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A Select Annotated Bibliography of Sources on the Underground Press ANNE E. ZALD and CATHY SEITZ WHITAKER Revised by K. R. ROBERTO I n the introduction to the bibliography that appeared in the second volume of the first edition of Voices from the Underground (Mica Press, 1993), Zald and Whitaker were careful to define what types of publications come under the rubric of “underground press”; some of the characteristics discussed include writing from a subjective and direct participant perspective, supporting youth culture, being noncommercial, and experiencing harassment by mainstream officials. In addition to meeting these specifications, materials were also required to have flourished between 1964 and 1975, concentrate upon the United States, be published in English, and be print-only. Unlike the original version, this revised version is not meant to be exhaustive or complete by any means. Entries are categorized according to four general headings: General Treatment of the Underground Press, Alternative Comics, GI Newspapers, and Anthologies. A more in-depth bibliography would have subdivided it further to include, for instance, categories focusing on gender-centric and race-centric newspapers. Here, those entries are included in the General Treatment and Anthologies sections. The new edition does not stray much from the original guidelines; two significant changes are the addition of online resources—namely, reformatted digital collections of alternative newspapers—and underground comics, which were almost assuredly, second to newspapers, the most popular form of capturing dissent on paper. In the eighteen years that have passed since the initial publication, underground and alternative works have simultaneously become much more accessible and less prevalent. There is no shortage of subjective, youth-oriented writing—especially online, though print is definitely not dead—but those qualities no longer mark publications as non-mainstream. The former hallmarks of the underground press have been co-opted by the commercial forces it was created to oppose. Reexamining the original works and later analyses offers insight into what made these qualities worth appropriating in the first place. Vietnam War–era alternative newspapers and comics captured an inimitable sense of immediacy. Databases searched in the process of updating this bibliography include the following: OCLC WorldCat (using Connexion and worldcat.org interfaces), EBSCOhost Academic Search 326 | Select Bibliography Complete, ProQuest Central, and Gale Academic OneFile. In spite of this list’s focusing almost entirely on print sources, no print resources were used in its preparation, which is easily the most obvious sea change in the twenty-first century. Many excellent works that address the overall history of U.S. alternative publications in the twentieth century were omitted from this bibliography due to their broad periods of coverage. Some of the most valuable resources in this category include Rodger Streitmatter’s Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Faber and Faber, 1995) and Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America (Columbia University Press, 2001); and Print Culture in a Diverse America, and Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 and 2006, respectively). General Treatment of the Underground Press n Armstrong, David. A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America. Boston: South End Press, 1981. This book traces the beginnings of underground comics, magazines, radio, and newspapers through the late 1960s and early 1970s, when many of the papers folded or changed their tone. It discusses obscure underground publications as well as popular dissident periodicals like Rolling Stone and Mother Earth News, and New Age media. One chapter focuses on the “new muckrakers,” who cover stories one never sees on the evening news but that appear on the annual Project Censored list of the ten top stories ignored by mainstream media. The book’s concluding analysis of the current (for 1981) state of alternative publishing suggests that “the assertion, frequently repeated in the mass media, that the really juicy stuff happened in those fabulous faded sixties, is rooted more in nostalgia than political reality” (p. 332). A major thesis of Armstrong’s book (ignored by many of the other books that focus more on journalistic style than political context) is that alternative publishing has changed in response to the times, and that, as the times change again, alternative publishing will continue to play a vital role in American culture. n Ben-Horin, D. “Alternative Press: Journalism as a Way of Life.” The Nation 216 (19 February 1973...

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