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Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021
Kerry Segrave
This book recalls masking efforts in response to the Spanish flu epidemic. Masking the population as an ineffective response to disease by public health officials and political bureaucrats at various…
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The first decade of the auto industry in America featured politicians and bureaucrats at all political levels trying to come to terms with a new form of locomotion. Rules and…
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Nixola Greeley-Smith was an important feminist journalist during the first two decades of the 20th century. She was a progressive and a social critic who was ahead of her time…
Although female lawbreakers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were rarely considered dangerous criminals, there are many records of women participating in non-violent crimes including shoplifting and fraud…
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A leading public health problem for Americans, obesity is a regular topic for nightly news programs, scientific or medical study, and intense public debate. This study takes a look at…
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The transition from stage to screen was not only a shift in popular entertainment, but a challenge for those working in the industry as well. This book looks at the…
This volume explores one of the more pressing aspects of the automobile problem–storage–from 1910 to the end of World War II, contrasting the reality and perception of parking as found…
This is the story about two lovers riding in a hansom cab in New York City on June 4 1904. A single shot rang out and Caesar Young was dead…
From its beginnings in Europe to its development as a quintessentially American trait, this work provides a social history of tipping customs and how the United States became a nation…
Between 1850 and 1950, at least 115 women were lynched by mobs in the US. The majority of these women were black. This examines the phenomenon of the lynching of…
Payola is as old as the music industry and continues today. Contrary to popular belief, the acceptance of payola is legal. (Only the nonreporting of it would be illegal.)
The polygraph, or lie detector, was created and refined by academics in university settings with support from a few early police agencies. This work is a history of the polygraph…
The use of endorsements and testimonials to sell anything imaginable is a modern development, though the technique is centuries old. This exploration of modern endorsement advertising follows its evolution from…
This social history traces the evolution of women’s smoking in the US from 1880 to 1950. From 1880 to 1908, women were not allowed to smoke in public places, with…
Examining the 20th century suntan as a social and scientific phenomenon, this illustrated book debunks the myth that changing attitudes toward the tan sprang largely from the world of fashion…
The electric vehicle seemed poised in 1900 to be a leader, even the dominant force, in the early American car market. They were clean, odorless, noiseless and they were mechanically…
Police violence is not a new phenomenon. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, police officers in America assaulted or killed many ordinary citizens. Based on newspaper accounts from…
When the need for telephone operators arose in the 1870s, the assumption was that they should all be male. Wages for adult men were too high, so boys were hired…
The early 20th century saw the founding of the National Security League, a nationalistic nonprofit organization committed to an expanded military, conscripted service, and meritocracy. This book details its history…
On a summer day in 1898, a family in Dover, Delaware, shared a box of chocolates they received from an anonymous sender. Within days, two of the seven family members…
This work traces the history of the vending machine from its inception to its current place in popular American culture. Successes and failures, economic factors influencing the popularity of vending…
Between 1887 and 1920, the humble hatpin went from an unremarkable item in every woman’s wardrobe, to a fashion necessity, to a dangerous weapon. All those protruding pins threatened men…
Looks at the activity of shoplifting for the last 140 years: the types of people singled out as the principal offenders, retailers’ ambivalent responses to the activity, selective prosecution, the…
This work examines age discrimination as it relates to the employment sector in the US throughout the 20th century: how the issue has been treated by the media, the extent…
A look at film piracy within the motion picture industry. The book begins with some of the earliest cases and then considers how the problem grew due to a lack…
Beginning with the history of walking as a social activity, this book discusses the various issues which have affected walkers, including increased automobile traffic, the attention of the marketing industry…
A primarily American institution, the drive-in theater sits on the verge of extinction. This title documents the history of the drive-in, from its beginnings in the 1930s through its heyday…
Details the ways in which scalping has changed over the years from a one-man business to an agency-controlled enterprise, from performances by Jenny Lind to Billy Joel. This book examines…
From the first torturous attempts at hair implants early in the 21st century to the faddish, well-hyped drug treatments, this work examines the extremes to which men have gone in…
The relationship of Hollywood and television, initially turbulent, has ultimately been profitable from the first sally in what was expected to be a war of attrition, up through the soliciting…
The case of Lizzy Borden stands out in the history of sensational criminal cases, but she was not the only person to be accused of killing her parents. This book…
Deals with the toothpaste and toothbrush industries from 1900 to 2008. This book shows that during these years, America moved from a nation of people who mostly cleaned their teeth…
This text examines the eyewear industry in America from 1900 to 2008, a period which mirrors an increased demand for eyewear. Eyeglasses, sunglasses and contacts are discussed. Topics covered include…
This historical book explores begging and beggars in the period 1850 to 1940, with emphasis on how the police, the courts, the media and private charity organizations dealt with the…
The struggles of extras, mostly overlooked and forgotten, to unionize were followed by internal struggles as the extras fought for a voice within that union. It is a story about…
While sexual harassment of women in the workplace has only been discussed publicly in the mainstream media, to any extent, for less than two decades it is a pervasive problem…
Once the major Hollywood studios got over their loathing of television as an entertainment medium, they moved quickly to dominate both domestic and international programming. In the United States, the…
This book examines the history of policewomen from 1880 to 2012, particularly in the United States. It looks at the problems women had being accepted into the male police establishment…
Because of the 2013 revelations of Edward Snowden we have all come to understand that, with regard to all ectronic communications, we are mostly all surveilled most of the time…
Examines the chewing gum industry in America from 1850 to 1920, the rise and spread of gum chewing and the reactions - almost uniformly negative - to the habit from…
dern anti-kissing era began in 1876 when Robert Koch proved that microorganisms could transfer disease from an ill creature to a healthy creature. At that point the war on kissing…
World War I was a gold mine for the capitalist class. The only problem was that they did not want to pay the entire war cost themselves. The banking plutocrats…
Traces the history and development of the American bicycle, observing its critical role in the fight for gender equality. The bicycle radically changed the face of fashion, health, and even…
This work traces the history of the jukebox from its origins in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Alva Edison in the 1880s up to its relative obscurity in…
This is the history of advertising in motion pictures from the slide ads of the 1890s to the common practice of product placement in the present. This work addresses such…
Explores the history of American actors’ attempts to unionize in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book focuses on the two unions of the time, the White Rats…
Perhaps the single medium in which women have been consistently treated as equal to men is the American judicial system. This book profiles the lives and cases of selected women…
