Showing posts sorted by relevance for query strange. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query strange. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, December 21, 2012
STEM Books
I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related
books (and counting). STEM is an acronym
for science,
technology,
engineering, and mathematics. As you may have seen in the news, there is a
push to improve STEM education,
interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers
in these fields. The idea is that these
will be the skills needed by workers of the future. If you’re a STEM educator or a student
considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of
these books.
Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers
On February 5, 1946, The Adventures of Superman radio
program opened with a new introduction:
Google
Yes, it’s
Superman. Strange visitor from another
planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities farbeyond those of mortal
men. Superman, defender of law and
order, champion of equal rights, valiant, courageous fighter against the forces
of hate and prejudice!
This announced the beginning of the radio Superman’s
struggle with post-war social issues, especially a campaign against racial and
religious intolerance. In this adventure,
Jimmy Olsen
infiltrated the Guardians of America, a fictional
stand-in for pro-Nazi
groups that were operating in the United States
at the time. This was only the
beginning. Later that year, Adventures would feature a 16-episode
story in which Superman took on the Clan of the Fiery Cross, a stand-in for the
Ku Klux Klan
(KKK).
Behind these fictional stories of Superman were real-life
adventures. The KKK was attempting to
launch a new national membership drive, playing on the insecurities people felt
after World
War II. There were real infiltrators
of the KKK and other organized hatemongers who exposed the workings of these
organizations in the media. Rick Bowers
tells the story of these men and the producers of the comic
book and radio Superman in Superman
versus the Ku Klux Klan.
Superman had been dealing with cultural concerns from his
beginning. When Jerry Siegel
and Joe
Shuster, Jewish
high-school students in Cleveland,
created Superman in the 1930s, they pitted
him against criminal
gangs and crooked politicians. As Nazi Germany began to
rise as an aggressive European power,
the hero opposed Nazis at home and abroad.
During the war,
he protected the home front. Though it
is not the focus, Bowers describes how Superman has changes with the concerns
of the times.
The Klan has roots going back to the Reconstruction
era after the Civil
War. It started as a jokey order of
former Confederate
Army officers in Tennessee who
imitated the mystery religion-inspired
fraternal orders that were popular at colleges, with mysterious rituals and
strange names. It spawned imitators that
secretly gathered in Nashville to
organize themselves in 1867. Former Confederate
General Nathan
Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard, who lead the Klan in opposition
to Reconstruction, including domestic terrorism
against blacks and white proponents of racial equality and Reconstruction
policies. The violence of the Klan
members, called Ghouls, eroded the organization’s popularity.
William
J. Simmons launched a campaign to revive the Klan, taking it national in 1920. For Simmons it was largely a moneymaking
scheme, though he seemed happy to promote intolerance of blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants and
anyone else who wasn’t a white, male Protestant. (I’m a white, male Protestant and I find
nothing in Protestantism, or Christianity
in general, that justifies the intolerance promoted by the Klan.) Successors led the Klan to political activism
in the 1920s, and it became very powerful, but front-line violence and
leadership hypocrisy undermined their position.
The post-war membership campaign, led by Samuel Green
who was Grand Dragon of the Georgia Realm,
was thwarted by law enforcement and equal rights advocates with help of medial
like Adventures.
The library helpfully labeled Bowers’ book with a sticker that reads, “TEEN.” I suppose it is a young adult
book, though I think it is within the grasp of many middle school
students. It is an unusual introduction
to the history of bigotry in American and the movements that promoted equality,
but the tie to a popular superhero might make the subject more appealing to
kids in school. It made me pick up the
book, and I’m far passed my school days.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Monday, January 9, 2012
Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman
Dawson, George, and Richard Glaubman. Life is So Good. New York: Penguin, 2000.
George Dawson was in his nineties when he learned to read. He was a centenarian when he and coauthor Richard Glaubman wrote his biography, Life is So Good. I think Dawson’s life was good, and not just because it has been so long.
Even a good life is sometimes hard. Most of Dawson’s life was hard. Black and poor were not auspicious beginnings for a boy in Texas at the beginning of the 20th Century. In the opening chapter, Dawson tells of how, as a boy, he witnessed the lynching of a young black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman. Dawson was ready to become bitter and withdraw from all contact with white people, but his father would not allow him to even consider it.
Dawson presents his parents and wise and pragmatic, making things better for themselves bit by bit. He picks it up and does the same thing in his own life, especially once he settled down to start his own family.
He had some wandering to do first. His early life of travel and adventure makes for interesting reading. He road trains all over North America, sometimes as a ticketholder and sometimes joining the hobos. He was able to find work wherever he went, mainly because there was no job so hard or unpleasant he was unwilling to try it.
Traveling opened his eyes, especially to race relations in the U.S. Growing up in the South, he thought the discrimination and oppression he was accustomed to be the way things were. In Mexico and Canada, even in parts of the U.S., he was treated like anyone else, regardless of color. Mexican villagers welcomed him like family and delighted in the novelty of someone so tall. Canadian lumbermen were curious about his home and happily directed him to the snow he had never seen before—it almost killed him. In his early days, he found it strange to be in places where no one cared which train car he was in or the restaurant at which he ate.
Things changed a lot in Dawson’s more than 100 years of life, though racism hasn’t disappeared. (I grew up in a town that was 99 percent white and I’m barely 40 years old. In the same county were villages that were almost entirely black.) Even in the face of difficulties, Dawson persisted and bit by bit made life better for himself and his family. When retirement came it wasn’t time to rest from his labors, it was time to pick up the education he had been denied as a boy because he had to work.
Dawson’s life story is worth reading simply because he is a witness to history who tells his story in an interesting and accessible manner. It’s worth reading because, without trying, it has a message too: don’t worry. Dawson recommends that people not worry if they want a good life. I think it’s very good advice. Arguably, though, he was working too hard most of his life to have time for worries, even though he had cause for them.
Google
George Dawson was in his nineties when he learned to read. He was a centenarian when he and coauthor Richard Glaubman wrote his biography, Life is So Good. I think Dawson’s life was good, and not just because it has been so long.
Even a good life is sometimes hard. Most of Dawson’s life was hard. Black and poor were not auspicious beginnings for a boy in Texas at the beginning of the 20th Century. In the opening chapter, Dawson tells of how, as a boy, he witnessed the lynching of a young black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman. Dawson was ready to become bitter and withdraw from all contact with white people, but his father would not allow him to even consider it.
Dawson presents his parents and wise and pragmatic, making things better for themselves bit by bit. He picks it up and does the same thing in his own life, especially once he settled down to start his own family.
He had some wandering to do first. His early life of travel and adventure makes for interesting reading. He road trains all over North America, sometimes as a ticketholder and sometimes joining the hobos. He was able to find work wherever he went, mainly because there was no job so hard or unpleasant he was unwilling to try it.
Traveling opened his eyes, especially to race relations in the U.S. Growing up in the South, he thought the discrimination and oppression he was accustomed to be the way things were. In Mexico and Canada, even in parts of the U.S., he was treated like anyone else, regardless of color. Mexican villagers welcomed him like family and delighted in the novelty of someone so tall. Canadian lumbermen were curious about his home and happily directed him to the snow he had never seen before—it almost killed him. In his early days, he found it strange to be in places where no one cared which train car he was in or the restaurant at which he ate.
Things changed a lot in Dawson’s more than 100 years of life, though racism hasn’t disappeared. (I grew up in a town that was 99 percent white and I’m barely 40 years old. In the same county were villages that were almost entirely black.) Even in the face of difficulties, Dawson persisted and bit by bit made life better for himself and his family. When retirement came it wasn’t time to rest from his labors, it was time to pick up the education he had been denied as a boy because he had to work.
Dawson’s life story is worth reading simply because he is a witness to history who tells his story in an interesting and accessible manner. It’s worth reading because, without trying, it has a message too: don’t worry. Dawson recommends that people not worry if they want a good life. I think it’s very good advice. Arguably, though, he was working too hard most of his life to have time for worries, even though he had cause for them.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
Kakalios, J. The Physics of Superheroes. New York: Gotham Books, 2005.
The Physics of Superheroes is a fun introduction to physics. Kakalios is a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, and childhood comic book fan, who created a freshman physics class that used examples from comic books to illustrate physics principles rather than traditional examples.
This book is not a physics textbook. For one thing, it is very light on math. Calculus was a prerequisite to the physics classes I took in college, but you can follow this book with no more math than a high school student would know. If higher math is necessary for a thorough understanding, Kakalios provides a general concept and moves on. This is a book for the nonspecialist.
Though written for a nontechnical audience, the book covers the range of physics you would find in an undergraduate physics curriculum. It moves from classical mechanics to thermodynamics to quantum mechanics. It demonstrates how seemingly esoteric and strange physical phenomena, particularly in the realm of quantum mechanics, make possible the technology that is all around us.
What makes the book entertaining is the use of comic books as sources of illustrations. Much of what is in comics is more fantasy than physics. Kakalios allows a “miracle exception” to explain the superheroes’ powers, but from their examines their feats form the point of view of solid science. Sometimes the comics get the science right.
Judging from the tone of the book, it seems that Kakalios has an affection for comic books. Though the main subject is physics, a secondary subject is the history of comics and some of their major characters. The comics fan will find something to enjoy as well as those seeking an approachable introduction to physics. Maybe it can bridge the gap between those with the button down collars and those in the Black Adam tee shirts.
This book shares something with more academic texts, namely footnotes. Kakalios’ footnotes deal more with the comics than the physics; he deals with the physics in the main text, but sometimes an explanatory note about the comics’ characters is helpful to the uninitiated. Some footnotes are tongue-in-cheek comments that lighten the tone of the more serious segments.
Order this book here
The Physics of Superheroes is a fun introduction to physics. Kakalios is a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, and childhood comic book fan, who created a freshman physics class that used examples from comic books to illustrate physics principles rather than traditional examples.
This book is not a physics textbook. For one thing, it is very light on math. Calculus was a prerequisite to the physics classes I took in college, but you can follow this book with no more math than a high school student would know. If higher math is necessary for a thorough understanding, Kakalios provides a general concept and moves on. This is a book for the nonspecialist.
Though written for a nontechnical audience, the book covers the range of physics you would find in an undergraduate physics curriculum. It moves from classical mechanics to thermodynamics to quantum mechanics. It demonstrates how seemingly esoteric and strange physical phenomena, particularly in the realm of quantum mechanics, make possible the technology that is all around us.
What makes the book entertaining is the use of comic books as sources of illustrations. Much of what is in comics is more fantasy than physics. Kakalios allows a “miracle exception” to explain the superheroes’ powers, but from their examines their feats form the point of view of solid science. Sometimes the comics get the science right.
Judging from the tone of the book, it seems that Kakalios has an affection for comic books. Though the main subject is physics, a secondary subject is the history of comics and some of their major characters. The comics fan will find something to enjoy as well as those seeking an approachable introduction to physics. Maybe it can bridge the gap between those with the button down collars and those in the Black Adam tee shirts.
This book shares something with more academic texts, namely footnotes. Kakalios’ footnotes deal more with the comics than the physics; he deals with the physics in the main text, but sometimes an explanatory note about the comics’ characters is helpful to the uninitiated. Some footnotes are tongue-in-cheek comments that lighten the tone of the more serious segments.
Order this book here
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Reckless by Chrissie Hynde
As I get older, I start noticing some strange connections. If Peter Parker
aged naturally, he’d be the same age as my father. I also learned that Chrissie
Hynde, lead singer of the Pretenders
(one of my favorite bands), is only three years younger than my parents. I can
hardly believe it, though there is an unreliable part of my mind that seems
convinced that I’m still in my early 20s.
This bit about Hynde’s age is hardly the most interesting thing in her autobiography,
Reckless. You find many things you
normally find in autobiographies. For instance, her early childhood in Ohio was
surprisingly and pleasantly normal.
Things get more interesting in her teen years. She became a teenager in the
1960s and she
was swept up into the youth culture
of the time. She had two loves, music
and drugs.
Hynde did a lot of drugs. She doesn’t dwell on the term addiction, but
she doesn’t hide that she clearly was addicted. She subjected to herself to may
dangers and abuses for the sake of getting high. A person would not do that if
she was thinking straight, but addicts don’t think straight.
Unfortunately, drugs got in the way of the music. Drugs took the lives
of many innovative musicians of the 1960s and 1970s, and Hynde
mentions many of them that she knew. Two members of the Pretenders, Jimmy Scott
and Pete
Farndon, died of drug-related causes. It seems that there are several
occasions in her story, before the Pretenders, when her dream of being in a
band was interrupted by drugs, either her own pursuit of them or her potential
bandmates’.
Hynde was adventurous. She traveled far from her childhood home in Akron to Canada, Mexico and France before
settling in London.
London became her home, largely because of the music scene. There she finally
put together a band, though an unusual British band with an American lead. She
met an amazing number of other musicians, famous then or later, who were there.
It may seem like name dropping to discuss the Clash or the Sex Pistols,
but these were people she knew and she lived their ups and downs with them.
The final section of the book, covering the career of the Pretenders,
is surprisingly short. Admittedly, the original line-up did not last long due
to the deaths of Scott and Farndon.
Hynde’s tone is not nostalgic. She has nostalgia for a Midwestern
urbanism that was almost dead by the time she came along. She speaks frankly
about her own days. She expresses a strong sense of agency and does not blame
anyone for the way they treated her or depict herself as a victim. She seems to
regret that the drugs people thought would set them free did not, and that as
addicts they kept using drugs long after they knew it was a trap.
If you’re interested in rock and roll
(and rhythm
and blues and punk),
you’ll likely enjoy this book. Hynde clearly loves this music and was around
when it was undergoing much innovation. She was friends with some of the first
stars of punk. He story is also an interesting section of the 1960s and 1970s.
For instance, she was a student at Kent
State University and witnessed the protests and other events that led to
the National
Guard firing on students.
If you’r interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Ed Wood Double Feature
Ed Wood is famous as one of the worst filmmakers of all time. That is an overstatement. Wood made some decent films (for the time, budget and type of films he was making) and some find even his bad movies to be entertaining. A couple of my favorite Wood films are illustrative.
I think Bride of the Monster (1956) is the first Ed Wood film I saw. I recall it showing on the Creature Feature, a late night film show broadcast out of Cape Girardeau and hosted by Misty Brew. Bride is not a bad movie. It’s about as good as a lot of low budget, sci-fi horror films from the 1950s.
In Bride, Bela Legosi plays an outcast scientist who intends to create a “race of atomic supermen” that will usher in a new age of his making, under his rule. His human experiments have not been successful and keeping ahead of the law and spies from his homeland led him to a remote American swamp. His animal experiments have been more successful, and his gigantic creation proves to be a useful way to dispose of the corpses of his unwilling human subjects. Mad science, nosy reporters, police, and spies crash in an atomic explosion of mayhem.
By contract, Night of the Ghouls (1958) has everything in it that is the worst of Wood. To start with, it seems to be a sequel to Bride, except that any continuity is accidental. Many of the actors are the same, but only two of the characters could are the same, Lobo (Tor Johnson) and Kelton the Cop (Paul Marco). There are constant reference to setting of the story and that strange things happened there once before, enough for me to think it’s referring to Bride, but they don’t exactly make sense and certainly aren’t necessary. I don’t know if issues with rights prevented Wood from making an outright sequel. I suspect his write-fast, film-fast style didn’t leave room for the careful checking of continuity a real sequel would require.
Another Woodism is the overuse of voiceover. The film begins and ends with soliloquies delivered from a coffin by newspaper psychic Criswell, which is entertaining in its goofy bombast. Criswell’s narrative continues through the film, though it is largely unnecessary. Wood is good enough to tell the story without the voiceover, but bad enough to use it anyway. Criswell delivers the lines with gusto, and possibly with thanks, for their better than most of the dialogue the other actors have to deal with.
Criswell narrates a section built on stock footage, which was a staple of low-budget and exploitation films and frequently used by Wood. The bad, and oddly entertaining, thing about this section is that it has practically nothing to do with the rest of the film. It’s an exploitation-style harangue on juvenile delinquency that depicts many young people dancing to rock and roll, racing cars and committing mostly petty crimes.
In Night, at least, Wood is not a good storyteller. He remains a great plotter though. A fake psychic set up shop to con wealthy clients who disparately desire to reach diseased spouses. It turns out he is actually very powerful medium who is unwittingly raising the dead from a nearby cemetery. These ghouls can’t stay in the realm of the living for long and they’re not going back to their graves alone. That could be an awesome horror story, but in Wood’s hand it doesn’t quite make it.
By the way, the malevolent medium of Night is named Dr. Acula. That is right, Wood straight up names a character Dr. Acula.
If you like old sci-fi horror films, you may like Bride of the Monster, which is typical of its low-budget ilk. If you want to see a bad movie that entertains in spite of, or possibly because of, its myriad flaws, look at Night of the Ghouls.
If your interested in these films, you may also be interested in
Bedlam
Isle of the Dead
I think Bride of the Monster (1956) is the first Ed Wood film I saw. I recall it showing on the Creature Feature, a late night film show broadcast out of Cape Girardeau and hosted by Misty Brew. Bride is not a bad movie. It’s about as good as a lot of low budget, sci-fi horror films from the 1950s.
In Bride, Bela Legosi plays an outcast scientist who intends to create a “race of atomic supermen” that will usher in a new age of his making, under his rule. His human experiments have not been successful and keeping ahead of the law and spies from his homeland led him to a remote American swamp. His animal experiments have been more successful, and his gigantic creation proves to be a useful way to dispose of the corpses of his unwilling human subjects. Mad science, nosy reporters, police, and spies crash in an atomic explosion of mayhem.
By contract, Night of the Ghouls (1958) has everything in it that is the worst of Wood. To start with, it seems to be a sequel to Bride, except that any continuity is accidental. Many of the actors are the same, but only two of the characters could are the same, Lobo (Tor Johnson) and Kelton the Cop (Paul Marco). There are constant reference to setting of the story and that strange things happened there once before, enough for me to think it’s referring to Bride, but they don’t exactly make sense and certainly aren’t necessary. I don’t know if issues with rights prevented Wood from making an outright sequel. I suspect his write-fast, film-fast style didn’t leave room for the careful checking of continuity a real sequel would require.
Another Woodism is the overuse of voiceover. The film begins and ends with soliloquies delivered from a coffin by newspaper psychic Criswell, which is entertaining in its goofy bombast. Criswell’s narrative continues through the film, though it is largely unnecessary. Wood is good enough to tell the story without the voiceover, but bad enough to use it anyway. Criswell delivers the lines with gusto, and possibly with thanks, for their better than most of the dialogue the other actors have to deal with.
Criswell narrates a section built on stock footage, which was a staple of low-budget and exploitation films and frequently used by Wood. The bad, and oddly entertaining, thing about this section is that it has practically nothing to do with the rest of the film. It’s an exploitation-style harangue on juvenile delinquency that depicts many young people dancing to rock and roll, racing cars and committing mostly petty crimes.
In Night, at least, Wood is not a good storyteller. He remains a great plotter though. A fake psychic set up shop to con wealthy clients who disparately desire to reach diseased spouses. It turns out he is actually very powerful medium who is unwittingly raising the dead from a nearby cemetery. These ghouls can’t stay in the realm of the living for long and they’re not going back to their graves alone. That could be an awesome horror story, but in Wood’s hand it doesn’t quite make it.
By the way, the malevolent medium of Night is named Dr. Acula. That is right, Wood straight up names a character Dr. Acula.
If you like old sci-fi horror films, you may like Bride of the Monster, which is typical of its low-budget ilk. If you want to see a bad movie that entertains in spite of, or possibly because of, its myriad flaws, look at Night of the Ghouls.
If your interested in these films, you may also be interested in
Bedlam
Isle of the Dead
Sunday, April 13, 2014
It's Not About Me by Max Lucado
Many of our
problems arrive from our focus on us. The cure, which leads to fulfillment, is
a life focused on Christ.
Max Lucado
makes the case for this idea in his book It’s Not About Me.
Everything
and everyone was made to reveal the glory of God. God is holy. It is hard to
imagine how higher and more is God than anything else is, and He made
everything else. Contact with God changes us and we become holy, different and
set apart, too. When Moses
was given a glimpse of God, his face shown so that people were afraid to look
at him.
We are to
shine, too, as mirrors that reflect the glory of God. We have reason to praise
Him. He is our stable foundation; He never changes though all else does. He
saved us entirely for His own purposes and pleasure even though we could never
deserve it. He redeems our suffering, and
our fleeting suffering for His name’s sake will be rewarded with eternal
blessing. If we have success in life,
it is His gift. Even our bodies are His and make to glorify Him, so it
important for us to take care of our bodies and avoid sin.
I found a
personal connection to one of the stories recounted by Lucado. As a Texan, he was
aware of the collapse of the Queen Isabella Causeway on September 15, 2001,when
it was struck by a barge.
I was vacationing
nearby in Corpus Christi at the time. One of my in-laws reacted in fear, assuming my
wife and I must have been trapped, or worse killed (even though the bridge
collapsed in the middle of the night), and frantically called anyone in the family
or at work
who might have some contact with us. A close relative of mine shrugged it off, saying
a call from the Texas Highway Patrol would come if something happened to us.
One reacted with fear (surely, something was wrong), one reacted with faith (we
were in God’s hands, whatever happened).
You might
note that this happened only days after terrorists crashed airplanes into
the World Trade Center towers in New York. On
the first day of that vacation, we were struck by another car under strange
circumstances in Arkansas,
leaving us stuck in Morrilton; we ended up skipping a planned stop at Hot
Springs. The collapsing bridge was the last straw, we were too heartsick to
enjoy our vacation and we came home early.
Even after
all that, we were grateful.
We were alive and well when so many others were not. We had our family with us
when others did not. We knew God was with us, comforting us, and that even if
the worst had happened to us, we would be with Him, which is the thing our
hearts long for.
If you’re
interested in this book, you may also be interested in
I previously
posted a review of this book here->.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk
Douglas
Wolk’s book Reading Comics has
two major sections. In the first section, outlines a framework for comic
book criticism.
First, he makes it clear that the comic book (or graphic
novel) is a distinct medium. Comics are
not half-assed attempts at some other media such as film
or prose.
Next he draws a distinction between mainstream comics and art
comics. Mainstream comics have always been an corporate effort. It is corporate
in the sense that it has been controlled by publishers.
It is also corporate because most mainstream comics are the product of a team
(a writer,
an artist—sometimes
separate penciller
and inker—a colorist, and a
letterer).
Both of these types of corporate authorship give rise to a house style.
This gives rise to one of the major points of distinction between
mainstream and art comics. Mainstream comics are dominated by a house style.
Art comics are an expression of the style of the cartoonist.
There is an element of auteurism in this understanding of art comics. An art
comic, to a much greater degree than a mainstream comic, is a single artist’s
interpretation of what he sees or envisions. Art comics are valued as an
expression of their creators’ visions. The more skillful the cartoonist, the
more likely he is to produce good comics.
There is more to Wolk’s framework of comics criticism than this, but it
seems to me to be the central element. Wolk does not claim to be making a
comprehensive system of criticism. Comic books are too new a medium for that,
especially because comics criticisms is necessarily younger.
In the second section of the book, Wolk discusses the works of
particular cartoonists. Some of these work heavily or mostly in mainstream
comics, but the focus remains on how the artist interprets and expresses his
vision in comics, with or without the expectations of mainstream comics.
One of the great examples of this is Alan Moore.
Moore’s work for mainstream publishers had turned the mainstream, and
especially the superhero
genre, on its
head while still producing comics that work excellently as mainstream comics.
Moore bucks the trend of artsy cartoonists by being a writer only; all of his
comics are mainstream-style collaborations with an artist. Wolk mentions
several works of Moore, but the grand example is Watchmen. Moore, and especially Watchmen, has cost a long shadow on
mainstream comics. He has pushed the mainstream to be much better, and eager
imitators have unfortunately produced some horrible comics by learning all the
wrong lessons.
Several cartoonists receive attention: the dark, strange visions of Steve Ditko
(cocreator of Spider-Man),
the epically deep world-building and beautiful drawing of Jaime
Hernandez, the epic opus of Cerebus
comics by Dave
Sim, the artistry of Will Eisner,
the power of Frank
Miller (sometimes overpowering), and the consciousness-expanding ouvre of Grant
Morrison (another writer, but not artist).
Even though the book is not new, it introduced me to cartoonists and
comics that were new to me. It was worth the read for that, though Wolk’s
perspective on the development of mainstream and art comics is interesting,
too.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Douglas Wolk. Reading Comics: How
Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge,
MA: Da Capo,
2007.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Mr. America by Mark Adams
Benarr
Macfadden was named Bernard McFadden by his parents; he chose the modified
name to suit himself. He was born into severe poverty in the Missouri Ozarks shortly after the Civil War. He would become a self-made millionaire famous for his physique, his stunts
and his opinions. Mark Adams recounts his story in Mr. America.
Macfadden became
fascinated with health and bodybuilding as a youth in St. Louis, where is visited a gym with his uncle. He had been sick much of his childhood, which is not surprising given the poverty,
malnutrition and undeveloped medicine of the time. With hard work and a
knack for self-promotion, he was eventually able to afford to join the gym (it
cost $15 for an initial membership, close to $400 today).
Macfadden pursued a lot
of jobs as a kid and young adult, spending very little time in school. In bodybuilding and training he
found his way into a career. Particularly, he started to follow a
career path that had been blazed by another strongman, Eugen Sandow. Mcfadden saw Sandow’s performances,
organized by Franz Ziegfeld, Jr., at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. He began doing a version of Sandow’s
act and even took it to his distant mentor’s adopted homeland, England.
When he returned from
his year in England, he brought back another idea borrowed from Sandow. He
began publishing a magazine titled Physical
Culture. The
magazine was an outlet for him to sell exercise equipment and promote his ideas about
fitness, diet, sex, nudity, marriage and other topics related to health
and happiness. It was the foundation of what grew
into a publishing empire in which Macfadden helped to pioneer true confession (long before Jerry Spring and Oprah Winfrey), celebrity culture and tabloid journalism. He is promotion of health
information set the path for American health experts that followed with a
mix of quackery and sound notions that turned out to be ahead of their time.
I’d be glad to go on
about Macfadden, his accomplishment and his sometimes strange life. Instead, I
should just suggest you read Mr. America.
Actually, I had been
looking forward to reading Mr. America.
I’ve seen Adam’s book referenced by other who have discussed Macfadden in the
context of fitness, health culture and popular publishing. Macfadden led and
interesting life suitable for a novel. Adam’s biography doesn’t quite read
like a novel, but it is entertaining and approachable, and I recommend it to
those interested in Macfadden or in the popular culture of the early 20th Century.
If you’re interested in
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