Prologue : popular culture on the brink

Blackface, Barnum, and newspaper ballyhoo

Taming rough amusements, 1840s-1860s

Building an entertainment industry

The billion-dollar smile : from burlesque to vaudeville and amusement parks

The leisure problem at the turn of the century

Popular culture and middle-class respectability in the early twentieth century

Battling the Great Depression

Building a wartime consensus in the 1940s and 1950s

Counterpoints to consensus

Popular culture and 1960s ferment

Up for grabs : leaving the 1960s

A pop culture society

Epilogue : pop culture in a post-9/11 world.