News Release

From Cavespace to Cyberspace: new book traces history of cultures

Book Announcement

Virginia Tech

Blacksburg, Va. -- From the professor who founded the Popular Culture Association and recently received the lifetime-achievement award from the American Culture Association comes a new book that traces the history of people's cultures from primitive to post-modern times.

"Popular Culture: From Cavespace to Cyberspace," by Marshall Fishwick, professor of American Studies in the Humanities Program at Virginia Tech, highlights important historical events such as slave revolts and the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. It examines the world's changing social movements in the style of a mosaic in which "separate pieces create a complex multilevel awareness." In that way, Fishwick can cover hundreds of topics and years in a highly readable book, giving the reader a broad picture as a result. As he says, "Popular culture has many facets, like a diamond, and can be subversive and explosive. Scorn may be mixed with the fun, venom with laughter; it can be wildly comical and deadly serious." The mosaic model allows Fishwick to touch on all these moods in a few pages.

"You will go on a journey through time, exploring the cultures of the world, venturing from cavespace to tomb space, to temple space then medieval space, to modern space and post-modern epochs, and finally to cyberspace," according to The Haworth Press Inc., the publisher. The book, a comprehensive guide, contains a wide collection of stories covering cultural phenomena such as Tutmania, the Crusades, the Ninja Turtles, Shakespeare, the Global Village and the coming millennium.

Popular Culture: From Cavespace to Cyberspace includes such events as the 1991 discovery of Oetzi the Ice Man, who is 5,300 years old; the legends of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Americans; the light that dispelled the Dark Ages; the 20th century, which "McDonaldized" the world; and cyburbia and globalism.

For example, Fishwick shows what Jessica McClure, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and General Norman Schwarzkopf have in common: "Each was a star in the popular culture heaven." The world held its breath until little Jessica was safe; at one point "the hunger for all things turtle seemed insatiable;" and Schwarzkopf earned the nickname "Stormin' Norman," but had the sense to retire "before others suggested that he go."

With section titles ranging from "Hurry-Up Time" to "Twisting" to "The Return of the Luddites," the book has only three essays titled with the names of individuals: FDR, "Ray and Ronald," and "Elvis the Incredible." The book has sections titled "Forethoughts," "Time and Space," "Themes," "Links," and "Afterthoughts" and provides a list of further reading for each topic discussed.

The scope of the book reminds the reader of Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire," in which Joel sings, in rapid fire order, events and people from Harry Truman in 1949 to "Rock and roller cola wars" in 1989. Fishwick's book includes things as diverse as the Atomic bomb, Barbie, the Beatles, Cabbage Patch Kids, Cambodia, Castro, dance, Dylan, Einstein, extraterrestrial creatures, W.C. Fields, Fundamentalism, Bill Gates, God, headhunting, Hitler, the Industrial Revolution, jazz, Keats, Levi-Strauss, the Lost Generation, Madonna, Marx, the Moral Majority, Native Americans, the Odyssey, Plato, poverty, religions, Rosie the Riveter, Shakespeare, Sports Illustrated, Sputnik, technopoly, televangelists, UFOlogy, the Vietnam War, the Volkswagen Beetle, Wal-Mart, Tiger Woods, Woodstock, the X-Files, Yippies and Franco Zeffirelli-- all in 255 pages. It's a march through time that carries the reader along like a raft in Class IV rapids.

Marshall Fishwick is past president of the Popular Culture Association and serves on the advisory board of the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of American Culture. His other books include Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture and Go and Catch a Falling Star: Pursuing Popular Culture.

"Popular Culture: Cavespace to Cyberspace" is available through bookstores or from the publisher, The Haworth Press, 10 Alice St., Binghamton, NY 13904-1580.

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