Shanon Fitzpatrick is a historian and editorial consultant. Her work, including Body and Nation, coedited with Emily S. Rosenberg, focuses on relationships among twentieth-century mass media, body politics, and empire.
Richly detailed and well-argued…Fitzpatrick has mined a fresh seam
in the quarry of American periodical history, and by setting it in
a new, global, context, she reveals a moment in the formation of a
global media culture.
*American Journalism*
A stimulating rewriting of the history of Macfadden’s media pulp
empire…Makes a compelling argument about what factors shaped the
interactive, confessional, and dynamic culture that makes up the
U.S. mass media landscape we live in at present.
*International Journal of Communication*
Fitzpatrick’s book at once recuperates the forgotten origins of
physical culture and contextualizes it within the media culture
that it traveled, adding crucial texture to our understanding of
media that explicitly tailored itself to nonelite readerships.
*American Literary History*
A lively, engrossing, and often funny history of Bernarr Macfadden
and the publishing empire he built. Fitzpatrick tells the story of
his journey from hungry orphan weakling to famous bodybuilder,
patriarch, promoter of ‘physical culture,’ and publishing magnate.
Though long overlooked as a purveyor of low-class, ephemeral pulp,
Macfadden achieved unsurpassed newsstand sales, connected with
leaders such as FDR, Mussolini, and the Pope, and represented
American culture to millions of readers around the world.
Fitzpatrick’s work provides insights into strongmen—understood both
literally and figuratively—and their popular appeal, and readers
today will see the unmistakable legacy of his media in the Trump
era and beyond.
*Kristin L. Hoganson, author of The Heartland: An American
History*
Absolutely original. Fitzpatrick deftly travels from the Victorian
world of the mid-nineteenth century to the doorstep of our time to
tell Macfadden’s story. Her book brims with insights into the
changing, everyday understandings of bodies, sex, material status,
and the individual’s place in a social world people found too vast
to perceive and difficult to comprehend. Fitzpatrick shows how
Macfadden’s work, from celebrating celebrity bodies to enlisting
readers to create the content to be sold back to them, laid the
foundations for today’s media world.
*Charles F. McGovern, author of Sold American: Consumption and
Citizenship, 1890–1945*
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