A01=Michael Kimmel
Author_Michael Kimmel
barbie
Category=JBSP1
Category=JHBS
Category=KJH
Category=KND
Category=NH
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=WCW
child psychology
childhood
children
childrens books
comic books
dolls
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
gi joe
hasbro
ideal
immigrants
jewish people
jews
lionel
mattel
parenting
shirley temple
superheroes
teddy bear
Product details
- ISBN 9781324105282
- Weight: 700g
- Dimensions: 160 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 17 Feb 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear in the back room of their Brooklyn sweet shop. Together, they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation into a pre-war market rife with other first-generation American Jewish toymakers: the Hassenfield brothers of Hasbro, Ruth Moskowicz and Elliot Handler of Mattel, and Joshua Lionel Cowan of Lionel Trains. In Playmakers, Michael Kimmel documents the creation of the idealised American childhood in the twentieth century—an idea developed but not experienced by its creators, whose parents often were poor immigrants from Eastern Europe. From Barbie and G.I. Joe to Popeye, Superman and Mr. Potato Head, Kimmel follows Jewish toymakers as they climbed the ladder of success alongside Jewish comic book creators, children’s authors, parenting experts and child psychologists. Playmakers shows how the overlapping experiences of being a Jew and a child in twentieth-century America created childhood as we know it today.
The great–grandnephew of the founder of the Ideal Toy Corporation, Michael Kimmel is a SUNY distinguished professor emeritus of sociology and gender studies and founder of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University. The author of Guyland, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
