A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book

Spanish American novels of the Boom period (1962-1967) attracted a world readership to Latin American literature, but Latin American writers had already been engaging in the modernist experiments of their North American and European counterparts since the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, the desire to be "modern" is a constant preoccupation in twentieth-century Spanish American literature and thus a very useful lens through which to view the century's novels.

In this pathfinding study, Raymond L. Williams offers the first complete analytical and critical overview of the Spanish American novel throughout the entire twentieth century. Using the desire to be modern as his organizing principle, he divides the century's novels into five periods and discusses the differing forms that "the modern" took in each era. For each period, Williams begins with a broad overview of many novels, literary contexts, and some cultural debates, followed by new readings of both canonical and significant non-canonical novels. A special feature of this book is its emphasis on women writers and other previously ignored and/or marginalized authors, including experimental and gay writers. Williams also clarifies the legacy of the Boom, the Postboom, and the Postmodern as he introduces new writers and new novelistic trends of the 1990s.

Smitten by the modernity of Cervantes and Borges at an early age, Carlos Fuentes has written extensively on the cultures of the Americas and elsewhere. His work includes over a dozen novels, among them The Death of Artemio Cruz, Christopher Unborn, The Old Gringo, and Terra Nostra, several volumes of short stories, numerous essays on literary, cultural, and political topics, and some theater.

In this book, Raymond Leslie Williams traces the themes of history, culture, and identity in Fuentes' work, particularly in his complex, major novel Terra Nostra. He opens with a biography of Fuentes that links his works to his intellectual life. The heart of the study is Williams' extensive reading of the novel Terra Nostra, in which Fuentes explores the presence of Spanish culture and history in Latin America. Williams concludes with a look at how Fuentes' other fiction relates to Terra Nostra, including Fuentes' own division of his work into fourteen cycles that he calls "La Edad del Tiempo," and with an interview in which Fuentes discusses his concept of this cyclical division.

In the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world, histories and collections of ritual knowledge were often presented in the form of painted and folded books now known as codices, and the knowledge itself was encoded into pictographs. Eight codices have survived from the Mixtec peoples of ancient Oaxaca, Mexico; a part of one of them, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is the subject of this book. As a group, the Mixtec codices contain the longest detailed histories and royal genealogies known for any indigenous people in the western hemisphere. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall offers a unique window into how the Mixtecs themselves viewed their social and political cosmos without the bias of western European interpretation. At the same time, however, the complex calendrical information recorded in the Zouche-Nuttall has made it resistant to historical, chronological analysis, thereby rendering its narrative obscure.

In this pathfinding work, Robert Lloyd Williams presents a methodology for reading the Codex Zouche-Nuttall that unlocks its essentially linear historical chronology. Recognizing that the codex is a combination of history in the European sense and the timelessness of myth in the Native American sense, he brings to vivid life the history of Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan (AD 935–1027), a ruler with the attributes of both man and deity, as well as other heroic Oaxacan figures. Williams also provides context for the history of Lord Eight Wind through essays dealing with Mixtec ceremonial rites and social structure, drawn from information in five surviving Mixtec codices.

Why does one talented individual win lasting recognition in a particular field, while another equally talented person does not? While there are many possible reasons, one obvious answer is that something more than talent is requisite to produce fame. The "something more" in the field of architecture, asserts Roxanne Williamson, is the association with a "famous" architect at the moment he or she first receives major publicity or designs the building for which he or she will eventually be celebrated.

In this study of more than six hundred American architects who have achieved a place in architectural histories, Williamson finds that only a small minority do not fit the "right person–right time" pattern. She traces the apprenticeship connection in case studies of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Hobson Richardson, the firm of McKim, Mead & White, Latrobe and his descendants, the Bulfinch and Renwick Lines, the European immigrant masters, and Louis Kahn.

Although she acknowledges and discusses the importance of family connections, the right schools, self-promotion, scholarships, design competition awards, and promotion by important journals, Williamson maintains that the apprenticeship connection is the single most important predictor of architectural fame. She offers the intriguing hypothesis that what is transferred in the relationship is not a particular style or approach but rather the courage and self-confidence to be true to one's own vision. Perhaps, she says, this is the case in all the arts.

American Architects and the Mechanics of Fame is sure to provoke thought and comment in architecture and other creative fields.

"The promise of an empty football field is an irresistible force for those who understand and revere the game," Jeff Wilson observes. Drawn by the sense of possibility and nostalgia inherent in every stadium, Wilson traveled the state of Texas to photograph high school stadiums for a photo essay that appeared in Texas Monthly in August 2005. The magazine's readers responded with an outpouring of enthusiasm, and Wilson's photo essay was nominated for a prestigious National Magazine Award.

In Home Field, Wilson creates a unique photo portrait of nearly eighty Texas high school football stadiums, ranging from the bright lights, artificial turf, and seating for thousands at Southlake Carroll to the lone set of bleachers under the wide open sky in Veribest. Shot from the fifty-yard line facing the home stands, these photographs invite us to view each stadium from the same vantage point and experience it as an evocative place that holds a community's collective memories. Accompanying the photographs are reminiscences about the fields from players, coaches, team physicians, athletic directors, sportswriters and announcers, school superintendents, principals and teachers, band directors, maintenance workers, booster club parents, students, and fans. Their stories—whether funny, nostalgic, or poignant—reveal just how important high school football is to Texans and how it creates an unforgettable sense of community and camaraderie.

Sure to bring back memories as soon as you open the book, Home Field captures what football is supposed to be—"simple and pure, like a perfect spiral arcing gracefully across the sky."

This collection of essays by five of the nation’s most eminent educators contains forthright discussions of the major issues that the state university faced at its 75th anniversary in 1958—relationships with other colleges and universities, undergraduate instruction, graduate education and research, public service, and the challenge of the future.

The contributors are David D. Henry, President of the University of Illinois, 1955–1971; Charles E. Odegaard, President of the University of Washington, 1958–1973; Sanford S. Atwood, Provost of Cornell University, 1955–1963; O. Meredith Wilson, President of the University of Oregon, 1954–1960; and Logan Wilson, President of the University of Texas, 1953–1960.

Mexico's export assembly industry has been the object of an intensely polarized debate. While some observers laud the maquiladora industry as a source of much-needed employment and foreign exchange for Mexico, others berate it as a vehicle for exploitation and pollution. Exports and Local Development attempts to transcend the dichotomy by taking a practical look at how this export industry could be better utilized to promote local development.

Using data gathered from a field survey of more than seventy maquiladora plants, Patricia A. Wilson compares the Mexican industry with its more successful Asian counterparts to determine how policy initiatives might help Mexico use local linkages to tap the potential of both local and foreign-owned assembly plants.

The study grounds its analysis of the maquiladora industry in leading-edge issues including the rise of free trade, changing corporate sourcing strategies, the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing, the Japanese challenge, the spread of flexible technology and management methods, the impacts of export-led development strategies, the importance of business networking, and the role of small business. It will be of interest to a wide audience in international business, economic development planning, public policy, and economic geography.

The decentralization of public policy from the federal government to state and local governments offers increased opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate directly in public policymaking. Yet these opportunities may not be equally shared. Due to a variety of factors, low-income citizens have long been denied a meaningful role in the public life and governance of our country.

By contrast, the essays in this volume explore how low-income citizens have successfully affected public policy. The book is built around six case studies, all from Texas, that cover education finance and reform, local infrastructure provision, environmental protection, and indigent health care.

This research illuminates several issues of national importance, including how communities gain standing and recognition for themselves and their issues, how policy agendas are defined, how communities mobilize technical and institutional resources, and how they form coalitions and alliances to accomplish their goals.

During the five full years of his presidency (1964–1968), Lyndon Johnson initiated a breathtaking array of domestic policies and programs, including such landmarks as the Civil Rights Act, Head Start, Food Stamps, Medicare and Medicaid, the Immigration Reform Act, the Water Quality Act, the Voting Rights Act, Social Security reform, and Fair Housing. These and other “Great Society” programs reformed the federal government, reshaped intergovernmental relations, extended the federal government’s role into new public policy arenas, and redefined federally protected rights of individuals to engage in the public sphere. Indeed, to a remarkable but largely unnoticed degree,Johnson’s domestic agenda continues to shape and influence current debates on major issues such as immigration, health care, higher education funding, voting rights, and clean water, even though many of his specific policies and programs have been modified or, in some cases, dismantled since his presidency.

LBJ’s Neglected Legacy examines the domestic policy achievements of one of America’s most effective, albeit controversial, leaders. Leading contributors from the fields of history, public administration, economics, environmental engineering, sociology, and urban planning examine twelve of LBJ’s key domestic accomplishments in the areas of citizenship and immigration, social and economic policy, science and technology, and public management. Their findings illustrate the enduring legacy of Johnson’s determination and skill in taking advantage of overwhelming political support in the early years of his presidency to push through an extremely ambitious and innovative legislative agenda, and emphasize the extraordinary range and extent of LBJ’s influence on American public policy and administration.

This young adult biography introduces middle school readers to a remarkable woman who founded the Women’s Army Corps, served as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and ran a media empire that included the Houston Post newspaper and radio and TV stations.

Winner, Gold Medal for Biography, Military Writers Society of America, 2015

Oveta Culp Hobby (1905–1995) had a lifetime of stellar achievement. During World War II, she was asked to build a women’s army from scratch—and did. Hobby became Director of the Women’s Army Corps and the first Army woman to earn the rank of colonel. President Eisenhower chose her as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, making her the second woman in history to be appointed to a president’s cabinet. When she wasn’t serving in the government, Hobby worked with her husband, former Texas governor William P. Hobby, to lead a media empire that included the Houston Post newspaper and radio and TV stations. She also supported the Houston community in many ways, from advocating for civil rights for African Americans to donating generously to the Houston Symphony and the Museum of Fine Arts.

Oveta Culp Hobby is the first biography of this important woman. Written for middle school readers, it traces her life from her childhood in Killeen to her remarkable achievements in Washington, DC, and Houston. Debra Winegarten provides the background to help young adult readers understand the times in which Hobby lived and the challenges she faced as a woman in nontraditional jobs. She shows how Hobby opened doors for women to serve in the military and in other professions that still benefit women today. Most of all, Oveta Culp Hobby will inspire young adults to follow their own dreams and turn them into tangible reality.

When Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph was published in 1995, it was acclaimed as the first comprehensive history of black women's struggles and achievements. This companion volume contains the original source materials that Ruthe Winegarten uncovered during her extensive research.

Like a time capsule of black women's history, A Sourcebook includes petitions from free women of color, lawsuits, slave testimonies, wills, plantation journals, club minutes, autobiographies, ads, congressional reports, contracts, prison records, college catalogues, newspaper clippings, protest letters, and much more.

In addition to the documents, a biographical section highlights the lives of women from various walks of life. The book concludes with a timeline that begins in 1777 and reaches to 1992. This wealth of original material will be a treasure trove for scholars and general readers interested in the emerging field of black women's history.

Brave black women have played important roles in American history. Before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, black women bore the bonds of slavery with courage and strength. Since Emancipation, black women have supported schools, churches, and civic organizations, entered many professions, and helped to build strong communities. This book dramatizes their impressive story and celebrates their achievements.

Writing especially for students in grades four through eight, Ruthe Winegarten and Sharon Kahn trace the history of black women from slavery until today. Their story includes many heroines, from Emily Morgan, "the Yellow Rose of Texas," to pioneer aviator Bessie Coleman, astronaut Mae Jemison, opera singer Barbara Conrad, actresses Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen, and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, whose life story forms the final chapter.

In addition to these famous black women, the book also profiles teachers, businesswomen, civil rights leaders, community activists, doctors, nurses, athletes, musicians, artists, and political leaders. Adapted from the award-winning Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph, it will be fascinating reading for children and their parents and grandparents, teachers, and librarians.

The civil rights problem of the mid-twentieth century was one of the greatest challenges to the American social fabric since the Civil War. Riots in scores of cities, and serious intergroup tensions and conflicts in thousands more, underlined the seriousness of the problem.

Administrative Implementation of Civil Rights examines the role, operation, and contribution of the device most often relied on by local and state governments for dealing with intergroup problems—the human- relations commission. First used in the early 1940s to deal with discrimination against blacks, this commission was later often charged with implementing the civil rights of other minority groups and of women, the elderly, the handicapped, and the poor. It is Joseph Parker Witherspoon’s thesis that the human-relations commission was not used effectively, that an agency of this type has great strengths that most local and state governments did not utilize, and that its weaknesses are susceptible of remedy and must be eliminated. He explains these weaknesses and develops proposals for correcting them.

 Witherspoon examines the roles of the local, state, and federal governments in solving this country’s complicated and serious civil rights problem and demonstrates that a program that carefully coordinates action by the federal government with action by local and state governments could be made to work effectively. As a part of this demonstration he proposes the enactment of a new form of comprehensive civil rights legislation at local, state, and national levels, and presents a series of four model statutes—the Alpha Model Acts—for effectuating his proposals. The approach emphasized in these statutes greatly strengthens the role of the human-relations commission as a law-enforcement agency and, in particular, focuses the operation of federal and state action upon life in the individual community.

 The book concludes with a group of appendices listing all state and many local commissions and agencies handling human-relations problems at that time, and summarizing the type of authority, the jurisdiction, the operating budget, and the legislative basis for each. This list will be of interest to those studying the history of civil rights and public policy in the United States.

This volume provides a generic description, based on a formal analysis of narrative structures, of the Middle English noncyclic verse romances. As a group, these poems have long resisted generic definition and are traditionally considered to be a conglomerate of unrelated tales held together in a historical matrix of similar themes and characters. As single narratives, they are thought of as random collections of events loosely structured in chronological succession. Susan Wittig, however, offers evidence that the romances are carefully ordered (although not always consciously so) according to a series of formulaic patterns and that their structures serve as vehicles for certain essential cultural patterns and are important to the preservation of some community-held beliefs.

The analysis begins on a stylistic level, and the same theoretical principles applied to the linguistic formulas of the poems also serve as a model for the study of narrative structures. The author finds that there are laws that govern the creation, selection, and arrangement of narrative materials in the romance genre and that act to restrict innovation and control the narrative form.

The reasons for this strict control are to be found in the functional relationship of the genre to the culture that produced it. The deep structure of the romance is viewed as a problem-solving pattern that enables the community to mediate important contradictions within its social, economic, and mythic structures. Wittig speculates that these contradictions may lie in the social structures of kinship and marriage and that they have been restructured in the narratives in a “practical” myth: the concept of power gained through the marriage alliance, and the reconciliation of the contradictory notions of marriage for power’s sake and marriage for love’s sake.

This advanced, thorough, and completely original study will be valuable to medieval specialists, classicists, linguists, folklorists, and Biblical scholars working in oral-formulaic narrative structure.

The Devil’s Fork opens with the boy Papa exclaiming, “They was gonna hang my o’Amigo Calley Pearsall out there in front a’the Alamo down in San Antoneya come Saturday Noon and if I was gonna stop it I better Light a Shuck and Get on with it. And I mean Right Now.” And so Papa and his sweetheart Annie Oster set off to rescue Calley, thereby launching themselves into another series of hair-raising adventures.

The Devil’s Fork concludes the enthralling journey through wild and woolly Central Texas in the 1880s that began in The Devil’s Backbone and The Devil’s Sinkhole. Papa springs Calley from jail, but their troubles are far from over. Framed for murder, the two amigos have to flee for their lives. Joining their flight this time is o’Johnny, the evil Sheriff Pugh’s disabled little brother, who has uncanny abilities. Escaping danger for a while, Papa and Calley try to start a new life as horse traders, only to find themselves branded as horse thieves when o’Johnny and a mysterious white ghost horse begin rescuing abused horses from their masters. Can Papa and Calley escape the noose and save all the horses that Johnny and the White Horse liberate? Or will their own hot tempers send them down the Devil’s Fork, from which no one ever returns?

Proving himself a master storyteller once again, Bill Wittliff spins a yarn as engrossing as the stories his own Papa told him long ago, stories that inspired The Devil’s Backbone, The Devil’s Sinkhole, and The Devil’s Fork.

When last we saw the boy Papa in The Devil’s Backbone, he had finally learned the fate of his missing Momma and his vicious daddy, Old Karl. But hardly has he concluded that quest before another one is upon him. Now a white-haired man with a hangman’s noose around his neck and death in his eye—o’Pelo Blanco—is coming. And he means to hang Papa.

In The Devil’s Sinkhole, the master storyteller Bill Wittliff takes us on another enthralling journey through wild and woolly Central Texas in the 1880s. When Papa and his o’amigo Calley Pearsall confront Pelo Blanco before he can ambush Papa, the encounter sets them on a pursuit with a promise of true love at the end, if only they can stay alive long enough for Calley to win the beautiful Pela Rosa, the captive/companion of Pelo Blanco. But before they can even hope to be united with Pela and Annie Oster, Papa’s plucky sweetheart, Papa and Calley have to defeat not only Pelo Blanco but also the evil, murdering Arlon Clavic and deliver Little Missey, the mysterious Wild Woman a’the Navidad, to the safe haven of the Choat farm. With dangers and emergencies around every bend, it’s a rough ride to the Devil’s Sinkhole, where this world and the next come together, bringing Papa and Calley, Pelo Blanco and Arlon to a climax that will leave readers clamoring for the next adventure.

The last the boy Papa saw of his Momma, she was galloping away on her horse Precious in the saddle her father took from a dead Mexican officer after the Battle of San Jacinto, fleeing from his Daddy, Old Karl, a vicious, tight-fisted horse trader. Momma’s flight sets Papa on a relentless quest to find her that thrusts him and his scrappy little dog Fritz into adventures all across the wild and woolly Hill Country of Central Texas, down to Mexico, and even into the realm of the ghostly “Shimmery People.” In The Devil’s Backbone, master storyteller Bill Wittliff takes readers on an exciting journey through a rough 1880s frontier as full of colorful characters and unexpected turns of events as the great American quest novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Wittliff grew up listening to stories and memories like these in his own family, and in this imaginative novel, they come to vivid life, creating an engrossing story of a Texas Huck Finn that brims with folk wisdom and sly humor. A rogue’s gallery of characters thwart and aid Papa’s path—Old Karl, hell-bent on bringing the boy back to servitude on his farm, and Herman, Papa’s brother who’s got Old Karl’s horse-trading instincts and greed; Calley Pearsall, an enigmatic cowboy with “other Fish to Fry” who might be an outlaw or a trustworthy “o’Amigo”; o’Jeffey, a black seer who talks to the spirits but won’t tell Papa what she has divined about his Momma; Mister Pegleg, a three-legged coyote with whom Papa forms a poignant, nearly tragic friendship; the “Mexkins” Pepe and Peto and their father Old Crecencio, whose longing for his lost family is as strong as Papa’s; and blind Bird, a magical “blue baby” who can’t see with his eyes but who helps other people see what they hold in their hearts. Papa’s adventures draw him ever nearer to a mysterious cave that haunts his dreams—an actual cave that he discovers at last in the canyons of the Devil’s Backbone—but will he find Momma before Old Karl finds him?

Exchanges of women between men occur regularly in Greek tragedy—and almost always with catastrophic results. Instead of cementing bonds between men, such exchanges rend them. They allow women, who should be silent objects, to become monstrous subjects, while men often end up as lifeless corpses. But why do the tragedies always represent the transferal of women as disastrous?

Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.

Over a mere three decades, the video game became the entertainment medium of choice for millions of people, who now spend more time in the interactive virtual world of games than they do in watching movies or even television. The release of new games or game-playing equipment, such as the PlayStation 2, generates great excitement and even buying frenzies. Yet, until now, this giant on the popular culture landscape has received little in-depth study or analysis.

In this book, Mark J. P. Wolf and four other scholars conduct the first thorough investigation of the video game as an artistic medium. The book begins with an attempt to define what is meant by the term "video game" and the variety of modes of production within the medium. It moves on to a brief history of the video game, then applies the tools of film studies to look at the medium in terms of the formal aspects of space, time, narrative, and genre. The book also considers the video game as a cultural entity, object of museum curation, and repository of psychological archetypes. It closes with a list of video game research resources for further study.

In 1992, at the end of a twelve-year civil war, El Salvador was poised for a transition to democracy. Yet, after longstanding dominance by a small oligarchy that continually used violence to repress popular resistance, El Salvador’s democracy has proven to be a fragile one, as social ills (poverty chief among them) have given rise to neighborhoods where gang activity now thrives. Mano Dura examines the ways in which the ruling ARENA party used gang violence to solidify political power in the hands of the elite—culminating in draconian “iron fist” antigang policies that undermine human rights while ultimately doing little to address the roots of gang membership.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and policy analysis, Mano Dura examines the activities of three nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have advocated for more nuanced policies to eradicate gangs and the societal issues that are both a cause and an effect of gang proliferation. While other studies of street gangs have focused on relatively distant countries such as Colombia, Argentina, and Jamaica, Sonja Wolf’s research takes us to a country closer to the United States, where forced deportation has brought with it US gang culture. Charting the limited success of NGOs in influencing El Salvador’s security policies, the book brings to light key contextual aspects—including myopic media coverage and the ironic populist support for ARENA, despite the party’s protection of the elite at the expense of the greater society.

Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer stands virtually alone among prominent writers for being more widely known through translations of his work than through the original texts. Yet readers and critics of the Yiddish originals have long pointed out that the English versions are generally shortened, often shorn of much description and religious matter, and their perspectives and denouements are significantly altered. In short, they turn the Yiddish author into a Jewish-American English writer, detached from of his Eastern European Jewish literary and cultural roots.

By contrast, this collection of essays by leading Yiddish scholars seeks to recover the authentic voice and vision of the writer known to his Yiddish readers as Yitskhok Bashevis. The essays are grouped around four themes:

• The Yiddish language and the Yiddish cultural experience in Bashevis's writings
• Thematic approaches to the study of Bashevis's literature
• Bashevis's interface with other times and cultures
• Interpretations of Bashevis's autobiographical writings

A special feature of this volume is the inclusion of Joseph Sherman's new, faithful translation of a chapter from Bashevis's Yiddish "underworld" novel Yarme and Keyle.

The Good Neighbor Policy was unique: a great power obligated itself not to use force in its dealings with twenty smaller powers and not to interfere in their domestic politics. It was a policy that lasted, with some perturbations, for twenty years: instituted by President Roosevelt in 1933 and carried out effectively from 1933 to 1943 by word and action, maintained during the Second World War largely as a result of British concern for continuance of Argentine beef exports, codified in the Charter of the Organization of American States in 1948, and reasserted by Truman and Acheson in 1950–51, it was covertly repudiated in Guatemala in 1954 by Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers, and not so secretly by Kennedy in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. Openly shattered in the Dominican Republic by Johnson in 1965, it has since been completely abandoned in favor of the usual relationships between large and small powers.

Working with documents from the Public Records Office in London and the National Archives, with recently released materials from the U.S. Department of State, and with secondary sources, Bryce Wood describes the temptations laid before the leaders of one powerful state by its occasionally recalcitrant neighbors, and the ways of reacting that were found. Having told half the story in his The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy, Wood now concludes it in the present volume. One of the chief casualties is shown to be the Organization of American States, which since 1954 has found itself badly crippled in its work to promote harmony and continued cooperation among the member states.

Well before Aristotle's Rhetoric elucidated the elements of verbal style that give writing its persuasive power, Greek poets and prose authors understood the importance of style in creating compelling characters to engage an audience. And because their works were composed in predominantly oral settings, their sense of style included not only the characters' manner of speaking, but also their appearance and deportment. From Homeric epic to classical tragedy and oratory, verbal and visual cues work hand-in-hand to create distinctive styles for literary characters.

In this book, Nancy Worman investigates the development and evolution of ideas about style in archaic and classical literature through a study of representations of Odysseus and Helen. She demonstrates that, as liars and imitators, pleasing storytellers, and adept users of costume, these two figures are especially skillful manipulators of style. In tracing the way literary representations of them changed through time—from Homer's positive portrayal of their subtle self-presentations to the sharply polarized portrayals of these same subtleties in classical tragedy and oratory—Worman also uncovers a nascent awareness among the Greek writers that style may be used not only to persuade but also to distract and deceive.

This is the tenth volume in the Oratory of Classical Greece. This series presents all of the surviving speeches from the late fifth and fourth centuries BC in new translations prepared by classical scholars who are at the forefront of the discipline. These translations are especially designed for the needs and interests of today's undergraduates, Greekless scholars in other disciplines, and the general public.

Classical oratory is an invaluable resource for the study of ancient Greek life and culture. The speeches offer evidence on Greek moral views, social and economic conditions, political and social ideology, law and legal procedure, and other aspects of Athenian culture that have recently been attracting particular interest: women and family life, slavery, and religion, to name just a few.

Demosthenes is regarded as the greatest orator of classical antiquity. This volume contains his Funeral Oration (Speech 60) for those who died in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, in which Philip of Macedonia secured his dominance over Greece, as well as the so-called Erotic Essay (Speech 61), a rhetorical exercise in which the speaker eulogizes the youth Epicrates for his looks and physical prowess and encourages him to study philosophy in order to become a virtuous and morally upright citizen. The volume also includes fifty-six prologues (the openings to political speeches to the Athenian Assembly) and six letters apparently written during the orator's exile from Athens. Because so little literature survives from the 330s and 320s BC, these works provide valuable insights into Athenian culture and politics of that era.

This is the fifth volume in the Oratory of Classical Greece. This series presents all of the surviving speeches from the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in new translations prepared by classical scholars who are at the forefront of the discipline. These translations are especially designed for the needs and interests of today's undergraduates, Greekless scholars in other disciplines, and the general public.

Classical oratory is an invaluable resource for the study of ancient Greek life and culture. The speeches offer evidence on Greek moral views, social and economic conditions, political and social ideology, law and legal procedure, and other aspects of Athenian culture that have been largely ignored: women and family life, slavery, and religion, to name just a few.

This volume combines the surviving speeches of three orators who stand at the end of the classical period. Dinarchus was not an Athenian, but he was called on to write speeches in connection with a corruption scandal (the Harpalus affair) that put an end to the career of Demosthenes. His speeches thus raise many of the vital issues surrounding the Macedonian conquest of Athens and the final years of Athenian democracy. Hyperides was an important public figure who was involved in many of the events described by Dinarchus and Lycurgus. His speeches open a window into many interesting facets of Athenian life. Lycurgus was one of the leading politicians in Athens during the reign of Alexander the Great and put Athenian public finances on a more secure footing. He was also a deeply religious man, who tried to revive Athenian patriotism after the crushing defeat at Chaeronea.

The Death of Ramón González has become a benchmark book since its publication in 1990. It has been taught in undergraduate and graduate courses in every social science discipline, sustainable and alternative agriculture, environmental studies, ecology, ethnic studies, public health, and Mexican, Latin American, and environmental history. The book has also been used at the University of California-Santa Cruz as a model of interdisciplinary work and at the University of Iowa as a model of fine journalism, and has inspired numerous other books, theses, films, and investigative journalism pieces.

This revised edition of The Death of Ramón González updates the science and politics of pesticides and agricultural development. In a new afterword, Angus Wright reconsiders the book's central ideas within the context of globalization, trade liberalization, and NAFTA, showing that in many ways what he called "the modern agricultural dilemma" should now be thought of as a "twenty-first century dilemma" that involves far more than agriculture.

Essayist, editor, columnist, author of many books, and winner of a special Pulitzer Prize citation in 1958 for his powers of news analysis, Walter Lippmann both appraised and influenced twentieth-century American politics. No other author of the century dealt with the persistent problems of politics from so many approaches, was so widely read, or varied so widely in his conclusions.

Benjamin F. Wright’s study is the first book devoted to an exposition and analysis of Lippmann’s nine “books of political philosophy,” as James Reston called them. These books provide a fascinating study of changes in the political and economic ideas of the most important journalist of his time.

Lippmann’s books published in 1913 and 1914 reflect the optimism of the Progressive Era, of faith in science and in the ability of people to choose their goals and attain them. In 1922 and 1925, while editor of the New York World, Lippmann wrote searching, often pessimistic analyses of what he believed to be the prevailing assumptions regarding the nature and role of public opinion. Although in the Coolidge era he relegated government to a minor role as mediator, he became an enthusiastic defender of the achievements of the early New Deal. Two years later in a longer look, he found the same New Deal following the path toward totalitarianism. Keynes was discarded and his place taken by the economics of Adam Smith, bolstered by the common law of Coke and the Constitution of the founders. Finally, in 1955, in the extremely popular and very engaging Public Philosophy, there is a lament for the “decline of the West” and a plea to return to the age of civility and natural law.

In a final analytical chapter, Wright presents a critique of Lippmann’s historical understanding and the modern applications of the tradition of natural law. He also assesses Lippmann’s inability to translate the “public philosophy” into programs or institutional changes and the failure to account for the expansion of governmental functions together with the continued strength of constitutional democracy in the West.

Montana has been the "last best place" for so many people. A century ago, Native Americans gathered here to perform the Ghost Dance—a last, doomed attempt to make white settlers vanish and bring back the old ways of life. Today, people are still pouring into Montana, looking for the pristine wilderness they saw in A River Runs through It.

The reality of Montana—indeed, of all the West—has never matched the myths, but this book eloquently explores how the search for a perfect place is driving growth, development, and resource exploitation in Big Sky country. In ten personal essays, John Wright looks at such things as Montana myths; old-timers; immigrants; elk; ways of seeing the landscape; land conservation and land trusts; the fate of the Blackfoot, Bitterroot, and Paradise valleys; and some means of preserving the last, best places.

These reflections offer a way of understanding Montana that goes far beyond the headlines about militia groups and celebrities' ranches. Montana never was or will be a pristine wilderness, but Wright believes that much can be saved if natives and newcomers alike see what stands to be lost. His book is a wake-up call, not a ghost dance.

The opposing forces of conservation and development have shaped and will continue to shape the natural environment and scenic beauty of the American West. Perhaps nowhere are their opposite effects more visible than in the neighboring states of Colorado and Utah, so alike in their spectacular mountain environments, yet so different in their approaches to land conservation. This study explores why Colorado has over twenty-five land trusts, while Utah has only one.

John Wright traces the success of voluntary land conservation in Colorado to the state’s history as a region of secular commerce. As environmental consciousness has grown in Colorado, people there have embraced the businesslike approach of land trusts as simply a new, more responsible way of conducting the real estate business.

In Utah, by contrast, Wright finds that Mormon millennialism and the belief that growth equals success have created a public climate opposed to the formation of land trusts. As Wright puts it, "environmentalism seems to thrive in the Centennial state within the spiritual vacuum which is filled by Mormonism in Utah." These findings remind conservationists of the power of underlying cultural values that affect their efforts to preserve private lands.

The Baniwa Indians of the Northwest Amazon have engaged in millenarian movements since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. The defining characteristic of these movements is usually a prophecy of the end of this present world and the restoration of the primordial, utopian world of creation. This prophetic message, delivered by powerful shamans, has its roots in Baniwa myths of origin and creation.

In this ethnography of Baniwa religion, Robin M. Wright explores the myths of creation and how they have been embodied in religious movements and social action—particularly in a widespread conversion to evangelical Christianity. He opens with a discussion of cosmogony, cosmology, and shamanism, and then goes on to explain how Baniwa origin myths have played an active role in shaping both personal and community identity and history. He also explores the concepts of death and eschatology and shows how the mythology of destruction and renewal in Baniwa religion has made the Baniwa people receptive to both Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

Universal human rights standards were adopted in 1948, but in the 1970s and 1980s, violent dictatorships in Argentina and Chile flagrantly defied the new protocols. Chilean general Augusto Pinochet and the Argentine military employed state terrorism in their quest to eradicate Marxism and other forms of “subversion.” Pinochet constructed an iron shield of impunity for himself and the military in Chile, while in Argentina, military pressure resulted in laws preventing prosecution for past human rights violations. When democracy was reestablished in both countries by 1990, justice for crimes against humanity seemed beyond reach.

Thomas C. Wright examines how persistent advocacy by domestic and international human rights groups, evolving legal environments, unanticipated events that impacted public opinion, and eventual changes in military leadership led to a situation unique in the world—the stripping of impunity not only from a select number of commanders of the repression but from all those involved in state terrorism in Chile and Argentina. This has resulted in trials conducted by national courts, without United Nations or executive branch direction, in which hundreds of former repressors have been convicted and many more are indicted or undergoing trial.

Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy draws on extensive research, including interviews, to trace the erosion and collapse of the former repressors’ impunity—a triumph for human rights advocates that has begun to inspire authorities in other Latin American countries, including Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, and Guatemala, to investigate past human rights violations and prosecute their perpetrators.

During the nineteenth century, British-owned railways grew under the protection of an Argentine ruling elite that considered railways both instruments and symbols of progress. Under this program of support for foreign enterprise, Argentina had by 1914 built the largest railway network in Latin America.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, the railways were successful in following a policy of calculated disregard for Argentine interests in general. However, following the end of World War I, the British economic empire began to decline and Argentine economic nationalism grew. A number of popularistic political movements incorporated economic nationalism into their platforms, and even among the ruling elite there were signs of increasing nationalistic sentiment.

Although most studies of economic nationalism have emphasized the importance of the middle-class Radical party in the rise of xenophobia, Winthrop R. Wright's study shows that antiforeign economic nationalism was not entirely a reaction to the conservative elite. Between 1932 and 1938 the nationalistic programs of General Agustin Justo's government—basically a conservative regime—led the British interests to decide to sell their holdings. The British govemment had arrived at a position of supporting the economic withdrawal of the large British-owned firms long before Juan D. Perón appeared on the political scene.

Perón combined traditional Argentine economic nationalism with his own scheme to gain power over all elements in Argentina. His solution to the railway problem, although more dramatically executed, did not differ greatly from that of the conservative Justo. Perón purchased the railways outright in 1947–1948, but his use of nationalism was in reality covering his own inability to outbargain Britain and the United States following the conclusion of World War II.

For over a hundred years, Venezuelans have referred to themselves as a café con leche (coffee with milk) people. This colorful expression well describes the racial composition of Venezuelan society, in which European, African, and Indian peoples have intermingled to produce a population in which almost everyone is of mixed blood. It also expresses a popular belief that within their blended society Venezuelans have achieved a racial democracy in which people of all races live free from prejudice and discrimination. Whether or not historical facts actually support this popular perception is the question Winthrop Wright explores in this study.

Wright's research suggests that, contrary to popular belief, blacks in Venezuela have not enjoyed the full benefits of racial democracy. He finds that their status, even after the abolition of slavery in 1854, remained low in the minds of Venezuelan elites, who idealized the European somatic type and viewed blacks as inferior. Indeed, in an effort to whiten the population, Venezuelan elites promoted European immigration and blocked the entry of blacks and Asians during the early twentieth century.

These attitudes remained in place until the 1940s, when the populist Acción Democrática party (AD) challenged the elites' whitening policies. Since that time, blacks have made significant strides and have gained considerable political power. But, as Wright reveals, other evidence suggests that most remain social outcasts and have not accumulated significant wealth. The popular perception of racial harmony in Venezuela hides the fact of ongoing discrimination.

A study of the largely hidden world of primary media market research and the different methods used to understand how the viewer is pictured in the industry.

The first book on the intersection between market research and media, Creating the Viewer takes a critical look at media companies’ studies of television viewers, the assumptions behind these studies, and the images of the viewer that are constructed through them. Justin Wyatt examines various types of market research, including talent testing, pilot testing, series maintenance, brand studies, and new show “ideation,” providing examples from a range of programming including news, sitcoms, reality shows, and dramas. He looks at brand studies for networks such as E!, and examines how the brands of individuals such as showrunner Ryan Murphy can be tested. Both an analytical and practical work, the book includes sample questionnaires and paths for study moderators and research analysts to follow. Drawn from over fifteen years of experience in research departments at various media companies, Creating the Viewer looks toward the future of media viewership, discussing how the concept of the viewer has changed in the age of streaming, how services such as Netflix view market research, and how viewers themselves can shift the industry through their media choices, behaviors, and activities.

Steven Spielberg once said, "I like ideas, especially movie ideas, that you can hold in your hand. If a person can tell me the idea in twenty-five words or less, it's going to make a pretty good movie." Spielberg's comment embodies the essence of the high concept film, which can be condensed into one simple sentence that inspires marketing campaigns, lures audiences, and separates success from failure at the box office.

This pioneering study explores the development and dominance of the high concept movie within commercial Hollywood filmmaking since the late 1970s. Justin Wyatt describes how box office success, always important in Hollywood, became paramount in the era in which major film studios passed into the hands of media conglomerates concerned more with the economics of filmmaking than aesthetics. In particular, he shows how high concept films became fully integrated with their marketing, so that a single phrase ("Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...") could sell the movie to studio executives and provide copy for massive advertising campaigns; a single image or a theme song could instantly remind potential audience members of the movie, and tie-in merchandise could generate millions of dollars in additional income.

2008 — Leeds Honor Book in Urban Anthropology – Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology

Living in Egypt at the turn of the millennium, cultural anthropologist L. L. Wynn was struck by the juxtapositions of Western, Gulf Arab, and Egyptian viewpoints she encountered. For some, Egypt is the land of mummies and pharaohs. For others, it is a vortex of decadence, where nightlife promises a chance to salivate over belly dancers and maybe even glimpse a movie star. Offering a new approach to ethnography, Pyramids and Nightclubs examines cross-cultural encounters to bring to light the counterintuitive ways in which Egypt is defined.

Guiding readers on an armchair journey that introduces us to Russian and Australian belly dancers on Nile cruise ships, Egyptian rumors about an Arab prince and his royal entourage, Saudi girls looking for a less restrictive dating scene, and other visitors to this "antique" land, Wynn uses the lens of travel and tourism to depict a fascinating and often surprising version of Egypt, while exploring the concept of stereotype itself. Tracing the history of Western and Arab fascination with Egypt through spurious hunts for lost civilizations and the new economic disparities brought about by the oil industry, Pyramids and Nightclubs ultimately describes the ways in which moments of cultural contact, driven by tourism and labor migration, become eye-opening opportunities for defining self and other.

The prosperous, comfortable, and homogeneous American suburb is a relatively recent institution in American history. Edward Wynne was one of the first to take a serious look at the quality of suburban childhood, where, he contends, we have ignored the developments affecting the largest pool of children and parents in America. This provocative volume argues that the total environment of the suburban youth—the school, the community, the family, and the workplace—is in need of drastic reform.

Wynne advances a forthright argument for the preservation of traditional moral values and criticizes excessive individualism in fragmented modern society. Focusing on the schools and extending his discussion to the larger community, he pleads for more attention to such goals as honesty, persistence, patriotism, and loyalty.

Post-industrial suburban environments, Wynne argues, do not provide the diversity of experience children must have to become successful adults. Strong community ties to the schools are basic to Wynne's thesis. Within the schools, he recommends changes in grading systems, student responsibilities and assignments, selection and training of teachers and administrators, structuring and evaluation of programs, and the socioeconomic and age mix of pupils. A feeling of cooperation and unity within the school itself is a major goal. Wynne also suggests steps for moving toward more heterogeneous, close-knit communities, where citizens have greater local control. For example, community members could restrict movement into the community and should aim for a mix of blue- and white-collar residents.

Wynne's arguments clearly run counter to fashion and are sure to provoke a high level of debate among educators of differing philosophic persuasions. Civil libertarians, feminists, civil rights advocates, and others are bound to make spirited replies to many of Wynne's contentions. Growing Up Suburban will be of interest to educators, public school administrators, parents, and suburban dwellers.