As a counterpart to research on the 1930s that has focused on liberal
and radical writers calling for social revolution, David Welky offers
this eloquent study of how mainstream print culture shaped and
disseminated a message affirming conservative middle-class values and
assuring its readers that holding to these values would get them through
hard times. Through analysis of the era's most popular newspaper
stories, magazines, and books, Welky examines how voices both outside
and within the media debated the purposes of literature and the meaning
of cultural literacy in a mass democracy. He presents lively discussions
of such topics as the newspaper treatment of the Lindbergh kidnapping,
issues of race in coverage of the 1936 Olympic games, domestic dynamics
and gender politics in cartoons and magazines, Superman's evolution from
a radical outsider to a spokesman for the people, and the popular
consumption of such novels as the Ellery Queen mysteries, Gone with the
Wind, and The Good Earth. Through these close readings, Welky
uncovers the subtle relationship between the messages that mainstream
media strategically crafted and those that their target audience wished
to hear