by David J. Skal ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1998
A remarkably detailed survey of a much-neglected cultural icon by a leading historian of horror films (Dark Carnival, 1995, etc.). As Skal points out, the mad scientist has been a central figure in science fiction from its beginnings: Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Moreau are among those whose names any reader of the genre would recognize instantly. And yet, the true blossoming of this ambiguous stereotype has not taken place in the pages of literary science fiction but rather in film, comics, and other less “respectable” media. After taking a brief look at the deeper implications of the icon—notably, a public awareness that the gifts of science are often of dubious value to the ordinary citizen—Skal lifts off for a wide-ranging examination of some resonances between sci-fi and daily life, centered on a history of the monster movie. Drawing parallels between the Heaven’s Gate cult and the Frankenstein monster, Skal examines the origins of Mary Shelley’s famous novel, moving deftly between the circumstances of its composition and the Romantic social theories of which it was one expression. As a counterpoint, the illustrations show the faces of various Hollywood screen embodiments of the Frankenstein monster. This dialogue between the cerebral and the sensual, the literary and the popular, gives Skal’s book an unusual breadth of reference. In a similar vein, the book segues between the career of Nikola Tesla, a real-life prototype of the mad scientist, and early sci-fi movies by the likes of Melies and Edison (who produced the first film version of Frankenstein!). Skal’s familiarity with his subject is second to none, and his interest in significant intellectual and cultural issues, as well as the usual ephemera of film histories, is an added treat. Should appeal to serious students of modern culture, along with sci-fi movie fans.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-393-04582-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales
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by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez
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by Howard Zinn
by Maya Angelou ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1969
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
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by Maya Angelou and illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher
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