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More copies of this ISBN:The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed Americaby David Hajdu
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created — in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress — only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine. The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told — until The Ten-Cent Plague. David Hajdu's remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority. When we picture the 1950s, we hear the sound of early rock and roll. The Ten-Cent Plague shows how — years before music — comics brought on a clash between children and their parents, between prewar and postwar standards. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics spoke to young people and provided the guardians of mainstream culture with a big target. Parents, teachers, and complicit kids burned comics in public bonfires. Cities passed laws to outlaw comics. Congress took action with televised hearings that nearly destroyed the careers of hundreds of artists and writers. The Ten-Cent Plague radically revises common notions of popular culture, the generation gap, and the divide between "high" and "low" art. As he did with the lives of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (in Lush Life) and Bob Dylan and his circle (in Positively 4th Street), Hajdu brings a place, a time, and a milieu unforgettably back to life. Review:"After writing about the folk scene of the early 1960s in Positively 4th Street, Hajdu goes back a decade to examine the censorship debate over comic books, casting the controversy as a prelude to the cultural battle over rock music. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, the centerpiece of the movement, has been reduced in public memory to a joke — particularly the attack on Batman for its homoeroticism — but Hajdu brings a more nuanced telling of Wertham's background and shows how his arguments were preceded by others. Yet he comes down hard on the unsound research techniques and sweeping generalizations that led Wertham to conclude that nearly all comic books would inspire antisocial behavior in young readers. There are no real heroes here, only villains and victims; Hajdu turns to the writers and artists whose careers were ruined when censorship and other legal restrictions gutted the comics industry, and young kids who were coerced into participating in book burnings by overzealous parents and teachers. With such a meticulous setup, the history builds slowly but the main attraction — EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines's attempt to explain in a Senate committee hearing how an illustration of a man holding a severed head could be in 'good taste' — holds all the dramatic power it has acquired as it's been told among fans over the past half-century." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"[Hajdu] insightfully shows that opposition to crime and horror comics did not come exclusively from know-nothing bigots and small-town smut hounds." Dallas Morning News Review:" Review:"Hajdu writes well and has performed the enormous service of interviewing more than 150 comic-book publishers and creators, which coupled with his archival research enabled him to produce a lively and nuanced portrait of a fascinating aspect of American culture." Boston Globe Review:"One way of looking at the history of American popular culture is to see it as episodic eruptions of condemnation of what young people, and others of limited sophistication, like to see, hear, read and do....Hajdu's book is dead-on." Minneapolis Star Tribune Review:"[An] amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination." Janet Maslin, New York Times Review:"Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture to create waves of destructive indignation and accusation. David Hajdu's fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit, which is the best kind. He illuminates the lives of his protagonists — from pompous, on-the-make censors to cracked comic book geniuses — with his own graphic powers, as well as his intense intellectual curiosity. The book is a rarity, vividly depicting a noir-ish 1950's America but without a trace of irony or nostalgia." Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University Synopsis:In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. About the AuthorDavid Hajdu is the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. He is the music critic for The New Republic, and he teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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