Kerry Segrave – författare

Rock is a music of rebellion against authority, and has consequently frightened and outraged people throughout its forty-year history. Anti-Rock is the first book to detail the objections of rock's detractors. Critics from parents to religious groups, industry executives to scientists, government spokesmen to eccentric crusaders, have all attacked rock vehemently with comments such as "It's the jungle strain gets'em all worked up" it's "one step from fascism" and "These deafening, dope-ridden, degenerate mob scenes have no more place in our America than would a publicly promoted gang rape." Here is: Albert Goldman, writing in the New York Times in 1968, comparing Mick Jagger to Adolf Hitler. A 1981 university study concluding that prolonged exposure to disco music "causes homosexuality in mice and deafness in pigs." Dr. John, a New York physician, writing in 1977 that rock music causes "a breakdown in the synchronization of the two sides of the brain." Tipper Gore, the former Vice-President's wife, co-chair of the Parents Music Resource centre and author of Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, commenting on heavy metal lyrics: "I'm a fairly with-it person, but this stuff is curling my hair."

Shoplifting is a practice that has been engaged in for centuries, but it was only after the Civil War that the prevalence of shoplifting and societal awareness of it, became significant. In the 1860s the typical shoplifter was from the lower classes; by 1900 it was an upper-class woman who shoplifted from a huge department store "because" she was a "kleptomaniac", and in the 1960s it was teenagers stealing for kicks. Shoplifting: A Social History 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 utilization of high-tech antitheft devices, and suing shoplifters to recover costs. Also examined are media accounts which have often used exaggerated numbers when discussing the activity and the effect of private justice on the offense. Discrepancies in treatment of lower-class women versus "respectable" women shoplifters will be of interest to women's studies scholars.

In 1907, the editor of The New York Times wrote, "Employers, naturally, look to the young. A man or woman of advanced years is too apt to be given to old-fashioned ways of doing things, and open to suspicion of having the unforgivable fault, in modern business, of slowness." Age discrimination has existed throughout the 20th century, sometimes in the public eye and sometimes not. This book examines the problem as it relates to the employment sector in the United States throughout the century: how the issue has been treated by the media, what is the extent of age bias, how older workers were viewed, the reasons and rationales presented by business enterprises for their refusal to hire older workers, and the responses of governments to the problem. Some foreign data are used for comparison purposes; age bias exists in all industrial societies, regardless of the type of government a country provides for itself.

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 modern obscurity. The jukebox's first twenty years were essentially experimental because of the low technical quality and other limitations. It then practically disappeared for a quarter-century, beaten out by the player piano as the coin-operated music machine of choice. But then, new and improved, it reemerged and quickly spread in popularity across America, largely as a result of the repeal of Prohibition and the increased number of bars around the nation. Other socially important elements of the jukebox's development are also covered: it played patriotic tunes during wartime and, located in youth centers, entertained young people and kept them out of "trouble." The industry's one last fling due to a healthy export trade is also covered, and the book rounds out with the decline in the 1950s and the fadeout into obscurity. Richly illustrated.

Although the 1880s are considered the beginning of the vending machine era, these devices have existed for a couple of thousand years. The earliest reference to a vending machine was made by Hero--a Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer who probably lived in Alexandria during the first century a.d.--who described and illustrated a coin-operated device to be used for vending sacrificial water in Egyptian temples. Completely automatic, the device was set in operation by the insertion of a five-drachma coin.This work traces the history of the vending machine from its inception to its current place in popular American culture, with the eight chapters covering significant eras. Successes and failures of the machines, economic factors influencing the popularity (or lack thereof) of vending machines, and the struggle of industry to become a dominant, large-scale method of retailing products are discussed. This text is richly illustrated and includes appendices on vending dollar value, vending sales by location type and vending statistics.

Film piracy began almost immediately after the birth of the film industry. Initially it was a within-the-industry phenomenon as studios stole from each other. As the industry grew and more money was involved, outsiders became more interested in piracy. Stolen material made its way offshore since detection was less likely. Hollywood's major film studios vigorously pursued pirates and had the situation fairly well under control by the middle 1970s--not eliminated but reduced to a low level--until videocassettes arrived.This work begins with a discussion of some of the earliest cases of piracy in vaudeville. It then considers how the problem continued to grow exacerbated by the lack of legal resource available to performers, and the ways film exhibitors cheated the film distributors and companies and the measures that the distributors and companies took to prevent piracy over the years.Also examined are the practices of American theater owners who tried to cheat Hollywood, especially through the practice known as bicycling--extra, unpaid for screenings of a legitimately held film--and altering paperwork to reduce the money owed to distributors on films screened on percentage contracts. Also examined, to a lesser degree, are Hollywood's own efforts to cheat, including the disregard of copyrights held by others.

The polygraph, most commonly known as the 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 machine, from the experimental work of the late 1800s that led directly to its creation, until the present.It covers early lie detectors and their inventors from the 1860s to the early 1920s, their use by the police and other law enforcement agencies in the 1930s and their use in Cold War America in the 1940s and 1950s. It then discusses the government's use of the polygraph in the 1960s, the PSE, a new take on the old polygraph, and private businesses' reliance on the polygraph in the 1970s and the government's increasing reluctance to use it in the 1980s. A chapter on new ideas and uses for the polygraph in the 1990s and after concludes the book.

Foreign films once enjoyed a position of prominence on American theater screens. By the start of World War I, however, the United States' film industry was strong enough to challenge that foreign presence and foreign films in America have been insignificant ever since. For about a century, the Hollywood cartel has dominated the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies domestically and around the world.This work traces the history of the foreign film in America from its domination in the early days to its low standing in the present, looking at the attempts made by foreign producers to increase their presence on American cinema screens, the responses by Hollywood to those attempts, and the oligopoly of Hollywood's few producers. The work discusses the cultural differences between foreign artistic expression and the commercialism of the American film and analyzes Hollywood's explanations for the lack of a foreign presence: Americans have "unique" tastes, they don't like subtitles, foreign films are immoral or badly made, trade union pressure, and so on. An appendix detailing the all-time gross earnings of foreign-language films and a full bibliography conclude the work, which is illustrated with stills and posters.

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. Initially, product placement was seen as a somewhat sleazy practice and also faced opposition from the film industry itself; it has grown dramatically in the past 25 years. From Maillard's Chocolates advertising with a shot of Cardinal Richelieu enjoying a hot cup of cocoa in 1895, to product placements in 2002's Minority Report, for which advertisers were rumored to have paid $25 million, this book explores the developing union of corporate America and Hollywood.This work addresses such topics as television's conditioning of filmgoers to accept commercials, companies' donation of props, the debate about advertising such activities as smoking and drinking in films, and "product displacement," or demands by companies to keep their products absent from unpopular or controversial films. Film stills and a bibliography complete the book.

The use of endorsements and testimonials to sell anything imaginable is a modern development, though the technique is centuries old. Before World War I, endorsement ads were tied to patent medicine, and were left with a bad reputation when that industry was exposed as quackery. The reputation was well earned: claims of a product's curative powers sometimes ran opposite the endorser's obituary, and Lillian Russell once testified that a certain compound had made her "feel like a new man." Distrusted by the public, banished from mainstream publications, endorsements languished until around 1920, but returned with a vengeance with the growth of consumerism and modern media. Despite its questionable effectiveness, endorsement advertising is now ubiquitous, costing advertisers (and consequently consumers) hundreds of millions of dollars annually.This exploration of modern endorsement advertising--paid or unsolicited testimonials endorsing a product--follows its evolution from a marginalized, mistrusted technique to a multibillion-dollar industry. Chapters recount endorsement advertising's changing form and fortunes, from Lux Soap's co-opting of early Hollywood to today's lucrative industry dependent largely on athletes. The social history of endorsement advertising is examined in terms of changing ethical and governmental views, shifting business trends, and its relationship to the growth of modern media, while the money involved and the question of effectiveness are scrutinized. The illustrated text includes five appendices that focus on companies, celebrities, athletes and celebrity endorsements.

During the last 20 years of the 19th century, cigarette smoking was transformed from a lower-class habit to a favored form of tobacco use for men and practically the only form available to women. The trend continued to grow through the 1950s, when smoking was a significant part of America's social fabric for both men and women.This social history traces the evolution of women's smoking in the United States from 1880 to 1950. From 1880 to 1908, women were not allowed to smoke in public places, with strong opposition based on moral concerns. Most smoking was done by upper class women in the home, at private parties, or at socials. By 1908, women smokers went public in greater numbers and challenged the prejudices against smoking that applied to them alone. By 1919, most restaurants allowed women to smoke, though most other public places did not permit it. More and more women smokers went public in the period between 1919 and 1927, with college students leading the way. By 1928, advertisers began to target female smokers, and over the next two decades women smokers gradually gained equality with male smokers.

The suntan experienced a profound change in the last century. Considered a mark of the lower class for hundreds of years, tanning became a fad in the early 1920s and remains popular today. The tan, though, was much more than a matter of fashion,enjoying at first a boost from the medical establishment. Opinions ranging from hard science to quackery lauded the suntan as something of a panacea. Near the end of World War II, however, researchers increasingly warned against the hazards of overexposure to the sun, and a large new industry developed--sunscreen. Americans' current paradoxical obsession with the tan developed almost entirely from the conflicting rays of twentieth century thought.This history examines the twentieth century suntan as a social and scientific phenomenon. Beginning with the years 1900-1920, it debunks the myth that changing attitudes toward the tan sprang largely from the world of fashion. Initial pro-tanning medical hype, emerging negative opinions of sunbathing near the middle of the century, the development of sunscreens, the debate over sunscreen efficacy, and the sunless tan are all covered here. Numerous pictures demonstrate changing perceptions of the suntan, displaying advertisements for products that promoted, prevented or healed tans.

Hippocrates, one of history's earliest known physicians, once asserted, ""Walking is man's best medicine."" Over the last three centuries, people have endorsed walking for a variety of reasons--health among them. Before the 1700s, people walked as an essential part of their lifestyle. With the coming of the transportation revolution--and the advent of such conveyances as horse-drawn coaches, railways and automobiles--walking became something that was done increasingly out of choice rather than necessity. England's fashionable society engaged in afternoon promenades as a stylish fad. While America's vast distances and sparse settlements made this activity impractical, Americans nevertheless took to walking in other ways, including engaging in long distance walking competitions complete with spectators and prize money. Thus, for most of the twentieth century, the activity of walking was much more than a means of transportation.Beginning with the history of walking as a social activity, the book discusses the various issues which have affected walkers, including increased automobile traffic, the attention of the marketing industry and pedestrian regulations. The work examines the contemplative, psychological and observational qualities of walking as well as famous personalities--including Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, John Keats and John James Audubon--who endorsed these intellectual qualifications. During the 1970s fitness boom, walking was reinvented yet again, becoming an activity of numbers and equations as participants fought to maximize health benefits. The book concludes with a legal analysis of pedestrianism as it relates to sharing space with the automobile.

A primarily American institution (though it appeared in other countries such as Japan and Italy), the drive-in theater now sits on the verge of extinction. During its heyday, drive-ins could be found in communities both large and small. Some of the larger theaters held up to 3,000 cars and were often filled to capacity on weekends.The history of the drive-in from its beginnings in the 1930s through its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s to its gradual demise in modern-day America is thoroughly documented here: the patent battles, community concerns with morality (on-screen and off), technological advances (audio systems, screens, etc.), audiences, and the drive-in's place in the motion picture industry.

Ticket scalping is as much an American staple as apple pie. Beginning as early as the mid-1800s, scalpers, known as "sidewalk men," were charging all the traffic would bear for event tickets. Although these speculators were generally viewed as pariahs and public opinion was against the practice, legal attempts to limit their activities were far from successful. Boston enacted laws as early as 1873, while Pennsylvania followed suit in 1884. Still, such measures did little good since some laws were declared unconstitutional and, for the ones that were upheld, the fines were negligible with jail time rarely served. Over the years, as moral objections to scalping dimmed, the public became more tolerant as the practice became increasingly prevalent. By the 1990s, the capitalist mantras of free market and economic principles of supply and demand were even being used to justify the practice.This volume 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. The book examines the general situation, public opinion and legal perception of scalping for four distinct periods: 1850-1899; 1900-1917; 1918-1949 and 1950-2005. Emphasis is placed on the ways in which public and legal perception of the practice has evolved over this period. Scalping, slowly gaining a more positive status, has become more accepted as part of the economic practice of free markets.

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, prostitution, and fraud. This work studies frauds and swindles perpetrated by women during that era, and offers character studies of several key female swindlers including Ann O'Delia Diss Debar, Mabel Parker, and Sarah Casselman, among others. Frauds covered include spiritually-based crimes (i.e. deceptive seances, "spirit writing") and love crimes (i.e. matrimonial racketeering), as well as "sob story" panhandling, counterfeiting, faking wealth, and pension fraud.

This work offers a detailed history of American actors' attempts to unionize in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Actors' unions of this period faced a staggering amount of struggles, including a heavy industry reliance on the blacklist, severe media attacks on individual actors, and the frequent formation of illegitimate company unions. This work focuses specifically on the two main unions of the time, the White Rats Actors' Union of America and the Actors' Equity Association. The author chronicles the formation of the unions along with their achievements in the following decades and outlines the roles of union leaders Harry Mountford and Francis Wilson.

Perhaps the single medium in which women have been consistently treated as equal to men is the American judicial system. Although the system has met with enormous public condemnation, equality under the law has justified the legal execution of nearly six hundred American women since 1632.This book profiles the lives and cases of selected women sentenced to capital punishment in America between 1840 and 1899, most of whom were executed by hanging. The book is divided into chapters by decades, chronologically following a summary of the long and heated debate regarding women and capital punishment. Also evident is the influence of the 1870s women's rights movement on the issue. Each chapter concludes with a comprehensive list of all women executed in the United States during the respective decade, specifying age, ethnicity and criminal conviction.

Each year, men spend an enormous amount of time and money searching for a cure to male pattern baldness. Numerous psychological assessments indicate that the reasons behind their futile efforts are sound: attitudes toward bald men are overwhelmingly negative.From the first torturous attempts at hair implants to the faddish, well-hyped drug treatments of today, the extremes to which men have gone in an effort to regrow hair or cover their bald scalps are examined in this work. The various causes for baldness advanced by credible members of the medical establishment over the years are detailed, as well as instances of outright quackery prompted by numerous individuals and companies. Wigs, weaving, transplants, flaps and scalp reduction are among the techniques explained.

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 of movies by major networks, independent stations, basic cable networks, premium cable channels, pay-per-view systems and even the corner video store.When their initial efforts to acquire ownership interests in television outlets were thwarted, Hollywood's major movie studios determined to withhold from the tube not only their films but also their actors, no doubt in hopes of making the rival medium appear a weak substitute for cinema. With ticket sales shrinking and television set purchases booming, the studios, erasing their last contemptuously drawn line in the sand, grudgingly released their films to television--and made a fortune.

This is a study of obesity in America from 1850 to 1939, concentrating on how the condition was viewed, studied, and treated. It examines the images and stereotypes that were associated with fatness, the various remedies that were proposed for the condition, and the often bizarre theories used to explain it, including the idea that ordinary tap water was fattening.From about 1850 to 1879, obesity existed almost exclusively among the upper class, and it received very little medical attention. From 1880 to 1919, doctors, scientists, and other health professionals began to present a coherent theory of obesity. By 1920, the condition was recognized as a big enough health issue that various groups, ranging from private employers to public health officials, began developing some of the nation's first organized weight reduction programs.

Though the history of tipping can be traced to the Middle Ages, the practice did not become widespread until the late 19th century. Initially, Americans reviled the custom, branding it un-American and undemocratic. The opposition gradually faded and tipping became an American institution. 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 of tippers.

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 all the attempts to organize film actors into a union, starting in 1912 when the Actors' Equity Association seemed the best platform for such an effort, to the establishment of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 1933 as the best vehicle to represent film actors; another four years passed before SAG was formally recognized by film producers and the first contract was signed.

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. Historically, about two percent of all murders are parricides.This book examines 103 selected cases of individuals charged with parricide--the murder of a father or mother--in the United States in the last half of the 19th century, categorized here by their links to abuse, alcohol, or money, sometimes involving multiple murderers or the deaths of both parents.

This excursion into American cultural history looks at the toothpaste and toothbrush industries from 1900 to 2008. During these years, America moved from cleaning their teeth mostly with homemade powders to using an enormous array of brands, often applied with an electric toothbrush. From early 20th century products like Forhan's (which "cured" pyorrhea) to the whiteners of the 1920s (which unfortunately also removed tooth enamel), and from paste that eliminated "that clinging film" and to copywriters who "wondered where the yellow went," the history of toothpaste has long been a testament to the power of misleading advertising. Interrupting a steady flow of hyperbole was the one true wonder ingredient--fluoride, which enabled Crest to be for decades America's top-selling brand.

Between 1850 and 1950, at least 115 women were lynched by mobs in the United States. The majority of these women were black. This book examines the phenomenon of the lynching of women, a much more rare occurence than the lynching of men. Over the same hundred year period covered in this text, more than 1,000 white men were lynched, while thousands of black men were murdered by mobs. Of particular importance in this examination is the role of race in lynching, particularly the increase in the number of lynchings of black women as the century progressed. Details are provided--when available--in an attempt to shine a light on this form of deadly mob violence.

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 the marketing and selling of eyewear with particular attention paid to advertising strategies and the internal structures of the industry and its regulations, which have sometimes helped and sometimes hurt consumers. This critical examination reveals how a relatively simple and functional item such as corrective eyewear could be transformed through marketing into a fashion accessory and a personal statement.

The poverty that drives people to begging has been a pressing social issue in the United States since the beginning. This historical work explores begging1and beggars in the period 1850 to 1940, with emphasis on how the police, the courts, the media and private charity organizations dealt with them. Efforts to suppress mendicancy are explored, including legislation, police crackdowns, and public vouchers for meals and shelter. Of particular interest is the way in which media portrayals have guided public perception of mendicants.Despite the massive social upheavals the last two centuries have brought, all efforts to suppress begging have failed. Many of the complaints and arguments made against beggars and begging in 1850 and 1900 and 1940 were also made into the 21st century because, in the end, the public continued to give alms.

With its decentralized urban areas, pollution, and mostly inadequate public transit systems, America pays a heavy price for its dependency on cars. This volume explores one of the more pressing aspects of the problem--storage--from 1910 to the end of World War II, contrasting the reality and perception of car parking as found in the pages of the popular newspapers and magazines.From early bans on street parking to street widening efforts to the introduction of parking lots, garages, and parking meters, the book chronicles attempts to accommodate the ever-increasing number of cars. By failing to effect any meaningful regulations along the way, this work shows, Americans slowly ceded authority and dominance to the automobile, to the detriment of present-day society.