American Runway : 75 Years of Fashion and the Front Row

New York Fashion Week has served many purposes throughout its long history, but it has always remained at the center of the American fashion world. During World War II, Fashion Week challenged the dominance of French couture; in the 1970s and 1980s, it was a showcase for American sportswear stars who became household names; in the 2000s, it was the stage for celebrity designers using the runway as a vehicle for entertainment; and now, it is the place to see and be seen by contemporary reality TV and social media stars. Now, this illustrious history is told as it's never been told before, in a book packed with designer interviews, backstage ephemera, and exclusive photographs culled from all 75 years of New York Fashion Week. Part historical over­view, part scrapbook, and part fashion-industry field guide, American Runway will bring to life the people, places, and over-the-top runway productions of New York Fashion Week—and will sate the appetites of die-hard fashion fans and casual fashionistas alike.

This biography tells the story of how a great intellect, Noam Chomsky's, was shaped. It describes the political and intellectual contexts that helped form the unyielding principles by which Chomsky lives, and the arenas of scholarship, political action, and ideology to which he still contributes. Along the way, the book provides an engaging political history of the last several decades, and many insights into how history too often gets rewritten. Chomsky's views on the uses and misuses of the university are highlighted, as are his doubts about the legitimacy of post-modernist inquiry, and his overall assessment of useful political engagement.

In a sense, this book strives to be the autobiography that Chomsky will probably never write by letting Chomsky speak for himself on the matters of greatest concern to him, through well-placed excerpts from his copious body of published writings and unpublished corespondence.

The first book to document the history of the runway and to offer an unprecedented look behind the scenes of Fashion Week