Download or read book The Chicken fried Rat written by Cylin Busby and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1998 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It looks like it's going to be another normal day for Eric--until he gets out of bed. Everywhere he goes, someone has a stomach-churning, disgustingly gross story to tell him!
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Urban Legends written by Jan Harold Brunvand and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents descriptions of hundreds of urban legends and their variations, themes, and scholarly approaches to the genre, including such tales as disappearing hitchhikers and hypodermic needles left in the coin slots of pay telephones.
Download or read book Too Good to Be True The Colossal Book of Urban Legends written by Jan Harold Brunvand and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you enjoy these too-good-to-be-true tales, Brunvand's new book will give you hours of pleasure."—Chicago Tribune A fabulously entertaining book from the ultimate authority on those almost believable tales that always happen to a "friend of a friend." Alligators in the sewers? A pet in the microwave? A tragic misunderstanding of the function of cruise control? No, it didn't really happen to your friend's sister's neighbor: it's an urban legend. And no matter how savvy you think you are, you are sure to find in this collection of over 200 tales at least one story you would have sworn was true. Jan Harold Brunvand has been collecting and studying this modern folklore for over twenty years. In Too Good to Be True he captures the best stories in their best retellings, along with their latest variations and examples of how the stories have changed as they move from person to person and place to place. To help you find your favorite, Brunvand has arranged the tales thematically. "Bringing Up Baby" is full of episodes of child-rearing gone wrong, including the grisly tale of the drugged out baby-sitter who mistakes the kid for a turkey. "Funny Business" showcases stories of infamous lapses in customer service, such as the story of the shockingly expensive chocolate chip cookie recipe. And "The Criminal Mind" features both brilliant --if they were real --scams, as well as the purported antics of the less mentally gifted. Whether you want to become an expert debunker or just have plenty of laughs, this book will surprise and entertain you. Illustrated throughout. "Informative and entertaining.... Brunvand has collected more than 200 of the most-repeated and best-known examples of modern folk-myth."—Tampa Tribune "[N]ot only an entertaining anthology, but an excellent introduction to the study of folklore itself."—Publishers Weekly "A fun read... . All the classics are here from the killer upstairs to the Kentucky Fried Rat."—New City "Resonant stories that express our hidden anxieties ... make us laugh, [or] arouse our fascinated horror."—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "Informative and entertaining... . Brunvand has collected more than 200 of the most-repeated and best-known examples of modern folk-myth."—Tampa Tribune "[N]ot only an entertaining anthology, but an excellent introduction to the study of folklore itself."—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Vanishing Hitchhiker American Urban Legends and Their Meanings written by Jan Harold Brunvand and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2003-12-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The groundbreaking book that launched America's urban legend obsession! Folklore scholar Jan Harold Brunvand assembles the best-known urban legends—including "The Hook," "The Spider in the Hairdo," and "The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs"—and provides an enlightening and entertaining analysis of their variants and evolution. The Vanishing Hitchhiker was Professor Brunvand's first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend lovers.
Download or read book Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales written by Daniel Cohen and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 1989 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relates twenty-one gruesome and disgusting tales drawn from folklore, most of them from urban legends.
Download or read book Manufacturing Tales written by Gary Alan Fine and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mouse in the Coke bottle, the promiscuous cheerleader, the exploding Pop Rocks candy, the Kentucky Fried Rat. If the ballad and the fairy tale were the archetypal folklore forms of an earlier age, such contemporary legends constitute the preferred narrative genre of the late twentieth century. In Manufacturing Tales, award-winning folklorist Gary Alan Fine presents a major new theory of the creation and diffusion of contemporary legends in modern society. While ballad and fairy tale arose in folk communities and spread through trade and migration, contemporary legends thrive in societies crosscut by varied communication channels and relatively open networks. By looking at the social-structural background, the performance context, the personality of the teller, and the content of the text, we gain insight into the formation, dissemination, and disappearance of these modern legends. Fine identifies sex and money as key themes in contemporary legends, reflecting the public's disguised attempts to deal with major contemporary preoccupations. From the AIDS crisis to fears of food contamination in restaurants, popular anxieties are reflected in folklore. As dramatic, moving, comic, and involving texts, contemporary legends build relationships among acquaintances and strangers; as depictions of the world that we face every day, they provide perspective on potential challenges; and as shared information, they elaborate a consensual understanding of reality.
Download or read book Conspiracy Theories in American History 2 volumes written by Peter Knight and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-12-11 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in the United States. Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive, research-based, scholarly study of the pervasiveness of our deeply ingrained culture of conspiracy. From the Puritan witch trials to the Masons, from the Red Scare to Watergate, Whitewater, and the War on Terror, this encyclopedia covers conspiracy theories across the breadth of U.S. history, examining the individuals, organizations, and ideas behind them. Its over 300 alphabetical entries cover both the documented records of actual conspiracies and the cultural and political significance of specific conspiracy speculations. Neither promoting nor dismissing any theory, the entries move beyond the usual biased rhetoric to provide a clear-sighted, dispassionate look at each conspiracy (real or imagined). Readers will come to understand the political and social contexts in which these theories arose, the mindsets and motivations of the people promoting them, the real impact of society's reactions to conspiracy fears, warranted or not, and the verdict (when verifiable) that history has passed on each case.
Download or read book Whispers on the Color Line written by Gary Alan Fine and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legends are arguably the most common narrative form of folklore in American society. From sex acts to business transactions, from fashion to food, from heroes to heroin, rumors and legends take on every charged topic. Children circulate texts about toys and candy; teenagers share stories about sex, drugs, and rock and roll; young professionals commiserate over the hazards of the work world. These stories address aspects of life about which we receive mixed or ambiguous messages. Given that matters relevant to race remain confused and divisive in many corridors of American society, it is not surprising that rumors and legends that reflect racial misunderstanding and mistrust frequently circulate. Whispers on the Color Line focuses on a wide array of tales told in black and white communities across America. Topics run the gamut from alleged governmental conspiracies, possible food tampering, gang violence, and the sex lives of celebrities. Such beliefs travel by word of mouth, in print, and increasingly over the Internet. In many instances these stories reflect the tenacious level of racial misunderstanding that continues to vex efforts to foster racial harmony, creating separate racialized pools of knowledge. The authors have spent over twenty years collecting and analyzing rumors and contemporary legends--from the ever-durable Kentucky Fried Rat cycle to persistent beliefs about athletic footwear manufacturers and their support for white supremacist regimes. These implausible stories serve many purposes: they assuage anxieties, entertain friends, increase our sense of control--all without directly proclaiming our own attitudes. Fine and Turner consider how these tales reflect attitudes that blacks and whites have both about each other and about the world they face. In an engaging and penetrating narrative, they brilliantly demonstrate how--by transforming unacceptable impulses into a narrative that is claimed to have actually happened--we are able to express the inexpressible.
Download or read book Contemporary Legend written by Gillian Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1996. For most of the time since the Grimm brothers first contrasted the fairy tale (Märchen) and the legend (Sage), the former has enjoyed the greater reputation among folklorists. Only in recent years, and with the work of such scholars as Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith, has it been recognized that—both as art and as news—the legend is now central to contemporary culture in a way that the Märchen no longer is. The present book is the first collection of essays on legend to appear in English since 1971. Nevertheless, its publication consolidates a gradual shift which has taken place over the last two decades, in which English-language scholarship has taken the lead in the study of certain kinds of legends—variously dubbed modern horror legends, urban legends, urban myths or, here, contemporary legends.
Download or read book Moneybags written by Tulley Holland and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2007-06-17 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1980's, a violent kidnapping leaves several people dead on the C&O Canal Towpath near Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Several days later, a parachutist is found dead, hanging upside down from a tree in the Virginia countryside. The two events seem unrelated, especially to Will MacKenzie, the man who discovers the dead parachutist while walking his dog. MacKenzie, a Viet Nam veteran, is familiar with parachutes, but is puzzled by the color of the parachute as well as the color of the parachutists clothing: all colors are black and the face of the dead man is covered in black camouflage. Additional black parachutes are found by his dog nearby, but these are attached to heavy, black duffle bags. A wrapped packet of hundred dollar bills is partially exposed, next to a small rip in one of the bags. This discovery could change his life, as he is struggling to recover from alcoholism and depression, problems that have caused him to lose his job, his family, and his friends. Faced with a choice of reporting his gruesome find to the authorities, or keeping the bags that may hold a great deal of money, MacKenzie takes the duffle bags to his mountain cabin to examine their contents without being disturbed. He is unaware that his lucky find is part of a large ransom payment. MacKenzies decision to keep the moneybags triggers a trail of violence, as killers from the Mafia, a D.C. drug gang, and a Colombian Drug Cartel, form an unholy alliance to search for the missing ransom. The cast of characters includes the veteran who is trying to rebuild his life, and a woman of wealth, privilege, and power, who find each other as they attempt to escape the tentacles of a billion dollar Drug Empire. A corrupt deputy sheriff and a philanthropist with a secret stand in their way.
Download or read book Tell Everyone written by Alfred Hermida and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social media is fuelling our human urge to share, affecting the information we depend on to make smart decisions, from choosing politicians to doing business to raising money for charity. Tell Everyone delves into contemporary culture to reveal how social media has become the planet's nervous system—amplifying the power of individuals, informing our choices and shaping how we learn about our world. Writing with journalistic flair but with academic rigour, online news pioneer and social media maven Alfred Hermida lays bare why we feel compelled to share news, gossip and information, and always have. Every day more than 500 million messages are sent on Twitter, 800 million people share four billion stories, links, photographs and videos on Facebook. Every minute, 100 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. And the flow is ever-increasing. In this new era of media saturation, what do we mean by “the news”? Is “the most trusted name in news” today a veteran anchor on television or an undergraduate tweeting from Tahrir Square in Cairo? Tell Everyone spells out how our ability to create and share news is shaping the information we receive and depend on to make informed decisions, from choosing politicians to doing business. Drawing on historical examples, real-world experiences and leading research, Tell Everyone explains how the power of sharing is transforming how we understand and give meaning to world events.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Folklife written by Simon J Bronner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 4164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American folklife is steeped in world cultures, or invented as new culture, always evolving, yet often practiced as it was created many years or even centuries ago. This fascinating encyclopedia explores the rich and varied cultural traditions of folklife in America - from barn raisings to the Internet, tattoos, and Zydeco - through expressions that include ritual, custom, crafts, architecture, food, clothing, and art. Featuring more than 350 A-Z entries, "Encyclopedia of American Folklife" is wide-ranging and inclusive. Entries cover major cities and urban centers; new and established immigrant groups as well as native Americans; American territories, such as Guam and Samoa; major issues, such as education and intellectual property; and expressions of material culture, such as homes, dress, food, and crafts. This encyclopedia covers notable folklife areas as well as general regional categories. It addresses religious groups (reflecting diversity within groups such as the Amish and the Jews), age groups (both old age and youth gangs), and contemporary folk groups (skateboarders and psychobillies) - placing all of them in the vivid tapestry of folklife in America. In addition, this resource offers useful insights on folklife concepts through entries such as "community and group" and "tradition and culture." The set also features complete indexes in each volume, as well as a bibliography for further research.
Download or read book Mysterious Urban Myths written by John Townsend and published by Heinemann-Raintree Library. This book was released on 2004 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read some of the funniest, scariest, and most disgusting modern legends and see if they can really be true. From failed criminals to medical mishaps, find out what makes these tales so popular.
Download or read book At 50 Your Warranty Expires and Everything Falls Apart written by Tom Dryden and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boys of Alabama A Novel written by Genevieve Hudson and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “soul-stirring debut,” Boys of Alabama tells the “bewitching” (Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine) tale of sixteen-year-old Max’s first year in America. “Daring, unusual . . . and startlingly fresh” (Don Noble, Alabama Public Radio), Boys of Alabama announced Genevieve Hudson’s place in the canon of the southern gothic alongside Donna Tartt and Harper Lee. Newly arrived in Alabama, Max falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. Although his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives after being taken in by the football team. But when he meets fishnet-wearing Pan in physics class, they embark on a quixotic, consuming relationship. Writing in “prose that is always imaginative and sensual” (Sarah Neilson, Believer), Hudson offers a complex portrait of masculinity, religion, immigration, and the adolescent pressures that require total conformity.
Download or read book No Way of Knowing written by Pamela Donovan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-02-24 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines both 'old media' treatment of crime legends: news reports, fictional film and television depictions, as well as 'new' media interactive discussions of them via the Internet and electronic mail.
Download or read book I Heard It Through the Grapevine written by Patricia A. Turner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I Heard It Through the Grapevine explores how rumors that run rife in African-American communities, concerning such issues as AIDS, the Ku Klux Klan and FBI conspiracies, translate white oppression into folk warnings, and are used by the community to respond to a hostile dominant culture.
