《书目》(Booklist)书评

Panati loves to collect quirky information about our lives and relay it with wit and panache, even making death funny in Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody [BKL S 1 89]. Here he gives American popular culture a big, affectionate bear hug. He characterizes mass culture as entertainment striving for "neither complexity nor profundity," seeking "only to reach and delight as many of us as possible. At a net profit." He explores the origins of popular culture, nostalgia, fads, and leisure time and then, beginning with the Gay Nineties, dances his way through a century of "fads, follies, and trends," fairs and expos, dance crazes, popular songs, best-selling books, and radio and television hits. Each item is described and creators, when possible, identified. The chapter titles set the tone for each decade: "The Innocent Oughts" for 1900-1909, "The Tender Teens," "The Soaring Twenties," "The Swing Thirties," "The Fantasy Forties," "The Fabulous Fifties," "The Schizophrenic Sixties," "The Self-seeking Seventies," and, in a grand finale, "The Spendthrift Eighties into the Payback Nineties." A terrifically enjoyable panorama of Americana. ~--Donna Seaman