Chapter Two follows a restless Rogers’ attempt to find himself as a young man by going abroad to seek work as a cowboy. He first journeyed to Argentina, then South Africa, and finally, Australia. A struggle to achieve success led him into popular "cowboy shows" where his riding and roping skills made him an attraction as "The Cherokee Kid" and symbol America for foreign audiences. Returnng to the United States after a couple of years, and determined to continue a career in entertainment, he joined a popular Wild West show featured at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. When the show went to New York and found success, Rogers affirmed his determination to be a cowboy showman and professional entertainer.

The introduction presents Rogers as a figure straddling major divides in American history. He was a Cherokee Indian seeking suceess in a WASP society, and a cowboy from the rural republic of the nineteenth century who becomes a wildly popular humorist, writer, and movie star in the urban society of the twentieth century. In particular, it frames him as a historical figure reflecting four important shifts in this era: the end of the frontier, the development of a consumer culture of abundance and personality, the emergence of modern celebrity, and the sharpening of a populist ethos in culture and politics. Finally, it frames Rogers as a historical mediator who helped Americans ease their way from one historical era to another.

Chapter Three analyzes Rogers’ move into vaudeville , the national entertainment circuit that fascinated the American public during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Oklahoman became a star attraction whose cowboy garb and tremendous roping skills delighted audiences all over the country. Rogers also gradually developed another skill that became his calling card – humorous commentary. As an emblem of the American West that was gradually disappearing in the wake of urban, industrial growth, and a natural humorist whose down-home jests and good-natured wisecracks delighted audiences, Rogers began to establish a national presence. This period also saw his stormy courtship of, and marriage to, Betty Blake, a young woman from back home. The marriage would last for the rest of his life.

Chapter Four treats Rogers’ alliance with Florenz Ziegfeld, whose popular Zeigfeld Follies made him the leading entertainer in early twentieth-century America. When the Oklahoman joined the show, he served as a cowboy counterpoint to the glamorous Ziegfeld Girls and sophisticated urban dancers and comedians. Rogers’ witty observations and droll comments on the events and values of the day, delivered in a drawling voice and homespun manner, delighted city audiences and critics alike. Attired in cowboy clothes and often twirling a rope, his humorous monologues and shrewd observations sharpened his image as a plainspoken man of the people, a national star, and a celebrity.

Although many mobile robot systems are experimental in nature, systems devoted to specific practical applications are being developed and deployed. This chapter examines some of the tasks for which mobile robotic systems are beginning to appear and describes several existing experimental and production systems that have been developed.

The Introduction begins by examining the treatment of First World War theatre in academic scholarship over the last century, and identifies reasons for its neglect and the resurgence of interest in the topic over the last decade. It considers this resurgence in relation to work on popular theatre, the focus on cultural histories of the war, and the centrality of theatre and performance to centenary commemorations. In addressing how theatre contributed to the war effort it considers themes including: recruitment and enlistment, fundraising for war charities, and the value of theatre for servicemen and the wouded. It also considers challenges to theatre production created by the wartime conditions. Drawing on the work of the Great War Theatre project it highlights the large number of war-themed plays produced during the war, arguing that plays did not have to ignore the war to be entertaining or popular. The introduction emphasises the importance of looking at the diversity of theatrical production across the country and in both amateur and professional contexts. As such it provides the framework for the in-depth analyses of these and other topics examined across the volume.

This chapter focusses on the importance of conspicuous generosity to the emperors and their heirs. Euergetism describes a performed relationship between rulers and ruled, where exchanges of goods, money, and clout are transacted. The expectation of such generosity is important for the stability and legitimacy of an emperor’s reign, which makes the question of succession a secondary focus of this chapter: how did the Roman emperor secure the future legitimacy of his position?

This chapter considers the popularity of the genre of the short story in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores, in particular, a class of magazine stories for which the terms of approval followed the lines of reading for amusement and entertainment. Surveying critical accounts of the short story, and the burgeoning interest in anthologies and handbooks for aspiring writers, the chapter considers what follows if we not only accept but accentuate the notion of the genre as an artistic commodity in a gendered marketplace defined by overabundance. Special consideration is given to the subgenre of “storiettes” published alongside a column covering “the latest fads” in Munsey’s magazine. The essay argues that the style of the period’s short story developed in tandem with ideas about it as a fashionable and consumable commodity, and even as something of a fad.

This chapter examines the middle-class milieu and setting of much of Salman Rushdie’s work. Such an exploration of the upwardly mobile, increasingly affluent, and globally connected Indian bourgeoisie highlights their elaborate lifestyle and aspirations. Another common thread binding the characters in Rushdie’s novels is the city of Bombay/Mumbai. This is the city that his middle-class bourgeois characters share with the criminal classes and the entertainment industry. In Mumbai the lines between the legitimate and the criminal are very often blurred, and many of Rushdie’s protagonists find themselves teetering over the abyss of the underworld. Those of Rushdie’s characters that have moved into global spaces of power and affluence are still umbilically attached to their natal city, where they were born middle-class, but have achieved wealth through crime or the world of entertainment, and have either voluntarily left the island city or have had to flee it. Instead of an omnibus overview, this chapter offers an in-depth analysis of Rushdie’s upwardly mobile middle class as they move from Bombay to London and from there to the new world in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, and The Golden House.

This chapter examines the relationship between Wallace’s writing and works of visual art. Beginning with the many moments of ekphrasis that punctuate the writing, ranging from myths of tapestry-weaving to Leutze’s mural of Manifest Destiny, encompassing Bernini and Escher in Infinite Jest alone, this chapter explores the ways in which Wallace makes use of the language of images in his writing, situating narrative in conversation with visual culture and reaching beyond language to image, color and texture. Reflecting on prior scholarly attention to art positioned in Wallace’s writing, the chapter explores the connections between attention and aesthetic. The chapter also examines the ways in which visual cues appear in other ways in Wallace’s work, from the defecatory art of Brint Moltke in “The Suffering Channel” to the incidence of color as a motif throughout the work, specifically Wallace’s insistent references to clothing. The chapter highlights the materiality of these instances, attending to both the visual and the haptic elements of his narrative deployment of art in fictional worlds. This chapter works in concert with the next, delineating the intermediate nature of Wallace’s writing, poised between language, sense and image, and how his inclusion and occlusion of art recalibrate and reflect the relationships between author and reader.

Wallace’s work exhibits a fascination with attention that is regulated and optimized through processes of self-administration, as well as an interest in how alertness and interest can be performed (I explored this in Contemporary Fictions of Attention, 2018). However, he also demonstrates a concern with forms of attention that do not just play out in the self-conscious practices of an isolated subject. Instead, his work also stages interactive moments of collective attention, such as the focus group in “Mister Squishy” or the game of Eschaton in Infinite Jest. This chapter will lay out a broader context for Wallace’s interest in attention, before going on to identify how Yves Citton’s notion of “attention ecology” might help to frame an argument about Wallace’s depictions of group attention.

As the central villain of Infinite Jest, entertainment is a persistent preoccupation in Wallace’s writing. He presents it as a locus of neoliberal power in ways that anticipated the development of tailored entertainment services well ahead of time. This chapter examines Wallace’s representation of entertainment, couching it particularly in its antagonistic relationship with attention and engagement, which his work elevated as cardinal virtues. This chapter situates Wallace’s vision of entertainment in a critical paradigm of entertainment as a form of individual and social control, and as the ultimate Jamesonian manifestation of late capitalist flattening, arguing that the anhedonia of Wallace’s characters is a direct result of the dominant forms and agendas of entertainment on display in his writing. The chapter also argues that the forms of entertainment in Wallace’s work invite and reflect the idea of absorption, which is characterized positively and negatively depending on its genesis. That is to say, the absorption of entertainment is contrasted with the absorption of boredom, and again with the absorption of attention, with widely diverse effects on the postmodern subject. Entertainment constitutes a seductive and deadening force that both unites and isolates the subjects of Wallace’s writing, the great threat to the contemporary self.

The court assembled around the prince consisted of his family and ministers, but also attracted all those who might need to seek royal authority for their own affairs. Molière was one of the King’s officers and was well acquainted with this milieu, which took form throughout the seventeenth century. During the first decades of his reign in particular, Louis XIV used entertainment to keep the members of his entourage in place by offering them opportunities to meet and experience his power in a pleasant way. The Parisian theatre troupes were regularly invited to appear before the King and Molière displayed a notable talent not only in presenting his own plays but also in combining within a single spectacle – the comedy-ballets, which were the highlights of these usually composite entertainments, and which were particularly well-suited to their context – spoken drama with music, meals, balls, and even fireworks. Devised to suit the individual circumstances, theatre could thereby offer a welcome moment of relaxation, particularly during the carnival period – a true breathing space in this environment where all was constrained according to the power relations in operation.

The chapter discusses how Islamic charity has functioned as an umbrella that granted legitimacy to all kinds of youth practices in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Charity here emerges as lifestyle and liberty, as a safe space that has allowed Saudi youth to test the boundaries, experiment with lifestyles, and enjoy sociability and autonomy outside of the family.

At the heart of the chapter are the Hikers, an informal organization that began in 2010 by promoting hiking, sports, and cultural events for a social cause. Like many youth initiatives at the time, it reflected a wish to bring about change and to be part of broader societal change to which it was contributing. Despite the group’s apolitical character, this public orientation put them at risk of surveillance and intervention. The "Third Sector" has become an integral part of the new political agenda of King Salman’s government. The chapter explores the ways in which the Saudi state has increasingly regulated and monitored civil society activism, through new institutions and legislation passed over the last decade, in the name of promoting the "Third Sector" in Saudi Arabia.

This chapter looks at Sun City, the massive resort and casino that opened up in Bophuthatswana in 1979. Just a 2-hour drive from Johannesburg, Sun City was a massive entertainment complex that served as the most visible symbol of the Bophuthatswanan state. Part of Sun City’s appeal was that it flouted many of the laws in the Republic, most notably apartheid’s racial segregation and prohibitions on miscegenation, as well as South Africa’s proscriptions against gambling. Sun City was an important flashpoint in the battle over Bophuthatswana’s contested sovereignty, especially because it attracted marquee sports and entertainment figures who were willing to break the anti-apartheid cultural boycott. The contours of these battles were often counterintuitive and surprising. Frank Sinatra’s opening of the Superbowl venue in 1981 began the short golden age of Sun City that would last until the release by Artists United Against Apartheid (AUAA) of the “Sun City” in 1985. Thereafter, the cultural boycott applied equally to Bophuthatswana as it did to South Africa proper.