Firecrackers

Expelled for cheating at her private school, seventeen-year-old Astrid, who lives in a rocket ship parked in her backyard, must attend public school where she learns some lessons about family, friendship, and romance.

Firecrackers, sparklers, and rockets offer maximum flash for minimum cash, and over the years, manufacturers have created dazzling labels to hype their pyrotechnic products. FIRECRACKERS! pays tribute to this eye-popping art form, featuring some of the most vibrant and eccentric labels from the 1950s and 1960s. Conjuring memories of outdoor celebrations and childhood mischief, this scintillating collection of pop culture artifacts will kindle the imaginations of advertising art aficionados, paper ephemera collectors, and fireworks enthusiasts alike. An explosive gift book featuring more than 180 rare vintage Chinese firecracker labels from one of the largest collections in the United States. A great resource for graphic artists, designers, and collectors of paper ephemera or advertising art.

In conjunction with the Carl Van Vechten Trust, Mondial republishs the late author's long-unprinted novel, "Firecrackers: A Realistic Novel." --- In what must be considered a milestone, the book will be published after being out of print for over eighty years; thereby poising to become a lost find for readers and literary scholars alike. First published in 1925, the novel centers around a wide cast of characters whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mysterious Gunnar O'Grady in 1920s New York. Though, like most Van Vechten novels, there is more than actually meets the eye. The book uniquely explores the true meaning of happiness and the eternal search for self-identity, through humorous, thoughtful, and often poignant characters. Firecrackers is expected to attract both new and old fans of Van Vechten, along with book enthusiasts around the world. ----- Description: Firecrackers centers around Paul Moody, a man who finds his life utterly tedious and uneventful in New York City. However, that is until he encounters the mysterious, yet exuberant, Gunnar O'Grady. Moody tries to uncover the mystery of his young friend, while also desperately seeking his own purpose in the world. Though, little does he know that his life and the lives of those around him are about to be changed forever. Humorous, poignant, and ironic, Firecrackers boldly stands as one of the most definitive portraits on the excesses and recklessness of the Jazz Age. ----- Quotation: Firecrackers is the least known of Carl Van Vechten's novels, probably because it has never been reprinted and all of the others have, some several times. Of the four (out of seven) novels that deal directly with what he called 'the splendid drunken twenties' in New York, Firecrackers was published at the heart of the period and comes closest to depicting the Jazz Age in all its variety. After eighty years, the novel will strike many readers as quaint or mannered or camp (or all three), but Van Vechten subtitled it 'a realistic novel, ' and the hi-jinks from the period on which it reports are apparently accurate, although informed by a masked austerity. As early as 1925, Van Vechten saw the end in sight even if few others were looking ahead that far. Coming out in the same year as books as disparate as Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, dealing with similar if markedly different milieus, Firecrackers bolsters our understanding of that strange decade. It extends the lives of some characters in Van Vechten's earlier novels, and it anticipates the frantic desperation depicted in his last one, Parties (1930), when the stock market crash brought the twenties to a thudding halt. (Bruce Kellner; Successor Trustee to the Estate of Carl Van Vechten) --- Carl Van Vechten (1880 - 1964), born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1880, rose to become one of America's most prominent writers. Throughout his career, he had written seven novels, featuring the turbulent twenties, to go along with numerous collections of essays and short stories. Aside from being an acclaimed author, Van Vechten went on to become a widely regarded photographer, photographing such profound celebrities as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gore Vidal, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. One of his many accomplishments was patronizing the work of the Harlem Renaissance. He died at the age of 84 in New York City.

Including 183 color and black-and-white images of vintage photos and packaging, plus values for American firecracker collectibles, this is the first book to focus on US firecrackers. Many pyrobilia guides cover Chinese firecrackers, but the US's history is just as colorful, from fireworks' inception into American celebrations as a replacement for dangerous celebratory gun and cannon fire, until the final federal ban with the Child Protection Act of 1966. Fireworks made the 4th of July the best holiday ever, for generations of boys especially. Beginning with a brief history of the firecracker and how it came to America, the book details the types the US produced a wide array, from Cherry Bombs and Silver Salutes to Ash Cans and Torpedoes. Also covered are how the US Industrial Revolution impacted fireworks, as well as the innovations throughout the American industry, from its successes to the factory disasters."

This collection of essays addresses humor and pathos in the Cotton Country of northern Alabama and Tennessee in the 1950s and ’60s. After World War II, the G.I. Bill and the emergence of the new South brought Darnell’s Depression-era parents from the soil to the boardrooms and strip malls. From holidays, to classrooms, to fields, these children of the Greatest Generation flourished in an evolving culture that arose to change the face of Dixie forever.

A history of firecrackers, their labels, and the development of the firecracker industry.