History of Toys

"The 10 essays here explore the images of blacks in historical contemporary American culture. Negative and stereotypical images of blacks have been deeply embedded in our art, music, literature, film, theater, and other forms of expression. On the other hand, as the preface states, black artists and others have also celebrated images of strength, beauty, and achievement.' Reflecting the complexity of the relationship between the races, these two elements are often intertwined. This reference work explores these images, both positive and negative, and their historical development and impact on both black and American culture. . . . Its unique qualities are the discussions and sources for studying and understanding those artifacts as well as the provision of a historical perspective on the images." Reference Books Bulletin

Today's digital culture traces its roots to the 80s, when the first computer generation came of age. These original techno-kids grew up with home-brew programs, secret computer access codes, and arcades where dedicated video gamers fought to extend their play by earning "extra life". In that era of gleeful discovery, driven by a sense of adventure and a surge of power, kids found a world they could master, one few grownups could understand.

In this memoir, popular media chronicler David S. Bennahum takes readers back to his initiation into this electronic universe, to his discovery of PONG at age five. We follow him from video-game addiction -- his Bar Mitzvah gift was an Atari 800 with 48K of RAM -- to his ascent to master programmer with the coveted title of "Super User" in his high school's computer room. Bennahum reflects on how computers empowered him and his friends to create a world of their own. We see how their geekiness, grounded in role-playing, iterative thinking, and systems analysis, led to a productive, social existence -- the "extra life" they found on the other side of the screen. Hilarious, poignant, and packed with little-known computer lore, Extra Life is a grand digital adventure set against the background of the emerging information age.

This book is a state-of-the-art look at where toys have come from and where they are likely to go in the years ahead. The focus is on the interplay between traditional toys and play, and toys and play that are mediated by or combined with digital technology. As well as covering the technical aspects of computer mediated play activities, the authors consider how technologically enhanced toys are currently used in traditional play and how they are woven into childrens' lives. The authors contrast their findings about technologically enhanced toys with knowledge of traditional toys and play. They link their studies of toys to goals in education and to entertainment and information transfer. This book will appeal to students, researchers, teachers, child care workers and more broadly the entertainment industry. Itnbsp;is appropriate for courses that deal with the specialized subject of toys and games, media studies, education and teacher training, and child development.

The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young, reveling in memories of a more innocent time, and finding solace in the softly backlit memories of our earliest years. We are, the proclamation goes, just big kids at heart. And, accordingly, we delight in prolonging and inflating the childhood experiences of our offspring. In images of the naughty but nice Buster Brown and the coquettish but sweet Shirley Temple, Americans at mid-century offered up a fantastic world of treats, toys, and stories, creating a new image of the child as "cute." Holidays such as Christmas and Halloween became blockbuster affairs, vehicles to fuel the bedazzled and wondrous innocence of the adorable child. All this, Gary Cross illustrates, reflected the preoccupations of a more gentle and affluent culture, but it also served to liberate adults from their rational and often tedious worlds of work and responsibility. But trouble soon entered paradise. The "cute" turned into "cool" as children, following their parental example, embraced the gift of fantasy and unrestrained desire to rebel against the saccharine excesses of wondrous innocence in deliberate pursuit of the anti-cute. Movies, comic books, and video games beckoned to children with the allures of an often violent, sexualized, and increasingly harsh worldview. Unwitting and resistant accomplices to this commercial transformation of childhood, adults sought-over and over again, in repeated and predictable cycles-to rein in these threats in a largely futile jeremiad to preserve the old order. Thus, the cute child-deliberately manufactured and cultivated--has ironically fostered a profoundly troubled ambivalence toward youth and child rearing today. Expertly weaving his way through the cultural artifacts, commercial currents, and parenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood.