A memoir of Paul Henning's screen writing for radio, television and motion pictures, as well as his family life in Beverly Hills, written by his wife Ruth Henning.

This text argues that the hillbilly - in his various guises - has been viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the modern order and as a keeper of traditional values and thus symbolic of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life.

Granny was always cooking hogback, gizzards, or crawdad, and anyone who looked at Jethro or Elly Mae knew Granny's cooking was nutritious. To capture the humor and spirit of the show, this book has possum, squirrel and groundhog, but also the hearty traditional recipes of the stars, photos, profiles, trivia, and more.

Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance's powerful origin story... From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for the 2024 election, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "You will not read a more important book about America this year."--The Economist "A riveting book."--The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."--David Brooks, New York Times Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

The historians of the late 1960s have emphasised the work of a small group of white college activists and the Black Panthers, activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class whites have tended to be painted as spectators, reactionaries and even racists. Tracy and Amy Sonnie have been interviewing activists from the 1960s for nearly 10 years and here reject this narrative, showing how working-class whites, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, fought inequality in the 1960s.

Come and listen to the story 'bout a man named Jed"" and the rest of the colorful Clampett family, perhaps television's most unlikely phenomenon to spring from the sixties. Hated by the critics but enthusiastically embraced by audiences around the world, to this day The Beverly Hillbillies still holds the Nielsen record for the highest rated half-hour show in the history of television. Over the years, the original television hit has inspired several highly rated network specials, an E! True Hollywood Story two-hour documentary, and even a big-screen motion picture from 20th Century Fox in 1993. Just in time to join the fortieth anniversary celebration of the classic television sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies is filled with all the hillbilly country corn anyone could expect. Updated and expanded from the first edition, published in 1988, it is the ultimate TV book. Readers will also find hundreds of photographs, including 16 pages of color, fascinating trivia, behind-the-scenes stories, exclusive contributions from Paul Henning, the show's creator, a list of Granny's fixin's, the story of the popular theme song, Elly May's critters, Jethro's ""Double-Naught"" secrets, and an introduction by 93-year-old Buddy Ebsen, who played Jed Clampett in the series. Also included are a complete episode guide, cast biographies with all the inside scoop, and highlights from guest stars (John Wayne, Gloria Swanson, Sammy Davis Jr., and others). The Beverly Hillbillies is still shown every day on cable television's Nick at Night. This fortieth anniversary edition of the book will become a collector's item for all who loved and love the show. There's more here than you can shake a possum at. Sit a spell. ""

What do Scott Joplin, John Grisham, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Maya Angelou, Brooks Robinson, Helen Gurley Brown, Johnny Cash, Alan Ladd, and Sonny Boy Williamson have in common? They’re all Arkansans. What do hillbillies, rednecks, slow trains, bare feet, moonshine, and double-wides have in common? For many in America these represent Arkansas more than any Arkansas success stories do. In 1931 H. L. Mencken described AR (not AK, folks) as the “apex of moronia.” While, in 1942 a Time magazine article said Arkansas had “developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.” Arkansas/Arkansaw is the first book to explain how Arkansas’s image began and how the popular culture stereotypes have been perpetuated and altered through succeeding generations. Brooks Blevins argues that the image has not always been a bad one. He discusses travel accounts, literature, radio programs, movies, and television shows that give a very positive image of the Natural State. From territorial accounts of the Creole inhabitants of the Mississippi River Valley to national derision of the state’s triple-wide governor’s mansion to Li’l Abner, the Beverly Hillbillies, and Slingblade, Blevins leads readers on an entertaining and insightful tour through more than two centuries of the idea of Arkansas. One discovers along the way how one state becomes simultaneously a punch line and a source of admiration for progressives and social critics alike. Winner, 2011 Ragsdale Award

"She was one of the working stiff actors who made American movies a sort of extended family for me. If I don't do this for her, who will?" Memory and movies collide when the narrator of Comfort and Joi, award-winning screenwriter Joseph Dougherty's imaginative blend of fiction and film fact, sets out to document the life and work of bosomy blonde bombshell Joi Lansing, a minor glamour girl who appeared in such "classics" as Hillbillys in a Haunted House and Queen of Outer Space. Alone in a borrowed house on the California coast during a winter weekend, he indulges his fascination with the pin-up who rose from extra girl to work with Orson Welles, only to end her career in grade-z horror pictures. Offbeat movie history from the fringes of Hollywood triggers haunting personal memories as he follows this "beautiful beacon in a Sargasso of bad filmmaking" and finds an unexpected path to his own past. "Dougherty is a humanist who argues that each of us has to look, listen, choose, and commit. His work is as encouraging as it is enlightening." -Douglas Heil, Prime-Time Authorship

Are you curious to know: The 50 Greatest TV Shows of all time? The 50 Worst? The 25 Greatest Commercials? The 10 Strangest Moments in Sports? . . . Then you'll be reading the right book! Here's a trivia book as entertaining as the TV shows it celebrates. Get lost in the greatest moments from classic television, right up to the must-see TV of today. Enjoy 50 years and 175 lists of pure trivia gold that covers TV themes, episodes, stars, celebrities, and even commercials. TV Guide has covered them all, and now they open their vault to bring all the favorite lists they've written over the years to a single fun volume!