalachia, but why.
Author: C. Bloom
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230583873
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 445
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Book Description
This essential guide, now available in a fully updated new edition, is the only available study of all bestselling books, authors and genres since the start of the last century, giving an unique insight into a hundred years of publishing and reading and taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.
Author: Joyce Antler
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9780874518429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Essays that discuss the portrayal of Jewish women in American culture.
Author: Nancy Workman
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761827603
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
This book is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Lewis University College of Arts and Sciences. Editors Nancy Workman and Therese Jones bring together a variety of Lewis University educators and administrators to examine the purpose, history, and practice of liberal learning, while preparing for the future of education.
Author: Everette E. Dennis
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412832519
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
Warnings of the death of the book and the degradation of literature have been prevalent for decades, yet books survive and book publishing remains a viable and important force with the media mix. At times, it is hard to distinguish book publishing from the rest of the media enterprise, since publishing houses are both independent entities and also part of newspaper, magazine, and electronic media empires. The oldest of the mass media, books were also the first to achieve a global presence, crossing easily over national and political boundaries from earliest times and serving as a venue for debate and development of thought. As testimony to their continued viability, publishing houses have been briskly bought up in the international marketplace by global media conglomerates. "Publishing Books "explores the current health and future prospects of books and the book publishing industry in the United States. It contains perspectives ranging from an insider view of publishing executives to those of agents, authors, booksellers, and readers. Dan Lacy provides an overview of the structure and economic history of book publishing. Jeremiah Kaplan predicts that books as we know them will disappear in the next century, although writers and readers will not. Gene D. Lanier contends that one worsening threat to books and publishing is the incidence of censorship. Other topics covered in "Publishing Books "include the importance of book reviews, the histories of New York's greatest bookstores, why there are so few book lovers among journalists, and the decline in quality of the writings of U.S. presidents. This volume also includes a section by Beth Luey reviewing six books on publishing. "Publishing Books "is a pioneering study of the history, current status, and future of books and their impact. It will be vital for publishers, editors, and librarians.
Author: Ben Yagoda
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101151471
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
From a critically acclaimed cultural and literary critic, a definitive history and analysis of the memoir. From Saint Augustine?s Confessions to Augusten Burroughs?s Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. Cultural and literary critic Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings and Roman generals? journals all the way up to the banner year of 2007, which saw memoirs from and about dogs, rock stars, bad dads, good dads, alternadads, waitresses, George Foreman, Iranian women, and a slew of other illustrious persons (and animals). In a time when memoir seems ubiquitous and is still highly controversial, Yagoda tackles the autobiography and memoir in all its forms and iterations. He discusses the fraudulent memoir and provides many examples from the past?and addresses the ramifications and consequences of these books. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition?Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Yagoda also describes historical trends, such as Native American captive memoirs, slave narratives, courtier dramas (where one had to pay to NOT be included in a courtesan?s memoir). Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored. Yagoda's elegant examination of memoir is at once a history of literature and taste, and an absorbing glimpse into what humans find interesting--one another.
Author: Ezra Greenspan
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271021515
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Book History is the annual journal of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Inc. (SHARP). Book History is devoted to every aspect of the history of the book, broadly defined as the history of the creation, dissemination, and the reception of script and print. Book History publishes research on the social, economic, and cultural history of authorship, editing, printing, the book arts, publishing, the book trade, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, copyright, censorship, literary agents, libraries, literary criticism, canon formation, literacy, literacy education, reading habits, and reader response.
Author: James W. Hall
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679604960
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF WHAT MAKES A MEGA-BESTSELLER IN THIS ENTERTAINING, REVELATORY GUIDE What do Michael Corleone, Jack Ryan, and Scout Finch have in common? Creative writing professor and thriller writer James W. Hall knows. Now, in this entertaining, revelatory book, he reveals how bestsellers work, using twelve twentieth-century blockbusters as case studies—including The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Jaws. From tempting glimpses inside secret societies, such as submariners in The Hunt for Red October, and Opus Dei in The Da Vinci Code, to vivid representations of the American Dream and its opposite—the American Nightmare—in novels like The Firm and The Dead Zone, Hall identifies the common features of mega-bestsellers. Including fascinating and little-known facts about some of the most beloved books of the last century, Hit Lit is a must-read for fiction lovers and aspiring writers alike, and makes us think anew about why we love the books we love.
Author: Chris Vials
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604733497
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Realism for the Masses is an exploration of how the concept of realism entered mass culture, and from there, how it tried to remake “America.” The literary and artistic creations of American realism are generally associated with the late nineteenth century. But this book argues that the aesthetic actually saturated American culture in the 1930s and 1940s and that the Left social movements of the period were in no small part responsible. The book examines the prose of Carlos Bulosan and H. T. Tsiang; the photo essays of Margaret Bourke-White in Life magazine; the bestsellers of Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Mitchell; the boxing narratives of Clifford Odets, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren; and the Hollywood boxing film, radio soap operas, and the domestic dramas of Lillian Hellman and Shirley Graham, and more. These writers and artists infused realist aesthetics into American mass culture to an unprecedented degree and also built on a tradition of realism in order to inject influential definitions of “the people” into American popular entertainment. Central to this book is the relationship between these mass cultural realisms and emergent notions of pluralism. Significantly, Vials identifies three nascent pluralisms of the 1930s and 1940s: the New Deal pluralism of “We're the People” in The Grapes of Wrath; the racially inclusive pluralism of Vice President Henry Wallace's “The People's Century”; and the proto-Cold War pluralism of Henry Luce's “The American Century.”
