The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s

The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s PDF Author: Mariah Adin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440833737
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
What caused four recently bar mitzvahed middle-class youths to go on a crime spree of assault and murder in 1954? This book provides a compelling narrative retelling of the boys, their crimes, and a U.S. culture obsessed with juvenile delinquency. After ongoing months of daily headlines about gang shootouts, stomp-killings, and millions of dollars worth of vandalism, by the summer of 1954, America had had enough of juvenile delinquency. It was in this environment that 18-year-old Jack Koslow and the other three teenage members of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers committed their heinous crimes and achieved notoriety. The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s exposes the underbelly of America's mid-century, the terrible price of assimilation, the uncomfortable bedfellows of comic books and juvenile delinquency, and the dystopia already in bloom amongst American youth well before the 1960s. Readers will be engrossed and horrified by the tale of the Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang whose shocking, front-page story could easily have been copy-pasted from today's online news sites. Author Mariah Adin takes readers along for a breathtaking moment-by-moment retelling of the crime spree, the subsequent interrogations, and the dramatic courtroom showdown, interspersed with expository chapters on juvenile delinquency, America's Jewish community in the post-Holocaust period, and the anti-comics movement. This book serves to merge the history of juvenile delinquency with that of the Great Comic Book Scare, highlights the assimilation of immigrants into America's white mainstream gone wrong, and complicates our understanding of America's "Golden Age."

The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s

The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s PDF Author: Mariah Adin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440833737
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
What caused four recently bar mitzvahed middle-class youths to go on a crime spree of assault and murder in 1954? This book provides a compelling narrative retelling of the boys, their crimes, and a U.S. culture obsessed with juvenile delinquency. After ongoing months of daily headlines about gang shootouts, stomp-killings, and millions of dollars worth of vandalism, by the summer of 1954, America had had enough of juvenile delinquency. It was in this environment that 18-year-old Jack Koslow and the other three teenage members of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers committed their heinous crimes and achieved notoriety. The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s exposes the underbelly of America's mid-century, the terrible price of assimilation, the uncomfortable bedfellows of comic books and juvenile delinquency, and the dystopia already in bloom amongst American youth well before the 1960s. Readers will be engrossed and horrified by the tale of the Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang whose shocking, front-page story could easily have been copy-pasted from today's online news sites. Author Mariah Adin takes readers along for a breathtaking moment-by-moment retelling of the crime spree, the subsequent interrogations, and the dramatic courtroom showdown, interspersed with expository chapters on juvenile delinquency, America's Jewish community in the post-Holocaust period, and the anti-comics movement. This book serves to merge the history of juvenile delinquency with that of the Great Comic Book Scare, highlights the assimilation of immigrants into America's white mainstream gone wrong, and complicates our understanding of America's "Golden Age."

The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s

The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s PDF Author: Mariah Adin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description
What caused four recently bar mitzvahed middle-class youths to go on a crime spree of assault and murder in 1954? This book provides a compelling narrative retelling of the boys, their crimes, and a U.S. culture obsessed with juvenile delinquency. After ongoing months of daily headlines about gang shootouts, stomp-killings, and millions of dollars worth of vandalism, by the summer of 1954, America had had enough of juvenile delinquency. It was in this environment that 18-year-old Jack Koslow and the other three teenage members of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers committed their heinous crimes and achieved notoriety. The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s exposes the underbelly of America's mid-century, the terrible price of assimilation, the uncomfortable bedfellows of comic books and juvenile delinquency, and the dystopia already in bloom amongst American youth well before the 1960s. Readers will be engrossed and horrified by the tale of the Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang whose shocking, front-page story could easily have been copy-pasted from today's online news sites. Author Mariah Adin takes readers along for a breathtaking moment-by-moment retelling of the crime spree, the subsequent interrogations, and the dramatic courtroom showdown, interspersed with expository chapters on juvenile delinquency, America's Jewish community in the post-Holocaust period, and the anti-comics movement. This book serves to merge the history of juvenile delinquency with that of the Great Comic Book Scare, highlights the assimilation of immigrants into America's white mainstream gone wrong, and complicates our understanding of America's "Golden Age."

Brooklyn's Most Wanted

Brooklyn's Most Wanted PDF Author: Craig McGuire
Publisher: WildBlue Press
ISBN: 1942266979
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A collected history of the 100 most notorious criminals to walk the streets of the New York City borough. Brooklyn’s Most Wanted parades an impressive perp walk of 100 of the borough’s most notorious, ranking them meticulously from bad to worst. From crime bosses to career criminals to corrupt politicians, pedophile priests to Ponzi scammers, this is not your usual crime chronicle. You want labor racketeering, Ponzi scheming, hijacking, murder, loan sharking, arson, illegal gambling, money laundering? Fugetaboutit! Take this guided gangland tour of Brooklyn, the broken land, and meet everyone from the South Brooklyn Boys to the Soviet thugs of Brighton Beach’s Little Odessa. Want to know what Billy the Kid, John Wilkes Booth and the Son of Sam all have in common? Brooklyn. Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, Al Capone, Frankie Yale, Paul Vario, Roy DeMeo and so many more malicious malcontents and maniacs stalk these pages, as author Craig McGuire rank a rogues’ gallery of the best of the worst from Brooklyn’s crime-ridden past and present. This includes more than a century of screaming crime blotter headlines, spotlighting epic cases, like The Brooklyn Godmother, The Sex Killer of Brooklyn, The Nurse Girl Murder, The Long Island Railroad Massacre, The Thrill Kills Gang, and many more. From “Son of Sam” to “Son of Sal,” “Little Lepke” to “Big Paulie,” “The Butcher of Brooklyn,” “The Vampire of Brooklyn,” “The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” and even “The Man Who Murdered Brooklyn Baseball,” they’re all here. Much more than Murder Incorporated, this book features kingpins and lone wolves alike, with a line-up featuring many of the multi-ethnic mobs mimicking the original La Cosa Nostra—the Russian Mafia, the Albanian Mafia, the Polish Mafia, the Greek Mafia—in fact, this book contains more mafias than you can shake a bloody blackjack at. The author’s proprietary Notorious Brooklyn Index analyzes criminal activity, socio-economic type, notoriety, relation to Brooklyn and more for a final score that’s far from conjecture—though it will undoubtedly spark debate. Praise for Brooklyn’s Most Wanted “Never has anyone put together a look into so many of Brooklyn’s worst. This is a great read I highly recommend.” —Thomas Dades, retired NYPD detective, bestselling author of Friends of the Family “If you love all-things-Brooklyn like I do, this is an absolute must-read you need on your shelf. . . . A revealing, rousing, rip-roaring tour that will slice you right into the underbelly of New York City’s most historic borough.” —Ron Valdes, co-founder, Brooklyn Creative Partners

Is Superman Circumcised?

Is Superman Circumcised? PDF Author: Roy Schwartz
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476644411
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Superman is the original superhero, an American icon, and arguably the most famous character in the world--and he's Jewish! Introduced in June 1938, the Man of Steel was created by two Jewish teens, Jerry Siegel, the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and Joe Shuster, an immigrant. They based their hero's origin story on Moses, his strength on Samson, his mission on the golem, and his nebbish secret identity on themselves. They made him a refugee fleeing catastrophe on the eve of World War II and sent him to tear Nazi tanks apart nearly two years before the US joined the war. In the following decades, Superman's mostly Jewish writers, artists, and editors continued to borrow Jewish motifs for their stories, basing Krypton's past on Genesis and Exodus, its society on Jewish culture, the trial of Lex Luthor on Adolf Eichmann's, and a future holiday celebrating Superman on Passover. A fascinating journey through comic book lore, American history, and Jewish tradition, this book examines the entirety of Superman's career from 1938 to date, and is sure to give readers a newfound appreciation for the Mensch of Steel!

The American Way

The American Way PDF Author: Helene Stapinski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982171677
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"An exuberant true-life adventure following two very different men - a loveable huckster turned publisher of DC Comics and the man he helped escape from 1930s Berlin - as they cross paths with icons of midcentury pop culture in pursuit of the American dream"--

Korean War Comic Books

Korean War Comic Books PDF Author: Leonard Rifas
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786443960
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Comic books have presented fictional and fact-based stories of the Korean War, as it was being fought and afterward. Comparing these comics with events that inspired them offers a deeper understanding of the comics industry, America's "forgotten war," and the anti-comics movement, championed by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who criticized their brutalization of the imagination. Comics--both newsstand offerings and government propaganda--used fictions to justify the unpopular war as necessary and moral. This book examines the dramatization of events and issues, including the war's origins, germ warfare, brainwashing, Cold War espionage, the nuclear threat, African Americans in the military, mistreatment of POWs, and atrocities.

Parents, Media and Panic through the Years

Parents, Media and Panic through the Years PDF Author: Karen Leick
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319983199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
This book analyses articles that appeared in popular periodicals from the 1920s to the present, each revealing the panic that parents and adults have expressed about media including radio, television, video games and the Internet for the last century. Karen Leick argues that parents have continuously shown an intense anxiety about new media, while expressing a romanticized nostalgia for their own youth. Recurring tropes describe concerns about each "addictive" new media: children do not play outside anymore, lack imagination, and may imitate violent or other inappropriate content that they encounter.

Violence in Popular Culture

Violence in Popular Culture PDF Author: Laura L. Finley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440854335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A comprehensive resource, this book reviews current and historical examples of violence in film, television, radio, music, music videos, video games, and novels. Despite decades of attention and various attempts to enact legislation that limits violence in American popular culture, it remains ubiquitous across films, television, radio, music, music videos, video games, and popular fiction. Studies have shown that programs marketed to children are often remarkably violent and that viewing or otherwise consuming such violence has numerous negative effects on children's psychological health. This book sheds light on the scholarship related to violence in popular culture and compares historical and current examples, analyzing popular shows such as Game of Thrones, video games such as Mortal Kombat, young adult fiction including the trilogy The Hunger Games, and more. Not only does Violence in American Popular Culture provide a comprehensive review of the research about the effects of violence in media, but it also offers detailed assessments of violent content in various expressions of popular culture. In addition, it invites readers to compare violence in American popular culture with that globally via entries on violence in popular culture outside the United States. An appendix of additional resources and primary sources gives readers further tools for deepening their understanding of this complex and controversial issue.

Sin, Sex & Subversion

Sin, Sex & Subversion PDF Author: David Rosen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631440454
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
During the tumultuous 1950s in America, sex was as threatening to the nation’s moral order as communism. New York was the capital of the post–World War II world and the epicenter of a fierce culture war over music, theatre, movies, fashion, and literature, as well as birth control, homosexuality, adolescent sex, pornography, and prostitution. Over the last half-century, America’s social life—especially notions of culture, sexuality, and politics—has fundamentally changed, and what were once sinful or subversive sexual practices have been integrated into the marketplace, irreversibly changing American moral values; the once illicit has become an industry of more than $50 billion. Drawing on first-person interviews, unpublished memoirs, newspaper accounts, contemporary studies, government documents, and recent scholarship, Sin, Sex & Subversion argues that “deviant” sexuality was subversive, and that unique New York “outsiders” of the 1950s set the stage for the following decades and the world we know today. In each chapter, author David Rosen examines a critical moral issue through an in-depth profile of figures such as Liberace, Samuel Roth, Bettie Page, the Rosenbergs, and others. Through these individuals, Rosen shows how those who operated outside the law or who challenged popular values, even if they were silenced in their time, ended up paving the way for a new normal. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history—books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors

From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors PDF Author: Peter W.Y. Lee
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978813481
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
After World War II, studies examining youth culture on the silver screen start with James Dean. But the angst that Dean symbolized—anxieties over parents, the “Establishment,” and the expectations of future citizen-soldiers—long predated Rebels without a Cause. Historians have largely overlooked how the Great Depression and World War II impacted and shaped the Cold War, and youth contributed to the national ideologies of family and freedom. From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors explores this gap by connecting facets of boyhood as represented in American film from the 1930s to the postwar years. From the Andy Hardy series to pictures such as The Search, Intruder in the Dust, and The Gunfighter, boy characters addressed larger concerns over the dysfunctional family unit, militarism, the “race question,” and the international scene as the Korean War began. Navigating the political, social, and economic milieus inside and outside of Hollywood, Peter W.Y. Lee demonstrates that continuities from the 1930s influenced the unique postwar moment, coalescing into anticommunism and the Cold War.