Yesterday's Faces, Vol. 1 Book

I am going to write a placeholder review for all of Robert Sampson's books because I plan to reread them soon. Hands down, the best writer/historian the pulps ever had! Why? Because he loves the pulps but he's not "in love" with them - he can show you why they were great, why they were awful, why they were brilliant, why they were cheap, how they were poetic and how they were trash, and do it all while informing you AND placing the whole shebang in its cultural context AND entertaining you. An amazing writer, I believe I need one more book by him to have everything he ever wrote on the subject (that's been printed in book form, at least) - you may not ever need to actually read many pulp stories and now you don't have to - Robert Sampson has and can condense their weird wonder down into this strange, printed form of a magic elixir (a mixed metaphor!?! why, that would have made me 2/3rds of a cent if I was a bang-em out, hack pulp writer!)

Seriously, these are some stunning books and well worth your time if you have any interest in the topic of the pulps and dime novels and genre history.

The first of six (at last count) volumes highlighting and discussing the histories and particulars of serial fiction characters from the 'pulp fiction' era. He's a bit dry, but well informed and has a lot of insightful things to say about the genre, sub-genre's within it, and the characters within those. I've always heard that his material is one of the definitive sources for material about the pulps and pulp characters, and I can see why. Probably not for a casual fan, but for those with a deep interest in the genre, this is the good stuff.