“The fury produced by an engine on a big load of nitro is a sensation one cannot begin to convey in words,” says former drag racer and now Smithsonian Institution curator Robert C. Post. A first-generation Southern California hotrodder, Post has packed High Performance with historical detail and personalities like “Pappy” Hart, who opened the first commercial drag strip, the first professional drag-racing star “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and his Swamp Rats; and female drag-racing superstar Shirley “Cha-Cha” Muldowney. He analyzes the American addiction to speed and presents drag racing as a “new theater of machines.” Covers drag racing phenomena from aerodynamics, the Bonneville Salt Flats and the land speed record to the widespread kid-appeal of Hot Wheels and Mattel model kits. SS

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University
Hardback: 417 pages
Illustrated

The short version is that “Pinocchio wasn’t written ‘just for kids’” and that with the advent of the various “isms” that started popping up in the art world around the turn of the last century, the “ists” began to embrace the idea of childhood’s innocence along with the carnival and fairground motif. Puppets were a good way for people with Dadaist, Cubist, Symbolist and Futurist (etc.) outlooks to portray the plight of humanity. Covering the period between 1890 and 1935, in such diverse locales as France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, this book tirelessly and joylessly explores the role of puppets in European avant-garde drama. One certainly can’t fault the book for shoddy scholarship. The bibliography is a full 10 pages. There is much information in this book, but it fails to evoke any sense of the excitement that is the nature of a good puppet show. It’s ironic is that in attempting to document what in essence was a longing for a return to simplicity, the author has created something large and unwieldy that any right-minded little puppet would mock and batter with all its might. SA

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University
Paperback: 372 pages
Illustrated

Tracing the origins of Dada performance techniques in Zurich through the works of Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, Jean Arp and other luminaries at the Cabaret Voltaire (1916-1919), this well-documented survey (complete with an exhaustingly informative bibliography) is a fascinating introduction to one of the most infamous artistic and literary movements of the 20th century. Dada was a caustic revolt against what it deemed the complacency of its time, championing random excess as the only alternative to cultural banality and numbness: “I am against all systems,” Tzara declared. “The most acceptable system is a principle to have none.” The book further includes discussion of the relationship between Dada and Futurist performance and the movement’s reception in France (brought there by Tzara in 1920) by the Parisian avant-garde (Breton, Soupault, Cocteau, Aragon and their entourage). It ends with a description of the eventual rift that would occur between Dada, with its anarchic passion for provocation, and the more contemplative Surrealism. MDG

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University
Paperback: 288 pages
Illustrated