Full AspenCat Catalog

A look at what kind of work Americans did, the homes they lived in, the goods they bought, the entertainment they sought, and the society and history that shaped their world ...

Christie takes a fresh look at President Ronald Reagan's character-driven political instincts and deeply impactful relationships across party lines--finding plenty of compelling insights for our current national dysfunction.

A look at what kind of work Americans did, the homes they lived in, the goods they bought, the entertainment they sought, and the society and history that shaped their world ...

A cultural critic and investigative journalist uncovers the full history of the Barbie doll, from her introduction in 1959 through countless transformations, makeovers and career changes to its emergence as an international pop culture icon.

From the publisher. Flappers takes readers back to the time of speakeasies, gangsters, dance bands, and silent film stars, offering a fresh look at the Jazz Age by focusing on the women who came to symbolize it. Flappers captures the full scope of the hedonistic subculture that made the Roaring Twenties roar, a group that reacted to Prohibition and other attempts to impose a stricter morality on the nation. Topics include the transition from silent...

From the publisher. This offers a detailed and long-awaited reassessment of one of the most maligned periods in American journalism -- the era of the yellow press. The study challenges and dismantles several prominent myths about the genre, finding that the yellow press did not foment -- could not have fomented -- the Spanish-American War in 1898, contrary to the arguments of many media historians. The study presents extensive evidence showing that...

Determined to do what he could to stop the rising tide of bigotry perpetuated by the right wing and frustrated by not being able to acknowledge his sexual preference, Marvin Liebman - a major strategist and fund-raiser for the conservative movement - decided in 1990 to reveal his homosexuality. With the demise of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union - the "enemy" that has long held the conservative movement together - Liebman fears that the...

"Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed. As he crossed the Congo River in an almost empty ferry boat, all he could see were lines of people trying to travel the other way-out of the Congo. Within his first two weeks he found himself on the wrong end of a revolver as militiamen played Russian-roulette,...

"The story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. "They're not going to catch us," Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. "We're on a mission from God." So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local...

""It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician...