Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man write by John F. Kasson. This book was released on 2002-07-02. Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A remarkable new work from one of our premier historians In his exciting new book, John F. Kasson examines the signs of crisis in American life a century ago, signs that new forces of modernity were affecting men's sense of who and what they really were. When the Prussian-born Eugene Sandow, an international vaudeville star and bodybuilder, toured the United States in the 1890s, Florenz Ziegfeld cannily presented him as the "Perfect Man," representing both an ancient ideal of manhood and a modern commodity extolling self-development and self-fulfillment. Then, when Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan swung down a vine into the public eye in 1912, the fantasy of a perfect white Anglo-Saxon male was taken further, escaping the confines of civilization but reasserting its values, beating his chest and bellowing his triumph to the world. With Harry Houdini, the dream of escape was literally embodied in spectacular performances in which he triumphed over every kind of threat to masculine integrity -- bondage, imprisonment, insanity, and death. Kasson's liberally illustrated and persuasively argued study analyzes the themes linking these figures and places them in their rich historical and cultural context. Concern with the white male body -- with exhibiting it and with the perils to it --reached a climax in World War I, he suggests, and continues with us today.
Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man
Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man write by John F. Kasson. This book was released on 2001. Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Concern with the white male body - with exhibiting it and with the perils to it - suffused American culture in the years before World War I, he suggests, and continues with us today."--BOOK JACKET.
Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man
Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man write by John F. Kasson. This book was released on 2005-04. Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. An important new work from one of our premier cultural historians. "Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man" considers the surprisingly complex evolution in representations of the white male body in late-nineteenth-century America, during years of rapid social transformation. John F. Kasson argues that three exemplars of physical prowess -- Eugen Sandow, an international vaudeville star and bodybuilder; Edgar Rice Burroughs's fictional hero Tarzan; and the great escape artist Harry Houdini -- represented both an ancient ideal of manhood and a modern commodity. They each extolled self-development, self-fulfillment, and escape from the confines of civilization while at the same time reasserting its values. This liberally illustrated, persuasively argued study analyzes the thematic links among these figures and places them in their rich historical and cultural context.
Amusing the Million
Amusing the Million - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Amusing the Million write by John F. Kasson. This book was released on 2011-04-01. Amusing the Million available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Coney Island: the name still resonates with a sense of racy Brooklyn excitement, the echo of beach-front popular entertainment before World War I. Amusing the Million examines the historical context in which Coney Island made its reputation as an amusement park and shows how America's changing social and economic conditions formed the basis of a new mass culture. Exploring it afresh in this way, John Kasson shows Coney Island no longer as the object of nostalgia but as a harbinger of modernity--and the many photographs, lithographs, engravings, and other reproductions with which he amplifies his text support this lively thesis.
Rudeness and Civility
Rudeness and Civility - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Rudeness and Civility write by John F. Kasson. This book was released on 1991-09-01. Rudeness and Civility available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. With keen insight and subtle humor, John F. Kasson explores the history and politics of etiquette from America's colonial times through the nineteenth century. He describes the transformation of our notion of "gentility," once considered a birthright to some, and the development of etiquette as a middle-class response to the new urban and industrial economy and to the excesses of democratic society.
