Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial (Heritage of Sociology)

We take reputations for granted. Believing in the bad and the good natures of our notorious or illustrious forebears is part of our shared national heritage. Yet we are largely ignorant of how such reputations came to be, who was instrumental in creating them, and why. Even less have we considered how villains, just as much as heroes, have helped our society define its values. Presenting essays on Fatty Arbuckle, Herman Melville, Benedict Arnold, Warren Harding, John Brown, Sinclair Lewis, Henry Ford, and Vladimir Nabokov, Gary Fine explores the complex roles in culture and history that difficult reputations play.Gary Alan Fine is the author of 'Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial (Heritage of Sociology)', published 2001 under ISBN 9780226249407 and ISBN 0226249409.