This anthology deals with such diverse conventions as the treatment of food, the iconography of weapons, the paraphernalia of baseball, the uses of clothing, tools, and technologies, and the representation of art and print media within the world of film. The essays within this collection help to reveal how the objects in American movies reflect both the fixed and changeable cultural assumptions of film makers and film audiences.

In this volume of the Beyond the Stars series, the subject of the various individual essays are discrete conventions of movie locales, but the subject of the volume as a whole—as with the other books in the series—is the viability of film convention studies as a tool for the study of film and American culture.

In six months bridging 1989 and 1990, the German Democratic Republic underwent a transformation that took the world almost completely by surprise.  Yet unlike the revolution in Poland a decade earlier, only a small percentage of workers played apolitically active role in the fall of socialism in Germany.
 
In this unprecedented study, Linda Fuller sets out to explain why the working class was largely missing from the 1989-90 revolution.   Drawing on pre- and post-revolutionary visits to East German work sites and dozens of interviews, Fuller documents workers' day-to-day experience of the labor process, workplace union politics, and class. She shows how all three factors led most workers to withdraw from politics, even while prompting a handful to become actively involved in the struggle.