Playmakers cover art

Playmakers

The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America

Preview
Subscribe now Free with 30-day trial
Offer ends on 14 April, 2026 at 23:59.
Prime logo
Pay ₹5/month for 2 months and ₹199/month after 2 months, Cancel anytime. Offer ends on 14 April 2026 at 23:59. Take this offer!
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep.
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks.
Download titles to your library and listen offline.
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Playmakers

Written by: Michael Kimmel
Narrated by: Adam Grupper
Subscribe now Free with 30-day trial

Pay ₹5/month for 2 months and ₹199/month after 2 months, Cancel anytime. Offer ends on 14 April 2026 at 23:59.

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹703.00

Buy Now for ₹703.00

LIMITED TIME OFFER | Get 2 Months for ₹5/month

About this listen

In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers.

Playmakers reveals how the toy industry created the idealized American childhood: an enchanted world, full of wild creatures and eternal struggles between good and evil, with endless realms of fantasy and beauty. For much of the twentieth century, every part of the American toy business was largely Jewish. A descendant of the founders of the Ideal Toy Corporation, Michael Kimmel shows how these poor, often Yiddish-speaking, tenement-dwelling children of immigrants invented a world they never experienced for themselves. Kimmel also portrays the rise of an entire culture focused on children, led by Jewish comic book creators, children's authors, parenting experts, and child psychologists.

The first full-scale toy history of the United States, Kimmel's story conjures the colorful, imaginative, restless spirits who followed the promise of the American Dream—and describes the ways in which the world they came from molded their beloved creations. Playmakers shows that the overlapping experiences of being a Jew, an immigrant, and a child in twentieth-century America created childhood as we know it today.

©2026 Michael Kimmel (P)2026 Tantor Media
Americas Children's Studies History Judaism Social Sciences United States
No reviews yet