Q. What is the most-watched TV format in history, seen by about 100 million people weekly around the world? A. Wheel of Fortune, a game show. Without putdowns or pandering, the author looks at 260 such shows, concluding that culture has triumphed over technology. For despite our capacity to transmit the same content world-wide, McLuhan's global village has not come to pass. Technology has, however, encouraged already-existing "cultural continents" to coalesce. About one-third of the world's game shows have been licensed or adapted from another country, especially from the United States. Conversely, a single program can cross borders unchanged, such as Sabado Gigante, which appeals to Spanish speakers in 18 countries. The first truly global study of TV entertainment, this book includes interviews with producers, contestants, and licensers. With its tables, illustrations and appendices, the text provides details on content and audiences, as well as explanatory overviews.
Detailed, accurate illustrations of 43 homes in wide range of styles: Mark Twain House, House of the Seven Gables, Nathan Hale Homestead, Robert Frost Place, The Breakers, many more. Informative captions.
In the tradition of Rizzoli’s Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley and The Houses of McKim, Mead & White, Great Houses of New England features a stunning array of newly photographed houses that range over four centuries and are distinctive examples of the architecture of the region—from the mid-seventeenth-century New England Colonial Judge Corwin House (Witches House) in Salem, MA., and the eighteenth-century Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, MA., to the late-nineteenth-century McKim, Mead & White Shingle-Style Isaac Bell House in Newport, R.I. With lavish photography of sumptuously appointed interiors including many rarely seen rooms, wonderfully detailed house exteriors and gardens, and authoritative text by architectural historian Roderic H. Blackburn, Great Houses of New England comprehensively considers the magnificent building styles of the region—including Early New England Colonial, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Shingle Style, Colonial Revival, and Tudor. Great Houses of New England is a landmark work of enduring interest to homeowners, architects, architecture historians, and all those who love fine architecture and interiors.
"The history of New England -- indeed, the history of the United States -- can be experienced first-hand by visiting the homes and estates of the region's most notable residents. From presidents and war heroes to icons of American literature and the arts, the grace and grandeur of these homes offer a glimpse into the lives of the men and women who shaped our nation. [The author and photographer] breathe life into the history of the region's thirty-six most important, influential, and picturesque homes, from the earliest homesteads of the 1600s through the Gilded Age mansions of the early twentieth century." --P. [4] of cover.
"Herein, we bring you to sites that have been central to the lives of 'the people' of Greater Boston over four centuries. You'll visit sites associated with the area's indigenous inhabitants and with the individuals and movements who sought to abolish slavery, to end war, challenge militarism, and bring about a more peaceful world, to achieve racial equity, gender justice, and sexual liberation, and to secure the rights of workers. We take you to some well-known sites, but more often to ones far off the well-beaten path of the Freedom Trail, to places in Boston's outlying neighborhoods. We also visit sites in numerous other municipalities that make up the Greater Boston region-from places such as Lawrence, Lowell and Lynn to Concord and Plymouth. The sites to which we do 'travel' include homes given that people's struggles, activism, and organizing sometimes unfold, or are even birthed in many cases in living rooms and kitchens. Trying to capture a place as diverse and dynamic as Boston is highly challenging. (One could say that about any 'big' place.) We thus want to make clear that our goal is not to be comprehensive, or to 'do justice' to the region. Given the constraints of space and time as well as the limitations of knowledge--both our own and what is available in published form--there are many important sites, cities, and towns that we have not included. Thus, in exploring scores of sites across Boston and numerous municipalities, our modest goal is to paint a suggestive portrait of the greater urban area that highlights its long-contested nature. In many ways, we merely scratch the region's surface--or many surfaces--given the multiple layers that any one place embodies. In writing about Greater Boston as a place, we run the risk of suggesting that the city writ-large has some sort of essence. Indeed, the very notion of a particular place assumes intrinsic characteristics and an associated delimited space. After all, how can one distinguish one place from another if it has no uniqueness and is not geographically differentiated? Nonetheless, geographer Doreen Massey insists that we conceive of places as progressive, as flowing over the boundaries of any particular space, time, or society; in other words, we should see places as processual or ever-changing, as unbounded in that they shape and are shaped by other places and forces from without, and as having multiple identities. In exploring Greater Boston from many venues over 400 years, we embrace this approach. That said, we have to reconcile this with the need to delimit Greater Boston--for among other reasons, simply to be in a position to name it and thus distinguish it from elsewhere"--
A generational shift is occurring at historic house museums as board members and volunteers retire while few young people step forward to take their place. These landmarks are also plagued by serious deferred maintenance, and many have no endowment funds. What will happen to these sites in the next ten years, and what can be done to assure their continued preservation for generations to come? In New Solutions for House Museums Harris examines possible options and provides a decision-making methodology as well as a dozen case studies of house museums that have made a successful transition to a new owner or user.
In her critically acclaimed, ingenious memoir, Sarah Messer explores America’s fascination with history, family, and Great Houses. Her Massachusetts childhood home had sheltered the Hatch family for 325 years when her parents bought it in 1965. The will of the house’s original owner, Walter Hatch—which stipulated Red House was to be passed down, "never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever"—still hung in the living room. In Red House, Messer explores the strange and enriching consequences of growing up with another family’s birthright. Answering the riddle of when shelter becomes first a home and then an identity, Messer has created a classic exploration of heritage, community, and the role architecture plays in our national identity.
New England is the oldest and most influential region of America. Although it has changed much through the centuries, it remains a place that even the Colonials may still recognize. Through a collection of photos, illustrations, history, and stories, this book explores the architectural history of New England and how, although it has changed much through the centuries, it remains a place that even the Colonials might still recognize. The book begins with the influence of climate and geography on the architectural choices and follows with the basics of the well-known New England homes––the cape, the saltbox, the colonial––all of which were created to serve the very specific needs of this corner of America, the people, the land and the climate. We look at the earliest settlers, understanding the challenges they faced, and follow their descendants as they convert and adapt the traditional New England home into something still clearly New England but different, newer and, ultimately, even modern. We watch how the people and houses evolve and how they become what are still clearly identifiable as New England––and all over New England, from Connecticut’s Gold Coast to the rocky shores of Maine. Sprinkled throughout the story of this evolution are sidebars such as A New England State of Mind and I Live Here, etc… where we meet the quintessential New England personalities and characters, who speak through letters, epitaphs, remembrances, books, newspapers, and others, and hear and see in their own words and images what they make or made of this place and life in it. People who buy this book will enjoy a very visual sense of what it’s like to be a New Englander and what it’s like to live in New England––whose houses have been copied and adapted in every state, city and neighborhood of America.
