This volume offers profiles of 423 titles published during the past two hundred years. The sketches are full and detailed, those for the longer-lived periodicals running to several pages. . . . The guide's real strength lies in the wealth of information it provides. For its full descriptions of magazines, its bibliographies, publication histories, and location sources, "Children's Periodicals of the United States" is a much needed work. "Wilson Library Bulletin"

The detective novel is both a product of the twentieth century and a response to the needs of readers forced to deal with social and political insecurities of the time. Thus codes of modernity are the essence of the genre, and its plausibility relies upon the degree of the readers' expectations, demands, and vicarious experiences. Even one of mystery fiction's hallmarks, the seemingly improbable but consequential encounter with strangers, is assimilated in the modern sensibility, which has been shaped by concepts of trust and confidence, of rationalism and emotion, of expertise and...