From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company—home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties—made an indelible mark on American popular culture with its high-energy comic shorts. Even as Keystone brought "lowbrow" comic traditions to the screen, the studio played a key role in reformulating those traditions for a new, cross-class audience. In The Fun Factory, Rob King explores the dimensions of that process, arguing for a new understanding of working-class cultural practices within early cinematic mass culture. He shows how Keystone fashioned a style of film comedy from the roughhouse humor of cheap theater, pioneering modes of representation that satirized film industry attempts at uplift. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Fun Factory offers a unique studio history that views the changing politics of early film culture through the sociology of laughter.

This is a comprehensive career study and filmography of Mack Sennett, cofounder of Keystone Studios, home of the Keystone Kops and other vehicles that showcased his innovative slapstick comedy. The filmography covers the more than 1,000 films Sennett produced, directed, wrote or appeared in between 1908 and 1955, including casts, credits, synopses, production and release dates, locations, cross-references of remade stories and gags, footage excerpted in compilations, identification of prints existing in archives, and other information. The book, featuring 280 photographs, also contains biographies of several hundred performers and technical personnel connected with Sennett.

Do you like Lionel toy trains? Enjoy corporate history? Or just want to take a nostalgic journey back to your childhood? Then Inside The Lionel Trains Fun Factory: The History of a Manufacturing Icon and The Place Where Childhood Dreams Were Made is for you. It delivers a fascinating trip through the rise, fall and rise again of Lionel, one of the manufacturing and pop icons in modern American life. The impeccable research by Lionel historian Robert J. Osterhoff, along with hundreds of unpublished photos and images, tells the history of Lionel's trains, factories, employees and business practices from the late 19th century until today.

From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company—home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties—made an indelible mark on American popular culture with its high-energy comic shorts. Even as Keystone brought "lowbrow" comic traditions to the screen, the studio played a key role in reformulating those traditions for a new, cross-class audience. In The Fun Factory, Rob King explores the dimensions of that process, arguing for a new understanding of working-class cultural practices within early cinematic mass culture. He shows how Keystone fashioned a style of film comedy from the roughhouse humor of cheap theater, pioneering modes of representation that satirized film industry attempts at uplift. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Fun Factory offers a unique studio history that views the changing politics of early film culture through the sociology of laughter.

This novel is set in the golden decade before the Great War, when the music halls were the people's entertainment, before radio, television or cinema and bigger than all of them. The biggest draw of the day was entrepreneur Fred Karno, whose colossal comedy companies toured the country bringing laughter, slapstick, excitement and, above all, spectacle to the music hall stage. Arthur Dandoe is a young comedian trying to make his way up the hierarchy of the Fred Karno company. Along the way he develops a bitter professional and romantic rivalry with another ruthlessly ambitious performer; a young man destined to become the most celebrated on the planet - Charlie Chaplin.

The book Why Didn't I Think of That! includes the passage "If a toy has magic, when people see it they say, 'Oooh! What is that?' . . . It appeals to the kid in everybody." That same kind of magic captures "the kid in everybody" when they pick up Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. Timeless Toys represents one of the finest documentaries and displays of modern toys ever written. Author Tim Walsh, a successful toy inventor himself, reveals a world of commerce, toys, and wonder that is equally fun, fascinating, and nostalgic. Readers of every age and background will find it impossible to pick up this book, turn a few pages, and not become spellbound by its insightful stories and the personal memories that the text and 420 brilliantly colored photographs bring forth. Slinky, Lego, Tonka trucks, Monopoly, Big Wheel, Frisbee, Hula Hoop, Super Ball, Scrabble, Barbie, Radio Flyer Wagons: All of these and many, many more are featured in this fascinating tome, along with the toys' histories, insider profiles, and rare interviews with toy industry icons. It's simply magic!

When the twentieth century was young, visitors to Cape May knew exactly how to show the folks back home the attractions, accommodations, and ambiance of "the Nation's Oldest Seaside Resort": they sent a penny postcard. Publishers such as local entrepreneur Joseph K. Hand provided a vast choice of views, capturing white sands crowded with colorful tents and wool-suited bathers or beachfront hotels such as the Stockton, Lafayette, and Congress Hall. Popular postcards depicted amusement centers and nearby diversions: the Casino, Red Mill, Corinthian Yacht Club, Fun Factory, Convention Hall, and Cape May Point Lighthouse. Reprinted Victorian views of hotels destroyed by fire served as reminders of the resort's glory days. Real-photo cards chronicled newsworthy events including the creation of the harbor, construction of the huge Hotel Cape May, and the 1907 fire at the Iron Pier.

This special issue of Memory brings together some of the most exciting new research on infant memory. Using innovative research designs, the five studies presented here are addressing questions of central importance to understanding the development of human memory. In particular, the studies seek to discover whether, and if so under what conditions, memories of events experienced during infancy are retained over the preschool years. Research questions include how long retention of early memories may persist, what form these memories may take, the role of language and language development, and the role of intervening experience in the retention of early memories. The results provide provocative evidence that experiences occurring even during the first year of life may be retained in some form for at least several years. However, much of this memory is expressed more as familiarity than as explicit recall. The researchers and commentator present different theoretical views about what these results mean and the conclusions we may or may not be able to draw. Although many questions remain unanswered, the researchers contributing to this volume are on the edge of making important new discoveries about human memory and its development.

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