Kenneth C. Davis (1)
Auteur van Don't Know Much About History
Voor andere auteurs genaamd Kenneth C. Davis, zie de verduidelijkingspagina.
Over de Auteur
Kenneth C. Davis is an American popular historian, best known for his Don't Know Much About... series. Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Davis attended Concordia College, Bronxville in New York, and Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York City. Davis's second book, Don't Know Much About toon meer History, spent 35 consecutive weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and sold nearly 1.5 million copies. This unexpected success launched the Don't Know Much About... series. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Fotografie: Kenneth C. Davis
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Werken van Kenneth C. Davis
Don't Know Much About the Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned (1998) 1,143 exemplaren
Don't Know Much About Geography: Everything You Need to Know About the World but Never Learned (1992) 1,113 exemplaren
Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict but Never Learned (1996) 855 exemplaren
America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a… (2008) 660 exemplaren
A Nation Rising: Untold Tales of Flawed Founders, Fallen Heroes, and Forgotten Fighters from America's Hidden History (2010) 249 exemplaren
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (2016) 244 exemplaren
Don't Know Much About Anything Else: Even More Things You Need to Know but Never Learned About People, Places, Events,… (2008) 78 exemplaren
More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War (2018) 67 exemplaren
The Hidden History of America at War: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah (Don't Know Much About) (2015) 60 exemplaren
Don't Know Much About the Bible Geography: Everything You Need to Know About the World but Never Learned (Don't Know… 3 exemplaren
Kenneth C. Davis CD Audiobook Bundle: Don't Know Much About the Civil War; Don't Know Much About History,… (2013) 2 exemplaren
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Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Gangbare naam
- Davis, Kenneth C.
- Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten
- Davis, Ken C.
- Geboortedatum
- 20th Century
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Geboorteplaats
- Mount Vernon, New York, USA
- Woonplaatsen
- New York, New York, USA
Dorset, Vermont, USA
Mount Vernon, New York, USA - Beroepen
- Editeur
- Korte biografie
- Kenneth C. Davis who wrote "Don't Know Much About History" and others graduated from Concordia College and Fordham. He lives in New York City
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 39
- Leden
- 13,504
- Populariteit
- #1,720
- Waardering
- 3.6
- Besprekingen
- 152
- ISBNs
- 330
- Talen
- 6
- Favoriet
- 1
Two-Bit Culture is, despite its title, first and foremost a history of paperback publishing as a business. Its nearly 400 pages of text chronicle the rise and fall of companies, imprints, marketing strategies, and editors. The text is stuffed with names, dates, facts, and figures (press runs, sales figures, cover prices, money paid for reprint rights, and money advanced to authors). For the period the book covers -- the eve of World War II to the first Reagan administration -- the book covers what must be every significant development in the industry. If you want to trace the history of Pocket Books, Ballentine, New American Library, or Avon, this is the book you want. If you want to learn about E. L. Doctorow's early career as an editor, or Ian Ballentine's industry-changing arc through the business, you'll find it here.
Davis doesn't neglect the cultural impact of the paperback, by any means--there are interesting discussions of Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care (the first paperback-original bestseller), the legal battle over publication of an unexpurgated paperback edition of Lady Chatterly's Lover, and the role of paperbacks in bringing the work of African American authors to mass audiences--but his coverage of such issues is scattered rather than sustained. They're well-developed pauses in the central narrative of changing business practices, rather than a parallel narrative of their own.
The book's greatest drawback is Davis's patent lack of respect for paperback originals that -- in his view -- lack seriousness and literary value. Paperbacks are, for Davis, a conduit of getting cheap reprints of "good literature" and serious non-fiction into the hands of the general public. He treats anything short of that mission with disinterest or barely concealed disdain. That high-mindedness leads him to unforced factual errors (having John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series begin in the mid-50s, rather than 1964), and shallow, unsatisfying treatments of the paperback's role in the evolution of science fiction and hard-boiled mysteries. His treatment of Harlequin and other "category" romances is a few pages long, and every paragraph of it drips with contempt. The paperback original's relationship to pulp magazines, episodic television, and similar forms of genre storytelling go entirely unmentioned.
Two-Bit Culture is unlikely to be bettered as a history of the paperback industry, but after forty years it's long past time for a new, deeper, and less judgemental history of the paperback as a cultural phenomenon.… (meer)