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With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830. By LeRoy Ashby. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. xii, 648 pp. $39,95, ISBN 0-8131-2397-6.)
LeRoy Ashby draws on the substantial volume of historical scholarship on American popular culture produced since the 1970s to present a survey of impressive breadth on two centuries of American amusements in a lengthy book of over 600 pages. The book concentrates on commercial amusements, perhaps since these are better documented and researched than noncommercial pastimes.
Numerous topics are introduced. Chapters move along at a rapid clip from topic to topic, with a general description of a given period introducing or connecting one-to-three...