Kirjahaku

Examining the 1950s debate over the media and juvenile delinquency, this study shows how the development of youth culture and the rise of a mass-media society became intertwined and confused.

The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was a major event in early twentieth-century America. Attracting millions of tourists, it exemplified the Victorian predilection for public spectacle. The Fair has long served as a touchstone for historians interested in American culture prior to World War I and has endured in the memories of generations of St. Louis residents and visitors. In "Whose Fair?" James Gilbert asks: what can we learn about the lived experience of fairgoers when we compare historical accounts, individual and collective memories, and artifacts from the event? Exploring these differing, at times competing, versions of history and memory prompts Gilbert to dig through a rich trove of archival material. He examines the papers of David Francis, the Fair's president and subsequent chief archivist; guidebooks and other official publications; the 1944 film "Meet Me in St. Louis"; diaries, oral histories, and other personal accounts; and a collection of striking photographs. From this dazzling array of sources, Gilbert paints a lively picture of how fairgoers spent their time, while also probing the ways history and memory can complement each other.

In this elegant and sensitive look at the milieu of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, James Gilbert examines the three utopias that were designed to bring order to the chaos of urban life: The World's Fair itself, George Pullman's community for his workers, and Dwight Moody's evangelical crusade. Gilbert draws upon a rich selection of fiction, collective biography, architecture, photographs, and souvenir books to show how these experiments each acted as a middle-class prescription for coming to terms with the new cultural diversity and competition resulting from the disruptive forces of technological change, commercial enterprise, and pluralism."Mr. Gilbert's splendid book opens the door on a conflicted past, and provides an indispensable perspective on the troubled and troubling struggle we face today between old and new, unity and diversity."—Alan Trachtenberg, New York Times"Perfect Cities is a remarkable account of a struggle for cultural definition. Chronicling the byplay between cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity, unity and diversity, James Gilbert not only throws light on Chicago's past but also provides insight that can be applied to the cultural debates of our own time."—Adria Bernardi, Chicago Tribune"What Gilbert has done is to enable the reader to experience the grand utopian visions of the times, yet at the same time see the cantankerous reality that made the visions impossible."—Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

James Gilbert examines the confrontation between science and religion in the 20th century, as these disparate, sometimes hostile modes of thought clashed within the arena of American culture. Beginning in 1925 with the Scopes trial, Gilbert traces nearly 40 years of conflicting American attitudes toward science and religion. From Harvard intellectuals to Hollywood, from UFOs to the USAF, from sci-fi thrillers to the nightly news - American culture became a proving ground where the boundaries between science and religion were polemicized, propagandized, and contested. Gilbert argues that Catholics, Jews and Protestants alike were able to use the language of democracy and egalitarianism to check the growing authority of science. They did this by appealing to American tolerance of contending views and by presenting a populist counter-weight to what they portrayed as elitest claims to specialized knowledge. Eventually, asserts Gilbert, a kind of cultural paradox emerged in which two intrinsically dissimilar and mutually exclusive systems of explanation were accepted, respected and even encouraged.

While the 1950s have been popularly portrayed - on television and in the movies and literature - as a conformist and conservative age, the decade is better understood as a revolutionary time for politics, economy, mass media, and family life. Magazines, films, newspapers, and television of the day scrutinized every aspect of this changing society, paying special attention to the lifestyles of the middle-class men and their families who were moving to the suburbs newly springing up outside American cities. Much of this attention focused on issues of masculinity, both to enforce accepted ideas and to understand serious departures from the norm. Neither a period of "male crisis" nor yet a time of free experimentation, the decade was marked by contradiction and a wide spectrum of role models. This was, in short, the age of Tennessee Williams as well as John Wayne. In Men in the Middle, James Gilbert uncovers a fascinating and extensive body of literature that confronts the problems and possibilities of expressing masculinity in the 1950s. Drawing on the biographies of men who explored manhood either in their writings or in their public personas, Gilbert examines the stories of several of the most important figures of the day - revivalist Billy Graham, playwright Tennessee Williams, sociologist David Riesman, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, Playboy literary editor Auguste Comte Spectorsky, and TV-sitcom dad Ozzie Nelson - and allows us to see beyond the inherited stereotypes of the time. Each of these stories, in Gilbert's hands, adds crucial dimensions to our understanding of masculinity the 1950s. No longer will this era be seen solely in terms of the conformist man in the gray flannel suit or the Marlboro Man.

-- Times Literary Supplement

'Analysis of Food Contaminants' was published in 1984 by Elsevier Applied Science Publishers and 10 years later I was asked to consider producing an updated second edition. Surprisingly little has really changed in a decade in terms of the public interest in food safety and the continued vigilance of Government in monitoring the food supply for contaminants. This means that food contamination in itself is still a very relevant topic. However, much has changed in terms of the techniques now employed in trace analysis. The 1984 book used a combination of an analytical technique and a specific food contaminant problem area per chapter (each written by a specialist) which resulted in a multi-authored text which was mostly application based but provided a good introduction to the 'how' in terms of applying techniques to real problems. Rather than producing a second edition of this text, it seemed on reflection more sensible to produce a new and complementary book, using the same formula as before of application plus technique, but to concentrate on contaminant areas of current interest and to highlight recent advances in techniques. Thus, the present book 'Progress in Food Contaminant Analysis' has originated as a follow-up to 'Analysis of Food Contaminants'.

'Analysis of Food Contaminants' was published in 1984 by Elsevier Applied Science Publishers and 10 years later I was asked to consider producing an updated second edition. Surprisingly little has really changed in a decade in terms of the public interest in food safety and the continued vigilance of Government in monitoring the food supply for contaminants. This means that food contamination in itself is still a very relevant topic. However, much has changed in terms of the techniques now employed in trace analysis. The 1984 book used a combination of an analytical technique and a specific food contaminant problem area per chapter (each written by a specialist) which resulted in a multi-authored text which was mostly application based but provided a good introduction to the 'how' in terms of applying techniques to real problems. Rather than producing a second edition of this text, it seemed on reflection more sensible to produce a new and complementary book, using the same formula as before of application plus technique, but to concentrate on contaminant areas of current interest and to highlight recent advances in techniques. Thus, the present book 'Progress in Food Contaminant Analysis' has originated as a follow-up to 'Analysis of Food Contaminants'.

An American tourist is murdered in a Mexican gay sauna, and Amanda Pennyworth, the American consul to Puerto Vallarta, risks her career and her life to find the culprit.Amanda Pennyworth works with a junior officer of the Tourist Police in search of suspects in the secretive underworld of a beautiful resort. When a young Mexican boy is arrested on flimsy evidence, Amanda is convinced it is a terrible mistake. But no one is willing to listen to her: not the arrogant chief of police; not the boy's parents who seem to blame her for the murder; and not the cynical American Ambassador who only wants to avoid an international incident. It's up to her. In Murder in the Olympiad by James Gilbert, we travel to the popular resort city of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and follow Amanda as she is drawn into the search for the killer of a young American. When she finally identifies the killer, she also discovers some very unpleasant truths about the Foreign Service in which she serves.

The 1950s are remembered as the "happy days" of the 20th century, when families were intact, religion was a salient motive in people's lives, juvenile delinquency seemed the worst sort of crime and alcohol was the drug of choice. All the national statistics seemed to bolster this impression - a high birth rate, declining divorce and a marriage proportion that made the single adult the odd person out and potentially disruptive. Of course, there was the ominous shadow cast by the Cold War, but if anything, that just intensified the local focus and inwardness of life.THE KEY PARTY is a comic-serious satire set in this suffocating world, amid the doubly claustrophobic routine of golf matches, weekly bridge games and Saturday night cocktail parties. Four couples, living along a street adjacent to a golf course, have intertwined relationships based upon their proximity and their similar interests. From the outside, their marriages seem placid and happy, but in fact, a better depiction would be monotony and predictability with an undercurrent of anger and dissatisfaction.One evening, at a cocktail party celebrating the wedding anniversary of one of the couples, this simmering discontent boils over, and the group makes a collective decision - out of boredom and the urges of alcohol - that has extraordinary and unexpected consequences for all of its members and for the small town in which they reside.

Part mystery and part romance, The Legacy is a commentary on the legal profession as well as a vivid picture of a city that has always been divided between an elite upper class and waves of aspiring immigrants. While unraveling the puzzle of an oddly worded Last Will, Adam Chauncey and Sally Warren seek to uncover the secrets of the legacy left by an enigmatic Chicago financier. Their search for answers takes them from the elite mansions North of the city to the Latino neighborhoods of the South Side. What they discover is a dysfunctional family troubled by a strange adoption and a second family related to the deceased. As they explore one lead after another, they begin to realize the complicity of the senior partners of their law firm in a cynical cover-up. Whether or not they reveal the existence of a second, more recent will, presents them with a desperate choice.James GilbertAfter an academic career during which he authored ten works on modern American History, (one of them a New York Times notable book), James Gilbert turned to fiction. He has now written a book of short stories and five novels, three of them a mystery series set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.The Legacy is his sixth published work.He has twice won awards from the annual F. Scott Fitzgerald short story contest.Born in Chicago, he grew up in a small suburb just to the south of the city. He graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota and earned a doctoral degree in history at the University of Wisconsin. While a professor at the University of Maryland, he taught at several universities in Europe and Australia as a visiting professor. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Trouble always seems to find Amanda Pennyworth, the American consul to the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. First on a romantic outing to a secluded cove along the Mexican coast where the beautiful Danielle Maglin is found bludgeoned to death; and then at an elegant dinner party thousands of miles away only days later with the killer surely present, Amanda finds herself drawn into the search to find the culprit's identity. When Danielle's close friend Terrence Blanchard is found dead from an apparent suicide, Amanda is convinced that the killer has struck again. But there are too many possible suspects and just the usual list of motives: jealousy, greed, sex, money, and hatred. Nothing seems to make sense. Working with the police first in Mexico and then in the United States, Amanda is sure that the killer was among the group of friends on an excursion to Puerto Vallarta from the small city near Chicago. But which one? The police are stymied when their forensic investigation leads nowhere. It is up to Amanda to find out why Danielle and Terrence had to die.