Caruso: An Illustrated Life

Average customer rating:

I feel GORGEOUS!

Could have been so much more!

Great gift idea!

More please!

Delightful!

Hello Gorgeous!: Beauty Products in America, '40s-'60s
Rachel C. Weingarten
Manufacturer: Collectors Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Cosmetics | Beauty & Fashion | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Culture | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Inventing Beauty: A History of the Innovations that Have Made Us Beautiful

Just Heat It 'n' Eat It!: Convenience Foods of the '40s-'60s

Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture

What's Your Poison?: Addictive Advertising Of The '40s - '60s

The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s

ASIN: 1933112182

Book Description

Beginning in the 1940s, women’s increased buying power allowed them the luxury of beautification, and beautify they did! Showcasing over 300 illustrated advertisements of the time, Hello Gorgeous! looks at the products that became staples for generations of women, and set the standard for innovations in the industry. Everything from skin care to hair products, from razors to toothpaste were touted as the key to eternal youth and womanly appeal, and they’re all here, from Camay to Prell to Lustre Crème. The author's commentary explores the science, the stats, and the little-known secrets of the formative years of female beauty.

Customer Reviews:

I feel GORGEOUS!.......2007-06-27

You know, I'm not a makeup junky like a lot of the people who write these reviews, but I do love trivia and I loved that part of the book best.

Could have been so much more!.......2007-05-02

I enjoyed looking thru this book and taking a fun trip into the past. Many of the ads were for products my mom used and with which I grew up. I also felt nostalgia for some great products from the 60s that are no more. It's a neat little colorful package which makes a nice gift for makeup junkies. Now, following are the reasons I gave it only 2 stars.

1. Because the book is so small, all the ads have been extremely shrunken down from their original size (magazines were huge back in the 40s,50s, & 60s). Ofcourse, I did not expect full size ads, but if the book were a bit larger one would not need to use a magnafying glass to read much of the text in the ads.

2. Too many of the ads were overly repeated within the same chapter and throughout the book. How many ads for Palmolive Soap do we need to see? Please! There were so many other beauty products I remember from the 60s which were not even represented (but Palmolive and Cashmere Bouquet were repeated on every few pages, over and over.

3. The major part of the ads mostly covered the 1940s and 1950s. The 1960s were barely represented. The 60s brought us many beauty innovations. The baby boomer generation was more demanding than the previous.

I can say alot more, but I will stop here. Over all the book was fun to look at, however, it could have been so much more.

Great gift idea!.......2006-09-15

I love this book. It's so much fun and so well researched. The reprints of old advertisements are entertaining in and of themselves, even if you never read a word of the text, and for a few of my older women friends it's been a walk down memory lane ("My grandmother had all of these combs in a jar by the mirror in the kitchen of their farmhouse!).

I started with a copy for me and one for my best friend, but now that I've had a chance to really look at the book (and see my girlfriend's reaction) I'm going to order more copies to give as gifts to other friends.

More please!.......2006-07-12

The best part of this book? everything. It's written well, well researched, funny as hell, poignant, educational and just so sweet.

Believe it or not, as much as I loved the ads which were fantastic (Check out Lucille Ball's eyebrows on page 64) I would have prefered fewer ads,larger typeface and much more of the commentary (this author sure can turn a phrase). I have read other books by this publisher, but this was the first one that felt like a book and not just a collection of images. In reading this I feel as though I had a conversation with a stylish girlfriend who knowsn everything about the beauty business. Talk about girlpower, this book was short but empowering and a hoot.

I can't wait to read whatever comes next from this author. This is my new stocking stuffer/birthday/any or no occasion gift.

Delightful!.......2006-07-11

Do I want to look years younger? Sure! Although I'm a smart consumer and don't believe the too-good-to-be-true claims of beauty product ads, I hold out enough hope that I scrutinize them all, clinging to the belief that somewhere out there is a lipstick formula that will make all my dreams come true. ;)

So I devoured this book. Its highlights are the pages and pages of full-color ads -- for soap, makeup, perfume, shampoo, and products for the "feminine finish" ("Say NO NO to Underarm 'O'") -- and bits of trivia on almost every page. It's interesting to see how advertising concepts have changed over the years, and it's fun to laugh at what would never work today ("Are you *really* lovely to love?").

This book is delightful; I'm buying copies for my mother and mother-in-law. I hope the author follows up with one on products from the late '60s and '70s.

Average customer rating:

Good book idea!
In the golden land at last.
Trials and triumphs of a new immigrant
GREAT book; Great sequel

Hello, America
Livia Bitton-Jackson
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Holocaust | History & Historical Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Teen Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0689867557

Book Description

The year is 1951 and eighteen-year-old Elli and her mother arrive in New York City. Finally they can leave behind bitter Holocaust memories and become real Americans! From office filing all day, to the challenge of night school, to interpreting the intentions of Alex, a handsome and persistent doctor, Elli soon finds learning English is only half as hard as "making it" in this new world.

Against a backdrop of soda shops, skyscrapers, and subways, acclaimed author Livia Bitton-Jackson fuses old-world tradition and modern dreams, in this vivid kaleidoscope of immigrant America.

Customer Reviews:

Good book idea!.......2007-05-21

After reading dozens of Holocaust memoirs, it is nice to see a continuation of how survivors adapted to life thereafter, especially as immigrants in America. There is so little said about how survivors adjusted to their new lives, since most of their stories end at the end of the war. After reading her first two books (which are a must to understand her perspective), I was left wanting to hear what happened next after reading this one. I loved the way she wrote about her mother with humor and her I was surprised at how some people she met in America were so ignorant of her plight and culture. It was very informative.

In the golden land at last........2006-10-17

Livia Bitton-Jackson continues the story of her life after Auschwitz in "Hello, America," the third installment of the trilogy she began with the powerful "I Have Lived a Thousand Years." The year is 1951 and the narrator, whom everyone calls Elli, is ecstatic when she and her mother sail into New York Harbor. Elli wonders, "America, will you be my home? Will you embrace me as a daughter yearning to belong, an equal among equals....?" Although she never attended high school, she yearns to go to college and become a teacher. She also eagerly anticipates a long-awaited reunion with her beloved older brother, Bubi, whom she has not seen in four years.

Elli has painful memories of the past. She recalls with an ache in her heart the last glimpse that she had of Papa in the old country when he was taken away by the authorities, never to be seen again. She cannot forget the harrowing years that she and her mother spent in Auschwitz and in the DP camps. However, her troubles do not end in America. Bitton-Jackson recounts the difficulty she has dealing with a frosty female representative of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, as well as an employer who tries to take advantage of her. On the plus side, Papa's brother, Uncle Abish and his wife, Aunt Lilly, give Elli and her mother a warm American welcome.

Elli is a greenhorn with an uncertain command of English when she first arrives in New York. She even believed the ship's captain who transported her to America when he jokingly told her that she would need a passport to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. To her, America is a puzzling and overwhelming place, and she is particularly appalled by the conspicuous consumption and waste that she sees all around her. Elli doubts that she will ever feel completely comfortable in this extravagant country, but little by little, she begins to relax and adjust to her new surroundings.

In this fast-paced book, Bitton-Jackson tells about her first jobs, the new friends that she makes, and her tentative steps towards romance. "Hello, America" is suitable for young adults, ages twelve and up. Although it is not strictly necessary to read the books of the trilogy in order, it would be helpful to do so in order to get a complete picture of Livia Bitton-Jackson's fascinating journey.

Trials and triumphs of a new immigrant.......2005-11-02

This book goes into territory very very few Shoah memoirists have--what the person's experience was like after leaving Europe and arriving in America. I'm glad Mrs. Bitton-Jackson decided to make her memoirs a trilogy, covering all of the important years and events of her adolescence and early years as an adult--the Shoah, the experience of going home after liberation and then beginning the long slow process of leaving home once again, this time of their own choosing, and finally what it was like when she and her mother joined her brother and some other relatives in America. Too many Shoah memoirs never go this far.

Elli has long dreamt about what America would be like, and finds that, while in many ways it really is the land of her dreams and fantasies, it also has a side she never knew existed. She and her mother begin finding out that America is not like Europe, that you can't just leave a basket of groceries unattended on the street while you're in another shop, that you're not supposed to greet anyone on the subway, that it's dangerous to hitch a ride, that they are now expected to keep their tragic pasts to themselves, that people in America throw things away and buy replacements instead of repairing them, and that people just don't want to hear about what they went through or that they were in the camps. The rabbi-director of the school Elli eventually is allowed to teach at has some words with her on one occasion because she told her students the truth about the number on her arm (in age-appropriate language) instead of saying that it was her phone number. She also finds out that relations between the sexes in America are different from Europe's way of doing things, and several times misreads and misinterprets sexual/romantic advances as joking or just a guy trying to be her good friend. It really shocks her to find out how lightly many American young people treat sexual intimacy, and that some American men feel intimidated upon finding out that she's very smart in addition to very attractive, feeling that a blonde can't be both a bombshell and an egghead.

My only small complaint about this book is that it kind of seemed to end without a full sense of closure and resolution, like there could have been another chapter or two to fully wrap up this chapter of Elli's life. And it was a surprise to me that Elli and her mother initially live with her aunt Celia and her husband Martin when they arrive in America; it was never mentioned at all in either of the two previous books that Celia, who appeared briefly in the first book, had survived, or that her husband had survived as well. It seems like a bit of discontinuity there, that something that important, two of their immediate relatives also having survived, should at least have been mentioned in some detail beforehand, so we would have known when they found out these two were still alive, how they found out, and when they got in touch with them again.

GREAT book; Great sequel.......2005-09-08

HELLO AMERICA by Livia Bitton-Jackson is the sequel to I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS: GROWING UP IN THE HOLOCAUST. HELLO, AMERICA begins right where I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS left off...with her and her mother standing on the ship seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. The book shares her experiences (good and bad) of her new life in America. Of course, she is surrounded by an unfamiliar and seemingly strange culture and language. As she learns English (and the culture), she begins to feel more and more at home in America although life is not always easy. She finds that most Americans just are not interested in hearing about the Holocaust or recognizing her pain and anguish. In fact, some Jewish-Americans seem not to care about the experiences of those in the holocaust. This is what she finds so unbelievable.

The book shares her experiences working, shopping, dating, and learning the culture--for example, she learns that the streets are not always a safe place--as well as her emotional experiences as she still deals with the aftermath of surving the Holocaust while other family members and friends did not.

Probably the most memorable scene of HELLO, AMERICA is when she is sharing her experiences as a first grade teacher in a Hebrew school. The principal--a rabbi--calls her into his office to discipline her for daring to mention the fact that she was in a concentration camp. She explains that the child saw the number tattooed on her arm and asked where it came from. He tells her that she should have lied and said that the number was her telephone number. She is outraged, offended, and shocked..."In my pain and bitterness I wonder, do all Americans, Jews and Gentiles who were untouched by our tragedy and don't even want to hear about it, feel like him? Do they also prefer to believe that the number tattooed on my arm in Auschwitz is nothing but a harmless New York telephone number? Do they also prefer to place me, and all of us with numbers tattooed on our arms, beyond the pale of their world?" (141).

Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil

Average customer rating:

An almost perfect study
Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil

Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil
Bryan McCann , and Bryan McCann
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0822332736

Book Description

âHello, hello Brazilâ was the standard greeting Brazilian radio announcers of the 1930s used to welcome their audience into an expanding cultural marketplace. New genres like samba and repackaged older ones like choro served as the currency in this marketplace, minted in the capital in Rio de Janeiro and circulated nationally by the burgeoning recording and broadcasting industries. Bryan McCann chronicles the flourishing of Brazilian popular music between the 1920s and the 1950s. Through analysis of the competing projects of composers, producers, bureaucrats, and fans, he shows that Brazilians alternately envisioned popular music as the foundation for a unified national culture and used it as a tool to probe racial and regional divisions.

McCann explores the links between the growth of the culture industry, rapid industrialization, and the rise and fall of GetÃºlio Vargas’s Estado Novo dictatorship. He argues that these processes opened a window of opportunity for the creation of enduring cultural patterns and demonstrates that the understandings of popular music cemented in the mid–twentieth century continue to structure Brazilian cultural life in the early twenty-first.

Customer Reviews:

An almost perfect study.......2005-09-02

This is a fascinating book that begins a much needed investigation into how the politics of Getulio Vargas' "Estado Novo" were tied to the development of many of the trends that led to overt "Brasilidade" in popular music. McCann argues that these relationships were intricately connected and complicated as he balances the varying ideas of nationalism, commercialism, and creativity. McCann carefully traces concurrent histories of radio development, musical development, the influence of the US, the invention of choro as traditional music, fan culture, advertising, and regional styles in a rich and deeply nuanced tale. McCann gets most of his sources from radio archives, which clearly come from work he did for his dissertation. Fittingly, his discussion is framed by the rise and fall of radio as the primary medium for entertainment in Brazil.

As a music scholar, I was a little sad to see that McCann's discussions of music were limited to the lyrics of the songs he described. When he attempted to discuss rhythm (essential to any discussion of the samba or choro), he was reduced to using syllables like "tam tam-tam" which hardly do the music any justice. Understandably, McCann is not a trained music scholar, but in this period of interdisciplinarity, I was surprised by its complete absence. Additionally, the chapter on fan clubs and auditorium shows marked the only point in McCann's book where he lost his momentum and got bogged down by details. Otherwise, the book is a thorough and fun read.

Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil.......2005-08-22

For any who are interested in the effect Getlio Vargas's nationalism as projected via 1920s radio's promotion of the Samba had upon the national character, I find "Hello Hello Brazil" a fascinating book. I got into this field because the Bossa Nova seduced my musical tastes. I had to know more. Clearly Rui Castro's book on the subject, plus a book entitled "The Brazilian Sound" by Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha told me much. "Hello, Hello Brazil" though scholarly oriented, fills in many of the blanks. I'm still reading it and I can barely put it down.

Hello, America: A Refugee's Journey from Auschwitz to the New World

Average customer rating:

Hello, America: A Refugee's Journey from Auschwitz to the New World
Livia Bitton-Jackson
Manufacturer: Simon Pulse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Holocaust | History & Historical Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Teen Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1416916253

Book Description

Having withstood the horrors of Auschwitz and made it out alive, eighteen-year-old Elli is more than ready to leave behind the painful memories and start fresh in America. What she is not fully prepared for, though, are all the challenges of creating a new life in a completely new place -- especially one as hectic as New York City! Within moments of stepping off the ship and into the arms of welcoming relatives, Elli's mind starts spinning with questions. Will she go to college? Will she have to take on a full-time job to pay the bills? And will she be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher?

Elli has dreamed for years of this abundance of opportunity and possibility -- and to think, this is only the beginning!

Rabbit's Wish for Snow: A Native American Legend (Hello Reader)

Average customer rating:

Rabbit's Wish for Snow: A Native American Legend (Hello Reader)
Tchin
Manufacturer: Cartwheel Books (Scholastics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Folklore & Mythology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0590697676

Disney's Pocahontas: Hello, Funny Face (Golden Look-Look Books)

Average customer rating:

Disney's Pocahontas: Hello, Funny Face (Golden Look-Look Books)
Margo Lundell
Manufacturer: Golden Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Little Hawk's New Name (Hello Reader!, Level 4)

Average customer rating:

Little Hawk's New Name (Hello Reader!, Level 4)
Don Bolognese
Manufacturer: Scholastic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

jp-unknown1 | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0590482920

Average customer rating:

Ciao Pratola, Hello America
Elsa S. Cavallaro
Manufacturer: Dorrance Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0805958436

Book Description

Take an emotional journey with author Elsa S. Cavallaro as she recalls her family's immigration from Pratola, Italy after World War I. Learn about the Italy she knew as a child, the family's difficult transition, and their struggle to succeed in America. An inspiring story of family, traditions and survival, Ciao Pratola, Hello America shares important memories for future generations of Americans.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books