Cynthia Overbeck's Books

College students crammed into phone booths. Couples dancing until they drop. Daredevils swallowing one live goldfish after another. Streakers dashing naked down the street. Planking and flash mobs and robotic pets. These are just some of the crazy fads that have caught hold in the United States over the last century. Where do these ideas come from and why do they catch people's imagination? Fads reflect the mood and spirit of a particular time, and they offer insight into a nation's culture. The 1950s, for example, was a time of economic prosperity and technological development. Americans expressed their delight in new inventions in many creative ways. One popular craze on college campuses was to stuff as many people as possible into a phone booth. On one campus, twenty-five people managed to squeeze into a single booth! In earlier decades, marked by the Depression and World War II, dance marathon frenzy caught on. Promoters lured couples with promises of fame and monetary prizes for those who could dance for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of hours. And great ideas never die. Almost one hundred years later, dance marathons came back. One creative variation, the flash mob dance, attracts spontaneous performances that range from flash mob wedding dances to ?Gangnam Style" K-Pop flash mobs in cities all over the world. Fad Mania! explores a century of American crazes, offering an entertaining and informative look at the major historical events of each decade and the fads that defined them. As you learn more about smiley buttons and Webkinz, you may just be able to predict this decade's next craze!

Ka-ching! Ever stop to think how our modern-day shopping culture came to be? In the early 1800s, stores were few and far between in the United States. General stores supplied everything from fabric and flour to handsaws and clocks. As the country grew, mail-order catalogs arrived at homes across the country, Mom and Pop specialty shops sprang up along Main Street, and later, shopping malls and big box megastores thrived in the suburbs. Then online shopping arrived via the Internet and changed the consumer experience yet again! Buying behaviors also changed over time. For example, did you know you could barter for a pound of sugar at a general store in the early 1800s? Or that department stores in the 1900s added restrooms and ladies lounges to encourage women to shop all day long? Or that online shopping in the twenty-first century is a multibillion-dollar industry? Spending Spree takes readers on an amazing journey from farmlands to cyberspace to learn about the evolution of shopping in the United States.

What would you have worn if you lived during the American Revolution or the early 1800s? It depends on who you were! Women wore layers and layers of undergarments, including corsets, chemises, and petticoats, and they accessorized with gloves, hats, parasols, and fans. Men also flaunted plenty of accessories, including neckties, top hats, walking sticks, and pocket watches. Read more about Revolutionary and early 1800s fashions—from pantaloons to silk stockings to tricornered hats—in this fascinating book!

SUMMARY: Three sisters love to visit their grandparents in the country and care for their Irish setter.

Two youngsters visit Marine Land where they learn that dolphins are intelligent and friendly creatures.

Describes the complex and dangerous life of lions on the African savannas.

This book brings together the horrifying real life stories of women who woke up one day and were not who they thought they were. The government changed and they suddenly no longer had the right kind of blood, the right name, the right family background, the right physical features to be considered a member of society, city, or state. These stories are from German women who were a part of a Jewish-Christian "mixed marriage" and were subsequently persecuted under the Nuremberg laws. Hitler called them "mischling"- half-breeds, however, they have often been passed over in studies of the Holocaust--perhaps because they are often not considered "real Jews." But these women are still struggling with the nightmares of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, the loss of family in concentration camps, and with their own identity-divided between their Jewish and Christian roots. Often their Jewish background was revealed to them only after Hitler's laws were passed. These are the narratives of eight women who remained in Germany, struggling to reclaim their German heritage and their cultural and religious identity. The narratives are compelling and sensitively written, addressing questions of cultural and ethnic identity.

This long-awaited new book from Cynthia Day Wallace picks up the thread of her best-selling Legal Control of the Multinational Enterprise: National Regulatory Techniques and the Prospects for International Controls. In the present work she applies herself to legal and pragmatic aspects of control surrounding MNE operations. The primary focus is on legal and administrative techniques and measures practised by host states to control – transparently or less so – foreign MNE activity within their territories, or even extraterritorially when effects are felt within national boundaries. The primary geographic focus is the six most investment-intensive industrialized states (namely,Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom). At the same time an important message of the present study is precisely the implication for the developing countries as well as for the emerging market economies of central and eastern Europe - and even Asian nations besides Japan, because it is the sharing of this very ‘experience of years’ that can best serve to facilitate a fuller participation on the part of the up-and-coming economies in the same global market place.

Congressional scrutiny and public criticism of violent television have spanned nearly four decades with little change in the emphasis of those protests. Despite the intensive spotlight cast on broadcasters, few in Congress have really tried to affect any real changes in the amount and nature of violence in television programming. Although there have been many studies conducted on the effects of television, few authors have explored the political, cultural and societal influences in the battles over television violence. This book explores the complexities of Congressional and public scrutiny and the dynamics of communications policy-making in the United States.

Explores the nature of midlife eating disorders, looking at why they develop, how their unique challenges set them apart from those that occur earlier in life, and the path to recovery.

Discusses the largest land animal on earth, which now lives only in Africa and Asia.

Describes the Venus fly trap, sundew, pitcher plant, and bladderwort, and explains how active and passive traps work in these meat-eating plants.

Biographies of Minnie Fiske, Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Lillian Hellman, and Julie Harris, and profiles of 10 other outstanding women of American theater.

Two children on a farm observe the growth of a small pig.

Create beautiful arrangements from your own flower garden.

This book shows how to create a peaceful, evocative garden d¬écor in any room of the home and in connected spaces such as porches, balconies, and breezeways. From sweepingly dramatic rooms to charming corners filled with flowerpots, your love of gardens can be carried indoors to bring joy and beauty to the spaces where you live and work every day.

Describes the life of a fox terrier that lives in an apartment building in the city.

Discusses the structure and history of the fortified wall stretching across northern China that took hundreds of years to complete.

Describes the special parts of the cactus plant and how they work together to enable the plant to survive in the desert by storing water.

An introduction to 12 varieties of tropical fish found in aquariums.

SUMMARY: Three sisters love to visit their grandparents in the country and care for their Irish setter.

Looks at the different modes of dress in America from the 1770s to the 1860s, examining the clothing and accessories of the common people and soldiers, as well as the men and women of the upper and middle classes.

Biographies of Minnie Fiske, Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Lillian Hellman, and Julie Harris, and profiles of 10 other outstanding women of American theater.

Discusses the history of the earth, how it changes from natural causes, and the need to use its resources wisely.

Describes the complex and dangerous life of lions on the African savannas.

Two youngsters visit Marine Land where they learn that dolphins are intelligent and friendly creatures.

Introduces dragonflies and damselflies, closely related winged insects which undergo a three-stage process of development called incomplete metamorphosis.

Book's by Cynthia Overbeck

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