Reviews

Popular culture has become a popular subject for books by academics. Polsgrove (journalism, Indiana Univ.) here writes about a publication that has had marked influence on our times: Esquire magazine. Hugh Merrill's book Esky: The Early Years at Esquire (LJ 5/1/95) gives a picture of the Esquire of the 1930s and 1940s; this book concentrates on the 1960s, when Harold Hayes was editor. It was a time when Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and James Baldwin were among the contributing writers and the magazine covered politics in Chicago and war in Vietnam. Polsgrove, who had access to the letters of Hayes, here includes a list of sources and copious notes on each chapter. This would be a useful complement to Merrill's book in popular culture or journalism collections.‘Rebecca Wondriska, Trinity Coll. Lib., Hartford, Ct.