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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Book That Misses the Forest for the Trees, October 22, 2006
This review is from: Live from Atlantic City: The Miss America Pageant Before, After, and In Spite of Television (Paperback)
After reading this book, I found myself disappointed with an author that seemed to miss opportunity after opportunity for insightful analysis and instead focused on the minutiae of, say, the banter between an M.C. and a pageant contestant in a decades old tape of the Miss America pageant. Unless one is for some reason in need of highly detailed information on the proceedings of past Miss America pageants, I would suggest looking elsewhere for a book about beauty pageant culture.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
definitive history of pageants, April 25, 2001
If you are looking for a coffee table book, this is not it. If you are looking for a book on tips for winning pageants, this is not it. If you are looking for a detailed, fully documented history of the Miss America Pageant then L.F.A.C. is your book. It is not only specific and insightful, but also looks at the pageant's evolution as a media event. It is scholarly in its approach.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Live from Atlantic City: A History of the Miss America Page, March 17, 2001
By A Customer
Riverol's research and preparation for writing this book seems almost exhaustive, but his presentation is unexciting and repetitive. With only 96 pages of text to read, 25 pages of photographs, 15 pages of footnotes, 9 pages of "works cited" and 5 pages of index , the book seems unbalanced, but Riverol admits in his foreword that this is a "scholarly" study. The most interesting portion of the book is his "Preliminary Thoughts" which speaks of how and why beauty pageants arose in history. After this initial chapter, he goes through each decade of the pageant, beginning with the 1920's. We learn from him when talent became a factor, when the "Miss Congeniality" Award began and why it was stopped in 1975, and other important changes along the way, but he only lightly discusses incidents with the contestants and winners and there is almost no dialogue in the book. Instead we see repeated program lineups, lists of preliminary winners, and finalists, in at least six key pageants. The changes that TV brought are shown as well as how the pageant survived ups and downs such as the Vanessa Williams Penthouse incident and the feminists' protests. This history of the American icon which is also the largest scholarship program for women ends at 1992, the copyright date of the book.
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