The vogue for vaudeville : urbanity, comfort, and celebrity -- Ragging style : presenting the modern American -- Grabbing attention : making good with the distracted audience -- Vaudeville modernism -- The business of mass entertainment -- The hook : vaudeville makes its exit.

"Today, vaudeville is imagined as a parade of slapstick comedians, blackface shouters, coyly revealed knees, and second-rate acrobats. But vaudeville was also America's most popular commercial amusement from the mid-1890s to the First World War; at its peak, 5 million Americans attended vaudeville shows every week. Telling the story of this pioneering art form's rise and decline, David Monod looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Although he acknowledges its quirkiness, Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle" -- Baksida