Bücher von Kerry Segrave

Between 1887 and 1920, the humble hatpin went from an unremarkable item in every woman's wardrobe, to a fashion necessity, to a dangerous weapon (it was said). Big hair and big hats of the era meant big hatpins, and their weaponized use sparked controversy. There were ""good"" uses of hatpins, such as fending off an attacker in the street. There were also ""bad"" uses, such as when a woman being arrested tried to stab a police officer. But seriously: All those protruding pins seemed to threaten people everywhere in the public sphere. It did not sit well with the patriarchy, who responded with hysterical crusades and often ludicrous legislation aimed at curbing the hatpin and disarming American women.

The early 20th century saw the founding of the National Security League, a nationalistic nonprofit organization committed to an expanded military, conscripted service, and meritocracy. This book details its history, from its formation in December 1914 to 1922, at which point it was a spent force in decline.

On a summer day in 1898, a family in Dover, Delaware, shared a box of chocolates they received from an anonymous sender. Within days, two of the seven family members were dead; the other five became ill but recovered. The search for the perpetrator soon moved from Delaware to California, where a suspect was quickly identified: Cordelia Botkin.

Traces the history and development of the American bicycle, observing its critical role in the fight for gender equality. The bicycle radically changed the face of fashion, health, and even morality and propriety in America. This thorough history traces the sweeping social advances made by women in relation to the development of the bicycle.

The electric vehicle seemed poised in 1900 to be a leader, even the dominant force, in the early American car market. They were clean, odorless, noiseless and they were mechanically simple, compared to their rivals. Yet just two decades later the electric car was dead. This book explores this early history of the electric car.

From the first torturous attempts at hair implants early in the 21st century to the faddish, well-hyped drug treatments, this work examines the extremes to which men have gone in an effort to regrow hair or cover their bald scalps.

Looks at women who passed themselves off as men for a variety of reasons. This book is about a large number of women who were engaged in individual revolt against an obscenely unfair economic system that discriminated openly and egregiously against women. For virtually all the women profiled in this book the act of passing as a man was an act of rebellion against patriarcy.

When the need for telephone operators arose in the 1870s, the assumption was that they should all be male. Wages for adult men were too high, so boys were hired. They proved quick to argue with subscribers, so females replaced them. Women were calmer, had reassuring voices and rarely talked back. Within a few years, telephone operators were all female and would remain so.

Police violence is not a new phenomenon. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, police officers in America assaulted or killed many ordinary citizens. Based on newspaper accounts from 1869 to 1920, this history provides a chronological listing of interactions between police and unarmed citizens in which the citizens - some of them minors - were assaulted or killed.

This social history traces the evolution of women's smoking in the US from 1880 to 1950. From 1880 to 1908, women were not allowed to smoke in public places, with strong opposition based on moral concerns. By 1928, advertisers began to target female smokers, and over the next two decades women smokers gradually gained equality with male smokers.

Gives a faithful overview of the history of tapping: it all started in 1910, when the dictograph arrived and made it easier still for people to engage in spying telegraphic communications. It was the first ready-to-use bug that anyone could employ - that is, buy it off the shelf and use it with no prior training required. Politicians dictographed other politicians; corporations dictographed labor unions; stockbrokers bugged other stockbrokers; and the police dictographed everybody.

The use of endorsements and testimonials to sell anything imaginable is a modern development, though the technique is centuries old. This exploration of modern endorsement advertising follows its evolution from a marginalized, mistrusted technique to a multibillion-dollar industry.

A look at film piracy within the motion picture industry. The book begins with some of the earliest cases and then considers how the problem grew due to a lack of legal resources available to performers. Also examined are the practices of American theatre owners who tried to cheat Hollywood.

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.

Examining the 20th century suntan as a social and scientific phenomenon, this illustrated book debunks the myth that changing attitudes toward the tan sprang largely from the world of fashion. Initial pro-tanning medical hype, negative opinions of sunbathing, development of sunscreens, debate over its efficacy, and the sunless tan are covered.

Perhaps the single medium in which women have been consistently treated as equal to men is the American judicial system. 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 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.

With its decentralised urban areas, pollution, and mostly inadequate public transit systems, today's America pays a heavy price for its car dependency. This explores one of the more pressing aspects of the automobile problem - storage - from 1910 to the end of the World War II, contrasting the reality and perception of car parking as found in the pages of the popular newspapers and magazines of that period.

Explores the history of American actors' attempts to unionize in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book focuses on the two unions of the time, the White Rats Actors' Union of America and the Actors' Equity Association. It chronicles the formation of the unions and outlines the roles of union leaders Harry Mountford and Francis Wilson.

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. This work addresses such topics as television's conditioning of filmgoers to accept commercials, companies' donation of props, the debate about smoking and drinking in , and ""product displacement"".

A leading public health problem for Americans, obesity is a regular topic for nightly news programs, scientific or medical study, and intense public debate. This study takes a look at obesity in America, concentrating not on the condition as it exists now, but rather on how the condition was viewed, studied, and treated from 1850 to 1939.

While sexual harassment of women in the workplace has been discussed for decades it is still a pervasive problem. This book looks at the history of that harassment from the 1600s (!) to the early 1990s, from long forgotten domestic servants in England of the 1600s to abused Japanese textile workers of 1900, to Anita Hill in 1991 America. Coverage is worldwide with emphasis on the United States and the period 1800 to the present. Harassment affects women from all walks of life; from unskilled to professional, those in traditionally female jobs, those in traditionally male jobs, and all the rest. Harassment occurs in factories, coal mines, construction sites, law offices, dental offices, government offices, Capitol Hill, and at every other work site. So bad was it in some factories that women took to carrying knives for self-protection. Women have put their economic existence on the line by striking over sexual harassment.

Once the major Hollywood studios got over their loathing of television as an entertainment medium, they moved quickly to try to dominate both domestic and international programming. In the United States, the eight major studios controlled an overwhelming majority of all television programming by the early 1950s. Their efforts in foreign markets were not quite so successful, but by the 1990s U.S. distributors controlled about 75 percent of the international television trade. Hollywood's efforts in television were often thwarted by governments that recognized the airwaves as a public resource and intervened in varying degrees to keep the studios' programing off the air in their countries. Still the U.S. industry found various ways to provide American fare to foreign viewers. Even into the 1980s, for example, some Hollywood shows could be bought by foreign broadcasters for fees as low as $25 per segment. Despite these efforts the American studios have never been able to completely dominate foreign airwaves: Viewers usually prefer their own, domestic fare to that offered by Hollywood. This history fully documents the U.S. television industry's efforts in foreign markets and how it continues to look for new markets.

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 obscurity in the year 2000. Other socially important elements of the jukebox's development are also covered.

The poverty that drives people to begging has been a pressing social issue in this country since its inception. This historical book explores begging and beggars in the period 1850 to 1940, with emphasis on how the police, the courts, the media and private charity organizations dealt with the issue. 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.

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. This book examines 103 selected cases of individuals charged with parricide - the murder of a father or mother - in the United States.

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 the attempts to organize film actors into a union, starting from the earliest attempt in 1912 when the Actors' Equity Association seemed the best platform for such an effort.

The polygraph, or 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 polygraph - from the experimental work of the late 1800s that led directly to its creation - until the present.

Between 1850 and 1950, at least 115 women were lynched by mobs in the US. The majority of these women were black. This examines the phenomenon of the lynching of women, which was a much more rare experience than the lynching of men. Of particular importance in this examination is the role of race in lynching, particularly the increase in the number of black lynchings as the century progressed.

This work traces the history of the vending machine from its inception to its current place in popular American culture. Successes and failures, economic factors influencing the popularity of vending machines, and the struggle of the inustry to become a dominant method of retailing are discussed.