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Throughout this book you'll encounter four themes that repeatedly
surface and commingle: the pervasiveness of popular culture, the power of
nostalgia, the mass appeal of faddishness, and something that makes possible
the enjoyment of popular culture, nostalgia, and fads: leisure time-for people
did not always have the time (to say nothing of the means) to engage in the
kinds of behavior chronicled in these pages.
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Review from The Harper Perennial:
PANATI'S PARADE OF FADS, FOLLIES, AND MANIAS: The Origins of Our Most Cherished Obsessions
Obsessions take time. As best-selling author Charles Panati
writes in the introduction to his collection of passing fancies: "A hundred and fifty years ago, the average work
week in the United States was seventy hours." That didn't leave a lot of
time for taking care of one's pet rock. But these days, pursuing the
latest fashion has become a full-time job.
Panati, who has compiled several other books of arcane facts
("Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things," "The
Browser's Book of Beginnings"), devotes a chapter to each decade
from the Gay '90s to today. We learn that Mary Johnston's 1900
romance novel "To Have and To Hold" was the century's first
"blockbuster"; that flagpole sitting originated in the 1920s; that
"Kilroy," the graffitti character (as in "Kilroy Was Here"), appeared in the '40s; that the Slinky first slunk in during the '50s. No
wonder people were rebelling in the '60s. Look at what was on TV:
"Mr. Ed," Andy Griffith and Don Knotts. Still, the more things
change, the more they remain the same. Dance crazes may wax and
wane, but the desire to dance never does.
This reviewer likes the chapter on the '70s best. Just ticking off the
various fads is fun: Earth Shoes, hot-pants, toga parties, mood
rings, "monster trucks." Flashes in the pan, you say? Perhaps. But
pooled in this delightful compendium, they make for an invaluable
book.
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