Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on the most notorious fashion of the 1940s, Zoot Suit traces its enigmatic career during World War II and after, as it spread from Harlem across the United States and around the world. In so doing, this book offers a new perspective on youth culture and the politics of style.
Trade Review"Refreshingly skeptical of the intellectual habit of reducing all cultural expression to the political." *
Wall Street Journal *
"Peiss is a creative and brilliant scholar and her book is a much-welcomed addition to the body of scholarship dedicated to unlocking the riddle of the zoot." *
American Historical Review *
"Thorough, well-researched, and illuminating." *
PopMatters *
"An important and valuable book. The breadth of research upon which it is based and Peiss's determination to question conventional assumptions considerably enrich our understanding of the zoot." *
Journal of American Studies *
"Kathy Peiss brilliantly unravels the many meanings of the zoot suit while sustaining the aesthetic pleasure of its creation in the complex cultural fabric of American life.
Zoot Suit is a cultural history laced with the eye of ethnography, showing how an original African American sartorial style carried substantial symbolic power into the lives of Mexican American
pachucos suaves, Jewish tailor trumpeters, and all who would wear 'the Drape' as a statement of hipness." * Nick Spitzer, producer and host of
American Routes *
"
Zoot Suit is a sophisticated, independent minded, and valuable book; there should be more work like it in the field. Peiss's principled attention to evidence, her nuanced argument, and her willingness to question conventional assumptions about the meaning of popular forms all go a long way toward re-grounding American Studies in the lived world." * Carlo Rotella, author of
Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 Making the Suit Zoot
2 Going to Extremes
3 Into the Public Eye
4 From Rags to Riot
5 Reading the Riddle
6 Zooting Around the World
Aftermath
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
