The Year's Work in the Oddball Archive (The Year's Work: Studies in Fan Culture and Cultural Theory)

The modern age is no stranger to the cabinet of curiosities, the freak show, or a drawer full of odds and ends. These collections of oddities engagingly work against the rationality and order of the conventional archive found in a university, a corporation, or a governmental holding. In form, methodology, and content, The Year’s Work in the Oddball Archive offers a counterargument to a more reasoned form of storing and recording the avant-garde (or the post-avant-garde), the perverse, the off, the bent, the absurd, the quirky, the weird, and the queer. To do so, it positions itself within the history of mirabilia launched by curiosity cabinets starting in the mid-fifteenth century and continuing to the present day. These archives (or are they counter-archives?) are located in unexpected places―the doorways of Katrina homes, the cavity of a cow, the remnants of extinct animals, an Internet site―and they offer up "alternate modes of knowing" to the traditional archive.

Humor & Entertainment

Dickey, Colin

Movies

Indiana University Press

The modern age is no stranger to the cabinet of curiosities, the freak show, or a drawer full of odds and ends. These collections of oddities engagingly work against the rationality and order of the conventional archive found in a university, a corporation, or a governmental holding. In form, methodology, and content, The Year’s Work in the Oddball Archive offers a counterargument to a more reasoned form of storing and recording the avant-garde (or the post-avant-garde), the perverse, the off, the bent, the absurd, the quirky, the weird, and the queer. To do so, it positions itself within the history of mirabilia launched by curiosity cabinets starting in the mid-fifteenth century and continuing to the present day. These archives (or are they counter-archives?) are located in unexpected places―the doorways of Katrina homes, the cavity of a cow, the remnants of extinct animals, an Internet site―and they offer up "alternate modes of knowing" to the traditional archive.

S159 - INDIANA UNIV PR

America's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a tour of the country's most persistent "unexplained" phenomena In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

VIKING

Product Description 
"Absolutely perfect for the current moment." --BuzzfeedAmerica's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a tour of the country's most persistent "unexplained" phenomena\nIn a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures.\nEnter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable. 
 Review 
“Fascinating, troubling, compassionate and—in the end—deeply thoughtful…Dickey’s sense of history reminds us of the complex reasons our odder beliefs endure.” 
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW\n“Colin Dickey’s examination of fringe beliefs is absolutely perfect for the current moment, as we watch a growing (and worrying) distrust in science… In shrewd, accessible analysis and firsthand reporting, Dickey explores his own theories about theories.”— 
BUZZFEED\n“Any aficionado of the macabre would be remiss not to pick it up.”— 
TOR\n“Colin Dickey’s new book about the rise of conspiracy theories and paranoid thought in American culture, could not come at a better time… Brilliant.” 
—THE NEW REPUBLIC\n“A fascinating expedition through fringe belief and theory… A thought-provoking and deliciously unsettling guide into the stranger corners of American culture.”— 
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review\n“Meticulously researched and written, this is the grown-up version of the mysteries of the 
unknown books... Perfect for the skeptics and believers alike.”— 
BOOKLIST\n“Dickey succeeds in informing and entertaining his audience with his sense of wonder… A fascinating blend of history and the strangeness of human nature.”— 
LIBRARY JOURNAL\n“An intriguing mix of myths and monsters.”— 
KIRKUS REVIEWS\n“[A] compelling historical and cultural analysis of human nature… engaging and impressively researched.” 
—BOOKPAGE\n“There are moments while reading 
The Unidentified where can feel yourself becoming fundamentally smarter about the world than you were before.”— 
Caitlin Doughty, New York Times bestselling author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes 
 About the Author 
Colin Dickey is a writer, speaker, and academic, and has made a career out of collecting unusual objects and hidden histories all over the country. He's the author of multiple books, including 
Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, and is a regular contributor to the 
LA Review of Books and 
Lapham's Quarterly, and is the co-editor of 
The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. With a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, he is a professor at National University.\nExcerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 
[ 1 ] \nThe Man Who Could Not Be Turned\nLater, Ignatius Donnelly would recall those heady days of 1856. Standing on the broad porch of his new mansion that overlooked the Mississippi River, he wondered to himself, "Here I am, but twenty-six years old, an

Penguin??Books

From beloved cultural historian and acclaimed author of Ghostland comes a history of America's obsession with secret societies and the conspiracies of hidden power The United States was born in paranoia. From the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Salem witch trials to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, one of the most enduring narratives that defines the United States is simply this: secret groups are conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law. We'd like to assume these panics exist only at the fringes of society, or are unique features of the internet age. But history tells us, in fact, that they are woven into the fabric of American democracy. Cultural historian Colin Dickey has built a career studying how our most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream, why, and what they tell us about ourselves. In Under the Eye of Power, Dickey charts the history of America through its paranoias and fears of secret societies, while seeking to explain why so many people--including some of the most powerful people in the country--continue to subscribe to these conspiracy theories. Paradoxically, he finds, belief in the fantastical and conspiratorial can be more soothing than what we fear the most: the chaos and randomness of history, the rising and falling of fortunes in America, and the messiness of democracy. Only in seeing the cycle of this history, Dickey says, can we break it.

Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

One of NPR's Great Reads of 2016 “A lively assemblage and smart analysis of dozens of haunting stories… absorbing…[and] intellectually intriguing.”—The New York Times Book Review An intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history, Ghostland takes readers on a road trip through some of the country's most infamously haunted places—and deep into the dark side of our history. Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes," Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as "the most haunted mansion in America," or "the most haunted prison"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget. With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living—how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made—and why those changes are made—Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved. Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

Travel

New York Times Bestseller • One of NPR’s Great Reads of 2016 “A lively assemblage and smart analysis of dozens of haunting stories…absorbing…[and] intellectually intriguing.” —The New York Times Book Review From the author of The Unidentified, an intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history that takes readers on a road trip through some of the country’s most infamously haunted places—and deep into the dark side of our history. Colin Dickey is on the trail of America’s ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and “zombie homes,” Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as “the most haunted mansion in America,” or “the most haunted prison”; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget. With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living—how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made—and why those changes are made—Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved. Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we’re most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.

Americas

The after-death stories of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig Beethoven, Swedenborg, Sir Thomas Browne and many others have never before been told in such detail and vividness. Fully illustrated with some surprising images, this is a fascinating and authoritative history of ideas carried along on the guilty pleasures of an anthology of real-after-life gothic tales. Beginning dramatically with the opening of Haydn’s grave in October 1820, cranioklepty takes us on an extraordinary history of a peculiar kind of obsession. The desire to own the skulls of the famous, for study, for sale, for public (and private) display, seems to be instinctual and irresistible in some people. The rise of phrenology at the beginning of the 19th century only fed that fascination with the belief that genius leaves its mark on the very shape of the head.

Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius

Unbridled Books

Afterlives of the Saints is a woven gathering of groundbreaking essays that move through Renaissance anatomy and the Sistine Chapel, Borges’ "Library of Babel," the history of spontaneous human combustion, the dangers of masturbation, the pleasures of castration, and so forth” each essay focusing on the story of a particular (and particularly strange) saint.

Afterlives of the Saints

Biographies & Memoirs

The after-death stories of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig Beethoven, Swedenborg, Sir Thomas Browne and many others have never before been told in such detail and vividness. Fully illustrated with some surprising images, this is a fascinating and authoritative history of ideas carried along on the guilty pleasures of an anthology of real-after-life gothic tales. Beginning dramatically with the opening of Haydn’s grave in October 1820, cranioklepty takes us on an extraordinary history of a peculiar kind of obsession. The desire to own the skulls of the famous, for study, for sale, for public (and private) display, seems to be instinctual and irresistible in some people. The rise of phrenology at the beginning of the 19th century only fed that fascination with the belief that genius leaves its mark on the very shape of the head.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dickey, Colin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dickey, Colin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dickey, Colin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Year's Work in the Oddball Archive (The Year's Work: Studies in Fan Culture and Cultural Theory)

The Year's Work in the Oddball Archive (The Year's Work: Studies in Fan Culture and Cultural Theory)

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained

Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius

Afterlives of the Saints

Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius