Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and
Footwear through the Ages provides a broad overview of costume traditions of
diverse cultures from prehistoric times to the present day. The five-volume set
explores various items of human decoration and adornment, ranging from togas to
turbans,necklaces to tennis shoes, and discusses why
and how they were created,the people who made them, and
their uses. More than just a description of what people wore and why, this set
also describes how clothing, headwear, body decorations, and footwear reflect
different cultural, religious, and societal beliefs.
Volume 1 covers the ancient world, including prehistoric man and the
ancient cultures of
Egypt,
Mesopotamia,
India,
Greece, and
Rome. Key issues covered in this volume
include the early use of animal skins as garments, the introduction of fabric
as the primary human body covering, and the development of distinct cultural
traditions for draped and fitted garments.
Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food
By Andrew F. Smith
Eating junk food and fast food is a great all-American passion. American kids and grownups love their candy bars, Big Macs and supersized fries, Doritos, Twinkies, and Good Humor ice cream bars. The disastrous health effects from the enormous appetite for these processed fat- and sugar-loaded foods are well publicized now. This was particularly dramatically evidenced by Super Size Me (2004), filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's 30-day all-McDonald's diet in which his liver suffered the same poisoning as if he had been on an extended alcohol binge. Through increased globalization, American popular food culture is being increasingly emulated elsewhere in the world, such as China, with the potential for similar disastrous consequences. This A-to-Z reference is the first to focus on the junk food and fast food phenomena from a multitude of angles in addition to health and diet concerns. More than 250 essay entries objectively explore the scope of the topics to illuminate the American way through products, corporations and entrepreneurs, social history, popular culture, organizations, issues, politics, commercialism and consumerism, and much more.
This huge volume is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of the fantasy field. Not only does it describe the genre authoritatively, but it redefines it, offering an exciting new analysis of this highly diverse and hugely popular sphere of art. With more than 4,000 entries and over one million words, this volume covers every aspect of fantasy-literature, film, television, opera, art, and comics. Written and compiled by a team of editors with unparalleled collective experience in the field, it is an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the art of the fantastic. This paperback edition includes thirty-two pages of update material obtained since the hardcover when to press.
The second edition of Contemporary Fashion, a revision of the late Richard Martin's 1995 edition, provides students and scholars with useful information on more than 400 fashion leaders from the 1940s to today.
