ON THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE GHOST CLINIQUE is, above all, a social novel. It is constructed with the style of a crime novel, to facilitate the public access towards a more digestible literary type of fiction. The majority of the characters are marked by an immense social trauma. It is the tragedy of the genius student who couldn't finish his studies because of his terrifying poverty, the sufferance of an ordinary man who couldn't support his family with his own salary, and the dilemma of a young woman who decided to prostitute herself in order to survive. The secret and unlawful Clinique is the only possibility of some scientists to continue their medical researchers, using founds gathered in an illegal or fraudulent way.

Beauty seems simple; we know it when we see it. But of course our ideas about what is attractive are influenced by a broad range of social and economic factors, and in Beauty and Business leading historians set out to provide this important cultural context. How have retailers shaped popular consciousness about beauty? And how, in turn, have cultural assumptions influenced the commodification of beauty? The contributors here look to particular examples in order to address these questions, turning their attention to topics ranging from the social role of the African American hair salon, and the sexual dynamics of bathing suits and shirtcollars, to the deeper meanings of corsets and what the Avon lady tells us about changing American values. As a whole, these essays force us to reckon with the ways that beauty has been made, bought, and sold in modern America.