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.
The Encyclopedia of American Journalism explores the distinctions found in print media, radio, television, and the internet. This work seeks to document the role of these different forms of journalism in the formation of America's understanding and reaction to political campaigns, war, peace, protest, slavery, consumer rights, civil rights, immigration, unionism, feminism, environmentalism, globalization, and more. This work also explores the intersections between journalism and other phenomena in American Society, such as law, crime, business, comsumption, etc.
What do Madonna, Ray Charles, Mount Rushmore, suburbia, the banjo, and the Ford Mustang have in common? Whether we adore, ignore, or deplore them, they all influence our culture, and color the way America is perceived by the world.
This A-to-Z collection of essays explores more than one hundred people, places, and phenomena that have taken on iconic status in American culture.
For working scientists, especially in high-tech fields, there are
only a few crucial nonjournal periodicals to pore over faithfully, and
Scientific American is one of them--its timely and technical features
on everything from paleoarchaeology to neural nets set it apart from
popular science magazines like Discover. Scientific American emphasizes
a wide variety of emerging technologies, giving scientists a chance to
keep up in an increasingly specialized professional world. Innovative
and controversial developments such as gene patenting and the latest
from the unified field gurus are front and center in every issue. It's
not all business, though--regular features like Michael Shermer's
"Skeptic" column, enticing book reviews, brain-busting puzzles, and
James Burke's intellectual-historical meanderings add browsability to
this enduring magazine, in business reporting the frontiers of
scientific exploration for more than 150 years.
For more than 50 years, science fiction films have been among the most important and successful products of American cinema, and are worthy of study for that reason alone. On a deeper level, the genre has reflected important themes, concerns and developments in American society, so that a history of science fiction film also serves as a cultural history of America over the past half century.
