The Genesis of Mass Culture

"In this lively and accessible study, John Springhall surveys the major American commercial and popular entertainments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing how they helped to initiate the era of mass media. Featured here are such varied forms as blackface minstrelsy, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and vaudeville, as well as P.T. Barnum's American Museum, freak shows, and circuses. Comprehensive and engagingly written, this book gives a definitive account of a key period in the history of American popular culture."--Jacket.