From 1880 to 1930, the vaudeville show reigned as the most popular form of entertainment in America. Vaudeville was a meeting place--an inclusive form of theatre that fostered cultural interaction between New Yorkers. With its daredevils, comics, tear-jerkers, slapstick clowns, and crooners, vaudeville succeeded in presenting as many voices as New York City itself, allowing them to swell together in a chorus rarely in unison, sometimes in harmony, and always as loud, brassy, and quintessentially New York as the sound of the subway train roaring into Times Square. Robert Snyder's entertaining and enlightening book depicts the rise of popular culture in America by brilliantly recapturing the essence and commercial trappings of one of its most vital forms of entertainment--the vaudeville show. Snyder reconstructs famous acts such as Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker, and Weber and Fields; describes the different theaters from Broadway's famous Palace to local Bronx and Brooklyn venues; and demonstrates how entrepreneurs such as B.F. Keith and E.F. Albee created a near monopoly over bookings, theaters, and performers. First exploring the early transformation of the variety theater into a more tasteful form of entertainment for middle-class women, men, and their families, he then introduces us to such influential showmen as Tony Pastor, who took vaudeville out of the Bowery without taking the Bowery completely out of vaudeville. He brings us to the opening of Keith and Albee's theater on Union Square and describes their efforts to make vaudeville a nationwide industry, along the way offering lively descriptions of the performances of Maggie Cline, the lusty-voiced "Irish Queen" of Tony Pastor's theater, Eubie Blake, the ragtime pianist, composer, and son of former slaves, and countless others. He also shows us vaudeville's decline, with the appropriation of vaudeville audiences by musical comedy, radio, and, most importantly, motion pictures, and the Depression and the closing of the Palace--which became a movie house and featured as its first film The Kid From Spain, starring one of the kings of vaudeville, Eddie Cantor. Within the vaudeville theater, New Yorkers found celebration and sentiment, freedom and confinement, abundance and exploitation, intimacy and bureaucracy, glitter and meanness; in other words, they found the voice of the city.

The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York

Humor & Entertainment

Snyder, Robert W.

Humor

Oxford University Press

100 greatest works by Bellows, Sloan, and the other painters of the Ashcan School. This book presents 100 of the greatest paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints by a group of artists derogatorily dubbed the Ashcan School by the critics. George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan ignored the romantic and lofty themes of many of their contemporaries and chose instead to depict the dramatic changes and conflicting social mores among the common people in turn-of-the-century New York City. The Ashcan artists documented the city and its people in an almost journalistic fashion, exploring the same subjects occupying the press: immigration, the lower-middle class, and gender issues. They portrayed life at the street level, gravitating to bars, street corners, boxing clubs, beaches, parks, restaurants, movie theaters, and neighborhood meeting places. In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine the American tradition in painting without these wonderful and moving works. 110 full-color and 100 black-and-white illustrations

Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, 1897-1917

Arts & Photography

Mecklenburg, Virginia M.

Zurier, Rebecca

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

W.W.Norton&Company

While there is nearly universal agreement that the media play a vital and defining role in democracy everywhere it exists, ironically they are often unpopular. However, the media in a democratic system must be credible and reliable lest they lose their influence and authority. It is usually acknowledged that democracy almost never flourishes without an effective, independent media. The contributors to Media and Democracy discuss these issues with the clear recognition that generalizing about the media is often perilous. In the opening section of this volume, "Definitive Questions," chapters by Leo Bogart and Denis McQuail explore the contemporary relationship between media and democracy and its implications for the future. The next section, "Media and the Dynamics of Democracy Around the World," opens with contributions from Vaclav Havel and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former secretary-general of the United Nations. They are joined by authors who examine the relationship between media and democracy in specific locations around the world. The third part, "Journalism as a Democratic Discipline," explores the demands that democracy makes on journalists in chapters by Robert MacNeil, Brian Mulroney, and Margaret T. Gordon. In the final"section, "Democracy and New Media," Lawrence K. Grossman, Sara B. Ivry, and Andrew C. Gordon consider the implications for democracy of new media technologies. Christopher Dornan concludes the book with a review essay examining recent books on media and democracy. Ideally, democracy and media coexist and support each other through a process of negotiation hopefully aimed at developing a consensus about the public interest. Media and Democracy is an intriguing examination of these two important ingredients to American society. It will be of value to political scientists, communications scholars, media specialists, and sociologists.

Media and Democracy (Media Studies Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Dennis, Everette E.

Philosophy

Routledge

Threats to journalists carry many different lessons, but one is constant: People who would intimidate or kill journalists are usually terrified that someone might find out. Journalists who want to protect one another need do nothing more than what should come naturally to them: report on threats to journalists—big threats and small threats, whether they are directed against the international luminaries of the profession or small timers.  Non-journalists can also play a big part in the fight to protect journalists. Next to tough and timely reporting that establishes the facts of a case, nothing protects a journalist so much as public outrage and public support. Ordinary citizens can play an enormous role by pressuring thugs and tyrants who would like to stifle the freedom of the press. The freedom of journalists is consequently the bedrock of freedom for all people.  Chapters and contributors to Journalists in Peril include: "The Clash of Arms in Exotic Locales" by Peter Arnett; "Press Freedom—Balkan Style" by Kati Marton; "Grim Prospects for Hong Kong" by John Schidlovsky; "Russian Reporters—Between a Hammer and an Anvil" by losif M. Dzyaloshinsky; "Defiant Publishing in Nigeria" by Dapo Olorunyomi; "Turkish Journalists on Trial" by Ahmet Emin; "In America, Justice for Some" by Ana Arana; and "Blood and Fear in Italy" by Candida Curzi. The tragic accounts detailed in Journalists in Peril are poignantly written and are important reading for all concerned with democracy in the world, especially political scientists, government officials, and those involved in the various communications professions.

Journalists in Peril (Media Studies Series)

History

Woodhull, Nancy J.

Americas

Most great transformations are not apparent as we live through them. Only in hindsight do individual moments acquire layers of meaning that give them great significance. Looking back is not something that comes naturally to journalists, immersed as they are in breaking events and relentless deadlines. But there is still good reason for journalists, scholars, and people who care about journalism to think about the critical episodes in its recent evolution. In Defining Moments in Journalism, such authors vividly describe episodes of this kind.  Some of the chapters and contributors include: "The Lessons of Little Rock" by Harry S. Ashmore; "Vietnam and War Reporting" by Peter Arnett; "Photo-journalists—Visionaries Who Have Changed Our Vision" by Jane M. Rosett; "The Weight of Watergate" by Ellen Hume; "Women Sportswriters—Business as Usual" by Mary Schmitt; "The Connie Chung Phenomenon" by Somini Sengupta; and "Covering Politics—Is There a Female Difference?" by Judy Woodruff.  The years since the Great Depression and World War II have seen vast changes in America and also in its journalism. Journalists' relationship to power and authority is more complex; the press corps has become more diverse; the technology of news reporting is almost unrecognizably different from that of fifty years ago; and economic reorganization of the media has bundled news and entertainment organizations into conglomerates of extraordinary size. Defining Moments in Journalism is a fascinating read for communications scholars and professionals, historians, and political scientists.

Defining Moments in Journalism (Media Studies Series)

Thirty years ago American political life was all relentless, painful, and confounding: the Tet Offensive brought new intensity to the Vietnam War; President Lyndon Johnson would not seek re-election; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; student protests rocked France; a Soviet invasion ended "socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia; the Mexican government massacred scores of peaceful demonstrators; and Richard M. Nixon was elected president. Any one of the events of 1968 bears claim to historical significance. Together they set off shock waves that divided Americans into new and contending categories: hawks and doves, old and young, feminists and chauvinists, straights and hippies, blacks and whites, militants and moderates. As citizens alive to their own time and as reporters responsible for making sense of it, journalists did not stand aside from the conflicts of 1968. In their lives and in their work, they grappled with momentous issues—war, politics, race, and protest. The contributors to 1968: Year of Media Decision establish not only what journalism meant in 1968, but also gauge the distance and direction that news reporting has traveled since then. There are contrasting essays by David Halberstam, a former war correspondent, and Winant Sidle, a retired major general; former reporter and author Jules Witcover, Jack Newfield on Robert Kennedy's final hour, Curtis Gans on the "Dump Lyndon Johnson" campaign, Dan T. Carter on George C. Wallace, Tom Wicker on Richard Nixon, and Robert Shogan on the new political order. In "Race" Pamela Newkirk discusses the origins and impact of the Kerner report. Robert Lipsyte explores the 1968 Olympics. Robert Friedman details the Columbia University strike, Claude-Jean Bertrand examines the French protests, and there are essays by Mary Holland on Northern Ireland, Madeline K. Albright on the press of the Prague Spring, Suzanne Levine on "the bra that was never burned," and Raymundo Riva Palacio on the Mexican media. With the perspective of thirty years we can see that the events of 1968, which once seemed to erupt out of nowhere, were the consequences of powerful trends. At the same time gauging the distance between then and now can help make it clear which aftershocks of 1968 are with us and which collectively, have disappeared. This volume tells us important things about not only where journalism has been but where it is going.

1968 (Media Studies Series)

Giles, Robert

Robert W. Snyder's Crossing Broadway tells how disparate groups overcame their mutual suspicions to rehabilitate housing, build new schools, restore parks, and work with the police to bring safety to streets racked by crime and fear. It shows how a neighborhood once nicknamed "Frankfurt on the Hudson" for its large population of German Jews became "Quisqueya Heights"―the home of the nation's largest Dominican community.
The story of Washington Heights illuminates New York City's long passage from the Great Depression and World War II through the urban crisis to the globalization and economic inequality of the twenty-first century. Washington Heights residents played crucial roles in saving their neighborhood, but its future as a home for working-class and middle-class people is by no means assured. The growing gap between rich and poor in contemporary New York puts new pressure on the Heights as more affluent newcomers move into buildings that once sustained generations of wage earners and the owners of small businesses.
Crossing Broadway is based on historical research, reporting, and oral histories. Its narrative is powered by the stories of real people whose lives illuminate what was won and lost in northern Manhattan's journey from the past to the present. A tribute to a great American neighborhood, this book shows how residents learned to cross Broadway―over the decades a boundary that has separated black and white, Jews and Irish, Dominican-born and American-born―and make common cause in pursuit of one of the most precious rights: the right to make a home and build a better life in New York City.

Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City

Three Hills

New York City may seem to be a place where everyone is a stranger, yet transit workers provide a human presence on a late-night bus or an empty subway platform. Few of us give any thought to these invisible workers-until something goes wrong. Transit Talk takes readers into the world of MTA New York City transit employees, as they describe their lives and work, from the most visible subway conductor to the seemingly invisible mechanic. There are nearly 44,000 transit workers like those you will meet in Transit Talk , and every day they help five million of us travel to work, to school, to weddings, to funerals, to hospitals, to vacations. These workers labor daily on subway tracks inches from high-voltage powerlines, risking their lives for passengers they'U never know. The city can feel large and fragmented, but the transportation system and its workers create common threads in the lives of all New Yorkers, threads we take for granted. Together, their stories create a human tableau of life and labor in the city within a city that is the MTA New York City Transit. Transit workers find satisfaction in fixing a damaged subway car, gain wisdom from mastering a dangerous workplace, nurse emotional wounds from tending to someone injured in an accident, battle frustration from difficulties with management, and express satisfaction when reflecting on a productive career. They tell of how years spent in the same shop create bonds between workers. They talk of the burden of laboring in a twenty-four-hour system with night shifts and weekend workdays that take them away from families. You'U hear painful tales of informing next-of-kin of a death on the tracks as well as joyous anecdotes of workers delivering a baby in a subway car.

Transit Talk: New York's Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories

Social Sciences

Rutgers University Press

New York City may seem to be a place where everyone is a stranger, yet transit workers provide a human presence on a late-night bus or an empty subway platform. Few of us give any thought to these invisible workers-until something goes wrong. Transit Talk takes readers into the world of MTA New York City transit employees, as they describe their lives and work, from the most visible subway conductor to the seemingly invisible mechanic. There are nearly 44,000 transit workers like those you will meet in Transit Talk , and every day they help five million of us travel to work, to school, to weddings, to funerals, to hospitals, to vacations. These workers labor daily on subway tracks inches from high-voltage powerlines, risking their lives for passengers they'U never know. The city can feel large and fragmented, but the transportation system and its workers create common threads in the lives of all New Yorkers, threads we take for granted. Together, their stories create a human tableau of life and labor in the city within a city that is the MTA New York City Transit. Transit workers find satisfaction in fixing a damaged subway car, gain wisdom from mastering a dangerous workplace, nurse emotional wounds from tending to someone injured in an accident, battle frustration from difficulties with management, and express satisfaction when reflecting on a productive career. They tell of how years spent in the same shop create bonds between workers. They talk of the burden of laboring in a twenty-four-hour system with night shifts and weekend workdays that take them away from families. You'U hear painful tales of informing next-of-kin of a death on the tracks as well as joyous anecdotes of workers delivering a baby in a subway car.

Transit Talk : New York's Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories

Business & Money

Industries

Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York

National Museum of American Art (U.S.)

Smithsonian Inst Natl Museum of

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