Stretching from the White House's Rose Garden to Hollywood's back lots, this volume features more than 1,000 entries that bring to light little-known facts, hidden histories, and sometimes strange stories about familiar people, places, events, inventions, fads, foods and much more. Over 1,000 photos and illustrations, many in color.
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What finer medium for conveying culture than the alphabet? The dictionary form is especially apt for pop culture, which relies less on logical connection than random association (witness, for example, roller disco or rock opera). Thus, this volume shows us that Stephen King belongs right next to Martin Luther King. Once you see "superheroes" side by side with "surfing" you'll kick yourself for not having made the connection before. Every tiny article in this hefty hardcover is an invitation to further reading and cross-referencing, providing in capsule form the highlights of many histories. Each page is bordered with richly reproduced color photographs. Even the layout of these pictures provides added insight, as when a Ronald McDonald balloon from the Thanksgiving Day parade breaks the border of a reproduction of Norman Rockwell's "Turkey Day." This volume is an almost endless occasion for cultural cross-pollination.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
interesting but too light,
By A Customer
This review is from: America A to Z: People, Places, Customs, and Culture (Hardcover)
As a newcomer to America there's lots of trivia I don't know about but am exposed to every day, so anything which lists the things Americans take for granted is useful. This book is amusing and a bit informative, though the subjects are in the main so well known that there's nothing new to be learned. By its very nature this has to be a light book with brief one paragraph descriptions for most things, so sometimes an item which is worth more detail or possibly a book of its own is under represented. All in all it's like reading the small filler articles in a magazine (it's published by Readers Digest), interesting to spend a couple of minutes dipping into but nothing you'd read from cover to cover or use as a reference book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Once over lightly, but everyone will recognize them,
By
This review is from: America A to Z: People, Places, Customs, and Culture (Hardcover)
Of course it would be impossible, in a book of this size, to go into much real depth about any of the subjects covered, but it's at least enough to pique your interest about them. It might almost have been titled "American Icons," because that's what it lists. The 993 entries range from beloved foods (cheeseburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, cold cereals) through heroes of history (Washington, Lincoln, Lee, the Mercury Seven astronauts, Davy Crockett), writers (Hawthorne, Hemingway, Faulkner, Emerson, Thoreau), performers (John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, the Grateful Dead, Woody Guthrie), places (Death Valley, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon), artists (the Hudson River School, holidays (Halloween, Christmas, July 4), inventors (Edison, Henry Ford), magazines (Mad, Ladies' Home Journal, Readers' Digest), fictional characters, films, TV series, books, and assorted other categories to terms like "Yankee" and "the Roaring '20's." Profusely illustrated and written in RD's trademark brisk, readable prose, it's a treasure house of people, places, customs, and things that have contributed to making the United States what it is. There are a few errors which might have been caught had the proofreaders been more alert (a mention of "President Theodore Roosevelt" during the Spanish-American War, a caption that describes a picture of John Wayne as of his role in The Searchers (John Wayne Collection) when it's really from El Dorado, and the like). It's rather heavily weighted toward the 20th century, since that was when "pop culture" really came into its own, and of course, as in any similar listing, you'll almost certainly find yourself thinking, "Why didn't they include this, and this, and this?" Still, it's a good beginning toward establishing just what American popular culture consists of, and will certainly evoke nostalgia in Americans of every age.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Treasure Trove,
By Time Traveller "JMH" (Reno, Nevada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: America A to Z: People, Places, Customs, and Culture (Hardcover)
I love this book because it presents me with a better understanding and insight about the things I encounter in the American culture on a regular basis.
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