Author David Hajdu to appear at book talk and signing at U of M
What: Book talk and signing
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 8
Where: University of Minnesota Elmer J. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue S., Minneapolis
Who: David Hajdu, author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America
Contacts: Marlo Welshons, University Libraries, welsh066@umn.edu, (612) 625-9148
Ryan Mathre, University News Service, mathre@umn.edu, (612) 625-0552
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (07/03/2008) -- The Friends of the University Minnesota Libraries and the Children's Literature Research Collections will host an appearance by David Hajdu, author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America. The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. at Anderson Library 222 21st Avenue S., Minneapolis.
The event with Hajdu is part of an evening celebration honoring John Borger and his gift of almost 40,000 comic books to the Children's Literature Research Collections at the University Libraries.
Dessert reception follows the book talk with books available for sale courtesy of Red Balloon Bookshop. Hajdu will be signing books during the reception.
Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America comprises the last book in an informal trilogy about American popular culture at mid-century, and radically revises common notions of popular culture, the generation gap, and the divide between "high" and "low" art.
The book argues that comic books, not rock-and-roll, created the generation gap and discusses an era when teachers, politicians, priests, and parents were lining up across from comic-book publishers, writers, artists and children at bonfires and senate hearings decrying the evil that was the "ten-cent plague."
Along with being an author of three books, Hajdu is the music critic for The New Republic and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His first two books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and both books won the ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award. His books have also been finalists for the LAMBDA Literary Award and the Firecracker Book Award.
