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The Ten-Cent Plague Audiobook by David Hajdu
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Title: The Ten-Cent Plague
Subtitle: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
Author: David Hajdu
Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-18-08
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 573 votes
Genres: History, 20th Century
Publisher's Summary:
David Hajdu reveals how comics, years before the rock-and-roll revolution, brought on a clash between postwar children and their prewar parents. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics became the targets of a raging generational culture divide. They were burned in public bonfires, outlawed in certain cities, and nearly destroyed by a series of televised Congressional hearings. Yet their creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority would have a lasting influence.
Critic Reviews:
"Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture....David Hajdu's fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit." (Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University)"This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination." (
The New York Times)
Members Reviews:
Art can't hurt you
This well researched book clearly details how Comic Books were used as a quick easy target for the difficult problem of violence in society. One can't help but see the parallels to current events as we scapegoat video games as the cause of violence in young people, even though violent crime has gone down as the sale of video games has gone up over the last 5 years. It is precisely the same dynamic described in this book.
A fair criticism is that there are too many sources referenced. I would have liked less quantity and more in depth interviews. However, as a fan of old EC Comics, I enjoyed hearing from all of the people who created them; many who lived through the ban went on to create modern comics. And all of the first person dialog brings the tone of the times to life.
Now I understand why my grandmother, to my horror, threw away all of my comics when she discovered them in my room in 1962. She thought I was headed for a life of crime!
The narration was excellent.
Very frightening
Most people believe that we live in a country where freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. This book, which is very well written, shows a slice of our history in which this right was removed. What was done to the comic book industry was the equivalent of Salem witch hunts. I was horrified and nauseated at the descriptions of massive comic book burnings. I had no idea that this event occurred and reminds me that we have to be ever vigilant to attempts by people who attempt to dictate what my morals and tastes should be. This book was gripping and very informative.
As good as a novel!
What a terrific book. As a child in the fifties I vaguely remember my parents warning me about comic books. But this book tells all the background information I could have never understood.
And the birth of MAD magazine is a great bonus to the birth of all the comic creations.
How our country got so wrapped up in fearing comic books is absurd, but not surprising given the hubbub a few years back over the flash of a breast at the Super Bowl.
This book is worth every moment of time.
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Title: The Ten-Cent Plague
Subtitle: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
Author: David Hajdu
Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-18-08
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 573 votes
Genres: History, 20th Century
Publisher's Summary:
David Hajdu reveals how comics, years before the rock-and-roll revolution, brought on a clash between postwar children and their prewar parents. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics became the targets of a raging generational culture divide. They were burned in public bonfires, outlawed in certain cities, and nearly destroyed by a series of televised Congressional hearings. Yet their creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority would have a lasting influence.
Critic Reviews:
"Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture....David Hajdu's fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit." (Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University)"This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination." (
The New York Times)
Members Reviews:
Art can't hurt you
This well researched book clearly details how Comic Books were used as a quick easy target for the difficult problem of violence in society. One can't help but see the parallels to current events as we scapegoat video games as the cause of violence in young people, even though violent crime has gone down as the sale of video games has gone up over the last 5 years. It is precisely the same dynamic described in this book.
A fair criticism is that there are too many sources referenced. I would have liked less quantity and more in depth interviews. However, as a fan of old EC Comics, I enjoyed hearing from all of the people who created them; many who lived through the ban went on to create modern comics. And all of the first person dialog brings the tone of the times to life.
Now I understand why my grandmother, to my horror, threw away all of my comics when she discovered them in my room in 1962. She thought I was headed for a life of crime!
The narration was excellent.
Very frightening
Most people believe that we live in a country where freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. This book, which is very well written, shows a slice of our history in which this right was removed. What was done to the comic book industry was the equivalent of Salem witch hunts. I was horrified and nauseated at the descriptions of massive comic book burnings. I had no idea that this event occurred and reminds me that we have to be ever vigilant to attempts by people who attempt to dictate what my morals and tastes should be. This book was gripping and very informative.
As good as a novel!
What a terrific book. As a child in the fifties I vaguely remember my parents warning me about comic books. But this book tells all the background information I could have never understood.
And the birth of MAD magazine is a great bonus to the birth of all the comic creations.
How our country got so wrapped up in fearing comic books is absurd, but not surprising given the hubbub a few years back over the flash of a breast at the Super Bowl.
This book is worth every moment of time.