In the late 1800s, “Arctic Fever” swept across the nation as dozens of American expeditions sailed north to the Arctic to find a sea route to Asia and, ultimately, to stand at the North Pole. Few of these missions were successful, and many men lost their lives en route. Yet failure did little to dampen the enthusiasm of new explorers or the crowds at home that cheered them on. Arctic exploration, Michael F. Robinson argues, was an activity that unfolded in America as much as it did in the wintry hinterland. Paying particular attention to the perils facing explorers at home, The Coldest Crucible examines their struggles to build support for the expeditions before departure, defend their claims upon their return, and cast themselves as men worthy of the nation’s full attention. In so doing, this book paints a new portrait of polar voyagers, one that removes them from the icy backdrop of the Arctic and sets them within the tempests of American cultural life. 

With chronological chapters featuring emblematic Arctic explorers—including Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Hall, and Robert Peary—The Coldest Crucible reveals why the North Pole, a region so geographically removed from Americans, became an iconic destination for discovery.

First the press became the media, and now the media have become the Imperial Media—or have they? In this timely and comprehensive analysis, Michael Robinson and Margaret Sheehan examine how the news media behaved (or misbehaved) in covering the 1980 presidential campaign. Using the media's own traditional standards as a guide, Robinson and Sheehan measure the level of objectivity, fairness, seriousness, and criticism displayed by CBS News and United Press International between January and December of 1980. Drawing on statistical analyses of almost 6,000 news stories and dozens of interviews with writers and reporters, the authors reach convincing and sometimes surprising conclusions. They demonstrate, for example, that both CBS and UPI strictly avoided subjective assessments of the candidates and their positions on the issues. Both gave the major parties remarkably equal access. But the media seem to give more negative coverage to front-runners, treating serious challengers less harshly. Perhaps the most surprising finding is that networks were not more superficial than print; CBS attended to the issues at least as often as UPI. Robinson and Sheehan find television coverage more subjective, more volatile, and substantially more negative than traditional print. But CBS behaved neither imperially nor irresponsibly in Campaign '80. The networks did, however, emulate the more highly charged journalism of the eastern elite print press. By blending the quantitative techniques of social science and the tools of Washington-based journalism, Robinson and Sheehan have produced a book that will be essential reading for students and practitioners of politics, public opinion research, journalism, and communications. Lively and readable, it should also appeal to anyone interested in the role of the news media in contemporary politics.

Predatory Bureaucracy is the definitive history of America's wolves and our policies toward predators. Tracking wolves from the days of the conquistadors to the present, author Michael Robinson shows that their story merges with that of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey. This federal agency was chartered to research insects and birds but - because of various pressures - morphed into a political powerhouse dedicated to killing wolves and other wildlife.

Robinson follows wolves' successful adaptation to the arrival of explorers, mountain men, and bounty hunters, through their disastrous century-long entanglement with the federal government. He shares the parallel story of the Biological Survey's rise, detailing the personal, social, geographic, and political forces that allowed it to thrive despite opposition from hunters, animal lovers, scientists, environmentalists, and presidents.

Federal predator control nearly eliminated wolves throughout the United States and Mexico and radically changed American lands and wildlife populations. It undercut the livelihoods of countless homestead families in order to benefit an emerging western elite of livestock owners. The extermination of predators led to problems associated with prey overpopulation, but, as Robinson reveals, extermination and control programs still continue. Predatory Bureaucracy will fascinate readers interested in wildlife, ecosystems, agriculture, and environmental politics.

This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.

Strindberg's plays, novels, and short stories, which influenced film and theatre artists from Artaud and the German Expressionists to Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, chart an artistic evolution from Naturalism to the revolt against realism that issued in Expressionist drama. These letters help to explain Strindberg's seminal force and testify to the broad range of his interests, energies, and imaginative instincts. An essential part of their author's oeuvre, the letters provide invaluable insight into Strindberg the artist, the political thinker, and the person, and were regarded by Strindberg himself as an integral component of his autobiographical project.

The letters, some of them published here for the first time, have been meticulously edited and are supported by an extensive introduction and notes.

This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.

This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.