18284 books match the query 'United States' and 850 start with p
Michael Robinson
University Press of Colorado, 2005
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.
Stephen Smith
University of Arkansas Press, 1996
Mary S. Melcher
University of Arizona Press, 2012
Early twentieth-century Arizona was a life-threatening place for new and expectant mothers. Towns were small and very far apart, and the weather and harsh landscape often delayed midwives. It was not uncommon for a woman to give birth without medical care and with the aid of only family members. By the 1920s, Arizona was at the top of the list for the highest number of infant deaths.
Mary Melcher’s Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Choice in Twentieth-Century Arizona provides a deep and diverse history of the dramatic changes in childbirth, birth control, infant mortality, and abortion over the course of the last century. Using oral histories, memoirs, newspaper accounts, government documents, letters, photos, and biographical collections, this fine-grained study of women’s reproductive health places the voices of real women at the forefront of the narrative, providing a personal view into some of the most intense experiences of their lives.
Tackling difficult issues such as disparities in reproductive health care based on race and class, abortion, and birth control, this book seeks to change the way the world looks at women’s health. An essential read for both historians and public health officials, this book reveals that many of the choices and challenges that women once faced remain even today.
Richard Guy Wilkinson
University of Michigan Press, 1971
John R Halsey
University of Michigan Press, 2018
William E. McGoun
University of Alabama Press, 1993
To many people in South Florida, and "oldtimer" is someone who has lived there for more than five years. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida considers the culture history of the real South Florida "oldtimers" dating from 10,000 B.C. through the invasion by Europeans and analyzes the ways in which they adapted to their environment through time—or caused their environment to adapt to them.
South Florida is a biological island, its plant communities circumscribed by the southern limits of frost. Its peoples were distinct from those to the north and were less studied by scholars. In recent years the pace of research has increased, but there has been no attempt at synthesis since John M. Goggin wrote his still-unpublished manuscript on the Glades nearly half a century ago. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida assembles the available knowledge and discusses competing theories, and does so in terms that are understandable to the general reader. McGoun outlines a cultural system that maintained an impressive continuity for 10,000 years—before being destroyed by two centuries of European contact.
Edited by Charles H. McNutt
University of Alabama Press, 1996
The Central Mississippi Valley, defined as the region along the Mississippi River from where the Ohio River joins in the north to its confluence with the Arkansas River in the south, lies between the two most important archaeological areas of the Southeast: American Bottom/Cahokia and the Lower Yazoo Basin. The valley has been influenced by these major centers and has a complex history of its own. Contributions from experts throughout the region present current, if sometimes conflicting, views of the regional cultural sequences supported by data from recent surveys and excavations, as well as radiocarbon and chronometric determinations. By examining this new information and reevaluating earlier interpretations of local archaeological sequences, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the valley and defines future research goals.
Robert C. Post, with K. Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Thomas C. Grey, and Reva B. Siegel
Duke University Press, 2001
Sunny Nakae
Rutgers University Press, 2021
Elizabeth A. Tryon
Temple University Press, 2023
Luc Delannoy
University of Arkansas Press, 1993
Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa
University of Chicago Press, 2009
Published twenty years ago, the original Preschool in Three Cultures was a landmark in the study of education: a profoundly enlightening exploration of the different ways preschoolers are taught in China, Japan, and the United States. Here, lead author Joseph Tobin—along with new collaborators Yeh Hsueh and Mayumi Karasawa—revisits his original research to discover how two decades of globalization and sweeping social transformation have affected the way these three cultures educate and care for their youngest pupils. Putting their subjects’ responses into historical perspective, Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa analyze the pressures put on schools to evolve and to stay the same, discuss how the teachers adapt to these demands, and examine the patterns and processes of continuity and change in each country.
Featuring nearly one hundred stills from the videotapes, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited artfully and insightfully illustrates the surprising, illuminating, and at times entertaining experiences of four-year-olds—and their teachers—on both sides of the Pacific.
Charles W. Anderson
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996
Jill Dolan
University of Michigan Press, 1993
This book critically bridges feminist theory and theatrical practice. Dolan examines how performance can subvert normative constructs of gender and sexuality. The collection evaluates mainstream theater, academic stages, subcultural venues, and performance in daily life. It centers sexuality as a primary analytical framework to explore queer visibility and cultural representation. It bridges contemporary feminist theory, poststructuralism, and theatrical practice and places sexuality at the center of its analytical framework to explore how theatrical representation can subvert normative constructs of gender and desire. Dolan evaluates a vast spectrum of performance spaces—ranging from mainstream professional and academic stages to subcultural venues, pornography, and everyday social interactions—to champion queer visibility and claim recognition for women's bodies. Ultimately, the volume functions as a foundational text in performance studies and LGBTQ+ cultural criticism, demonstrating how deliberate theatrical strategies can provoke American culture to actively dismantle and reimagine its traditional social relations
Philip Auslander
University of Michigan Press, 1994
Ava Kadishson Schieber
Northwestern University Press, 2016
The focus of Present Past is her life after the Shoah. Rejecting stereotypes of survivors as traumatized or broken, Schieber is stark yet exuberant, formidable yet nuanced. The woman who emerges in Schieber’s Present Past is a multifaceted, heterogeneous figure—poet, artist, and survivor. In it, she plays the passionate observer who dispassionately curates the kaleidoscopic memories of her tumultuous personal and professional life in Belgrade, Prague, Tel Aviv, New York, and Chicago.
Organized into thirteen chapters, each a blend of images, poems, and narrative, this moving new work offers myriad points of entry to readers of these genres, those fascinated in the relationship between the Holocaust and art, as well as readers interested in memory and survivorship.
Tom Gauntt
Oregon State University Press, 2027
From ale romantics to hopheads, the Pacific Northwest is a haven for beer lovers. Considered a mecca for beer enthusiasts, the Northwest earned its reputation from a group of emerging brewers in the 1980s who established a demand for craft beer throughout and beyond the region. Brewing guru Fred Eckhardt, the Grateful Dead–loving McMenamin brothers, the effervescent Art Larrance, the determined Widmer brothers, and entrepreneurial pub owner Don Younger were among the open-minded, vibrant crew who founded a microbrewery industry that became a model for a new era.
“For those intimately involved or those who merely had a barstool view of the microbrewing revolution, the first decade of the movement was an intoxicating passage from anonymity to celebrity,” writes Tom Gauntt in the introduction. Present at the Fermentation celebrates the rich history of beermaking and those who transformed the business in the Pacific Northwest. Through press coverage of the time, interviews, oral histories, and personal memory, Gauntt offers an engaging history of one of Oregon’s signature industries.
With more than 9,700 craft brewers now operating in the US, there remains a passion for craft brewing and pride in creating the perfect ale in this evolving market. So, pour a pint and learn how Pacific Northwest microbreweries persevered through risk, hard work, foibles, and a lot of luck to create award-winning beer, connect with their communities, and build thriving businesses.

Paul Banks
American Library Association, 2000

Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler
Society of American Archivists, 2010
James M. Lindgren
University of Massachusetts Press, 2019
C. Morgan Grefe and Megan Cullen Tewell
University of Massachusetts Press, 2027
Examining how former prisons became tourist destinations and what that means for past, present, and future carceral spaces
Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. War on Drugs and tougher crime policies drove incarceration rates to unprecedented levels, leading to severe prison overcrowding and a surge in prison construction. As new facilities opened, many older prisons, some dating to the nineteenth century, were closed and abandoned. Communities faced difficult decisions about their future. Demolition was expensive, and adaptive reuse was often constrained by the distinctive architecture of confinement.
One response, often inspired by the success of institutions such as Alcatraz Island and Eastern State Penitentiary, has been to preserve former prisons as historic sites and tourist attractions, welcoming visitors and using tours and exhibits to shape public understanding of incarceration. Today former prisons operating as such exist in every region of the United States. For many visitors, these sites provide a primary point of contact with the history and realities of imprisonment.
Yet transforming places of confinement into destinations for tourism and heritage raises important questions. How should these sites interpret difficult histories? For whom? What responsibilities do they have to the formerly incarcerated, previous staff, and affected communities? How can they balance education, commemoration, entertainment, and economic development?
Preserving Punishment offers the first sustained historical study of prison museums in the United States. Examining how these institutions preserve, interpret, and present the history of incarceration, C. Morgan Grefe and Megan Cullen Tewell highlight the role of preservationists and public historians in shaping narratives, addressing ethical challenges, and fostering critical engagement with America's past and present systems of punishment. Grounded in local and regional contexts, they argue that historic prison sites are uniquely positioned to encourage informed public conversations about incarceration, memory, and criminal justice.
Shawn Hall
University of Nevada Press, 1999
Nye County is Nevada’s largest and least populated county, but it is also the site of many of the state’s most colorful ghost towns and mining camps. The county’s economy throughout its history has been largely based on its mines--first, exploiting veins of gold and silver, and more recently deposits of raw materials for modern industry, such as molybdenum and barite. It was here that famous boomtowns like Tonopah and Rhyolite sprang up after the discovery of nearby lodes brought in rushes of prospectors and the merchants who supported them. But the county includes many smaller, shorter-lived camps and numerous abandoned stagecoach and railroad stops associated with defunct mining operations.This book offers a lively, informative record of Nevada’s isolated interior. Hall first published a guide to Nye County’s ghost towns in 1981. Since then, he has continued his research into the county’s past and has uncovered much new information and corrected some errors. To prepare this revised and greatly expanded edition, he revisited all 175 sites recorded earlier and has added more than 20 previously unlisted sites.
Stephanie Ryberg-Webster
Temple University Press, 2023
David Zarefsky
University of Alabama Press, 1986
How words waged war—and shaped the fate of a nation’s boldest social crusade.
In January 1964, in his first State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson announced a declaration of “unconditional war” on poverty. By the end of the year the Economic Opportunity Act became law.
War on Poverty illustrates the interweaving of rhetorical and historical forces in shaping public policy. Zarefsky suggests that an important problem lay in its discourse. He assumes that language plays a central role in the formulation of social policy by shaping the context within which people view the social world. By terming the anti-poverty effort a war, President Johnson imparted significant symbolism to the effort: it called for total victory and gave confidence that the “war” was winnable. It influenced the definition of the enemy as an intergenerational cycle of poverty, rather than the shortcomings of the individual; and it led to the choice of community action, manpower programs, and prudent management as weapons and tactics. Each of these implications involves a choice of language and symbols, a decision about how to characterize and discuss the world. Zarefsky contends that each of these rhetorical choices was helpful to the Johnson administration in obtaining passage of the Economic Opportunity Ac of 1964, but that each choice invited redefinition or reinterpretation of a symbol in a way that threatened the program.
Edward R. Schmitt
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010
Robert Kennedy's abbreviated run for the presidency in 1968 has assumed almost mythical proportions in American memory. His campaign has been romanticized because of its tragic end, but also because of the foreign and domestic crises that surrounded it. Yet while most media coverage initially focused on Kennedy's opposition to the Vietnam War as the catalyst of his candidacy, another issue commanded just as much of his attention. That issue was poverty. Stumping across the country, he repeated the same antipoverty themes before college students in Kansas and Indiana, loggers and women factory workers in Oregon, farmers in Nebraska, and business groups in New York. Although his calls to action sometimes met with apathy, he refused to modify his message. “If they don't care,” he told one aide, “the hell with them.”
As Edward R. Schmitt demonstrates, Kennedy's concern with the problem of poverty was not new. Although critics at the time accused him of opportunistically veering left in order to outflank an unpopular president, a closer look at the historical record reveals a steady evolution rather than a dramatic shift in his politics.
Stuart Streichler
University of Michigan Press, 2023
The American presidency has long tested the capacity of the system of checks and balances to constrain executive power, especially in times of war. While scholars have examined presidents starting military conflicts without congressional authorization or infringing on civil liberties in the name of national security, Stuart Streichler focuses on the conduct of hostilities. Using the treatment of war-on-terror detainees under President George W. Bush as a case study, he integrates international humanitarian law into a constitutional analysis of the repercussions of presidential war powers for human rights around the world.
Putting President Bush’s actions in a wider context, Presidential Accountability in Wartime begins with a historical survey of the laws of war, with particular emphasis on the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Tribunal. Streichler then reconstructs the decision-making process that led to the president’s approval of interrogation methods that violated Geneva’s mandate to treat wartime captives humanely. While taking note of various accountability options—from within the executive branch to the International Criminal Court—the book illustrates the challenge in holding presidents personally responsible for violating the laws of war through an in-depth analysis of the actions taken by Congress, the Supreme Court, and the public in response. In doing so, this book not only raises questions about whether international humanitarian law can moderate wartime presidential behavior but also about the character of the presidency and the American constitutional system of government.
Michele P. Claibourn
University of Illinois Press, 2011
Donald R. Deskins, Jr., Hanes Walton, Jr., and Sherman C. Puckett
University of Michigan Press, 2010
"Hanes Walton, Donald Deskins, and Sherman Puckett have produced a highly impressive collection and valuable contribution to the literature on American electoral politics. This work is indispensable for academic libraries, political scientists, historians, and serious students of American government."
---Immanuel Ness, Professor, Department of Political Science, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
"Massive amounts of information about presidential elections which are not readily available elsewhere. Unprecedented coverage in one volume of every single American presidential election."
---James Gimpel, Professor of Government, University of Maryland
"This is an extraordinary research endeavor; the most comprehensive set of aggregate election data ever assembled. Painstakingly researched, this color-coded volume presents data for every presidential election from 1789 to 2008. Unlike most, the wide ranging narrative for this atlas identifies racial patterns in the vote. Everyone who studies or is interested in presidential elections should have this impressive collection of statistical data in their libraries. A visual gem for the digital age."
---Robert Smith, Professor of Political Science, San Francisco State University
"Presidential Elections, 1789-2008 is a genuine tour de force that captures in an extremely accessible and comprehensive way the electoral geography of America's presidential elections, from Washington to Obama. An invaluable addition to the library of all those interested in presidential elections and U.S. politics."
---Marion Orr, Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science, Brown University
"This volume sets an extraordinarily high standard in scholarship, completeness, description, and explanation of our political process. It has been said that all politics are local, but never before has this been demonstrated with such clarity and panache, using the simple method of standardized tables summarizing voting, then showing state and county breakdowns of the numbers, greatly strengthened by beautiful full-color maps and cartograms. Every scholar of politics and democracy will benefit from the work laid out in this volume."
---Keith Clarke, Professor of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara
Presidential Elections is an almanac of the popular vote in every presidential election in American history, analyzed at the county level with histories of each campaign, graphs, and stunning four-color maps. Most Americans are familiar with the crude red state/blue state maps used by commentators and campaign strategists---and even, for want of an alternative, by many academics. In providing a higher-resolution view of voting behavior the authors of this new volume enable examination of local and regional political trends that are invisible in state-level aggregations.
Presidential Elections will enable scholars to more subtly analyze voting behavior, campaigns, and presidential politics; commentators will use it to analyze trends and trace the historical evolution of new coalitions and voting blocs; strategists will use it to plan campaigns and mobilize constituencies. Presidential Elections will become the standard almanac on the subject: a required resource for academic and public libraries, as well as for scholars, consultants, and pundits nationwide.
Donald R. Deskins, Jr., is a political geographer and Emeritus Professor of Sociology and a former Associate Dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan.
Hanes Walton, Jr., is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He also holds positions as Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Political Studies and as a faculty member in the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.
Robert H. Ferrell
University of Missouri Press, 2005
Jodi Kanter
Southern Illinois University Press, 2016
By W. Henry Lambright
University of Texas Press, 1985
How do science and technology issues become important to a particular presidency? Which issues gain priority? How? Why? What is the role of the presidency in the adoption of national policies affecting science and technology? In their implementation? How does the presidency try to curtail certain programs? Eliminate others? Or rescue programs Congress might seek to terminate? How does implementation vary between a president's own program and one that is inherited?
Such are the questions raised in this book, one of the first to address the relationship between scientists, few of whom have political backgrounds, and presidents, few of whom are knowledgeable in matters of science and technology. Drawing on extensive research performed at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, and the National Archives in Washington, as well as on secondary sources and interviews, W. Henry Lambright describes, discusses, and analyzes this relationship and shows how one presidency set its agenda, adopted, implemented, and curtailed or eliminated science and technology programs.
Twenty-four case studies of specific decision processes occurring in the era of Lyndon Johnson anchor the book in the world of real events. Some programs adopted under Johnson are now all but forgotten, such as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, nuclear desalting, and electronic barrier. The effects of many more, initiated, maintained, or enlarged under LBJ, lasted far beyond his administration. These include environmental pollution control, Project Apollo, and the application of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Finally, there are those that were redirected, placed on hold, or terminated under Johnson, such as the supersonic transport, antiballistic missile, and Project Mohole.
In this important book, Lambright has provided a framework for analyzing how the presidency as an institution deals with such issues, and he has established a strong foundation on which all future students of presidential policy management can build.
Patricia Heidotting Conley
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Jeffrey E. Cohen
University of Michigan Press, 1999
We expect a president to respond to public opinion as an elected official in a democracy. Indeed, the president needs public support to overcome opposition to his policies in Congress and the bureaucracy. At the same time the president may want to pursue policies that do not have widespread support. How does public opinion affect presidential policy making? Jeffrey Cohen finds that presidents are responsive to the public in selecting issues to focus on. If an issue has captured the interest of the people, then the president will focus on that issue. Cohen finds that having chosen to work on an issue, presidents pay less attention to public opinion when making a policy. The president will try to maintain control over the details of the policy so that the outcome fits his policy agenda. Cohen examines the way presidents from Eisenhower through Clinton have dealt with public opinion in policy making. He uses case studies of issues such as Clinton and gays in the military, Bush and the extension of unemployment benefits, and Kennedy and cutting the income tax, to explore the relationship between presidents and public opinion. In addition Cohen uses a quantitative analysis of State of the Union addresses and positions on roll call votes of presidents from Eisenhower through George Bush to test his theories. This book should appeal to political scientists and historians interested in the presidency and in public opinion, as well as general readers interested in the history of the American presidency.
Alexander Heard and Michael Nelson, eds.
Duke University Press, 1987
What are the international implications of how the Unites States chooses its presidents? How does the process affect other nations? Does it enhance or diminish the ability of the United States to deal effectively with the rest of the world?
How do the changing characteristics of the the presidential selection process affect the shaping of public policies, and vice versa? For example, how have changes in citizen participation, campaign technologies, and campaign finance laws altered the balance of political power among institutions and interests?
What is the influence of the Constitution on presidential selection, as in the prescribed qualifications for the office and in provisions for unusual circumstances?
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Gary C. Jacobson
University of Chicago Press, 2019
David J. Siemers
University of Missouri Press, 2009
Theodore O. Windt
University of Alabama Press, 1990
Edited by J. Garry Clifford & Theodore A. Wilson
University of Missouri Press, 2007
From Abraham Lincoln’s stance on international slavery to George W. Bush’s incursions on the world stage, American presidents and other leaders have taken decisive actions to shape our country’s foreign policy. This new collection of essays provides analytical narratives of how and why policies were devised and implemented that would determine the place of the United States in the international arena from the 1860s to the present. Showing what individuals do—or choose not to do—is central to understanding diplomacy in peace and war.
These writings—by such prominent historians as Terry H. Anderson and Eugene P. Trani—examine presidents and other diplomats at their best and worst in the practice of statecraft. They take on issues ranging from America’s economic expansion abroad to the relations of democracies with authoritarian leaders and rogue nations to advocacy of such concepts as internationalism, unilateralism, nation building, and regime change. In so doing, they take readers on a virtual tour of American diplomatic history, tracing the ideas and actions of individuals in shaping our foreign policy, whether George F. Kennan as author of Soviet containment or Ronald Reagan as progenitor of “Star Wars.”
The essays range over a variety of scenarios to depict leaders coming to grips with real-world situations. They offer original views on such topics as American diplomacy toward Nicaragua, origins of U.S. attitudes toward Russia and the Soviet Union, FDR’s idiosyncratic approach to statecraft, and food diplomacy as practiced by LBJ and Richard Nixon. And in considering post–Cold War crises, they address Bill Clinton’s military interventions, George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, and the half-century background to the current nuclear standoff with Iran. Additional articles pay tribute to the outstanding career of Robert H. Ferrell as a scholar and teacher.
Throughout the volume, the authors seek to exemplify the scholarly standards of narrative diplomatic history espoused by Robert Ferrell—especially the notion that historians should attempt to explain fully the circumstances, opportunities, and pressures that influence foreign policy decisions while remembering that historical actors cannot with certainty predict the outcomes of their actions. Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals is both a collection of compelling historical studies and an overarching case study of the role of individuals in foreign policy making and an insightful review of some of history’s most important moments. Taken together, these essays provide a fitting tribute to Ferrell, the trailblazing scholar in whose honor the book was written.
William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Irwin Silber
Temple University Press, 2003
Mark J. Rozell
University of Michigan Press, 1992
Roni Stoneman as told to Ellen Wright
University of Illinois Press, 2006
Drawn from more than seventy-five hours of recorded interviews, Pressing On reveals Roni's gifts as a master storyteller. With characteristic spunk and candor, she describes her "pooristic" ("way beyond 'poverty-stricken'") Appalachian childhood, and how her brother Scott taught her to play the challenging and innovative three-finger banjo picking style developed by Earl Scruggs. She also warmly recounts Hee Haw-era adventures with Minnie Pearl, Roy Clark, and Buck Owens; her encounters as a musician with country greats like Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, June Carter, and Patsy Cline; as well as her personal struggles with shiftless and violent husbands, her relationships with her children, and her musical life after Hee Haw.
Greg Barnhisel
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010
Scott Memmel
University of Missouri Press, 2024
Seth Friedman
Rutgers University Press, 2023

Nick Smedley and Tom Sturges
Intellect Books, 2019
Yolanda Flores Niemann
Utah State University Press, 2020
The courageous and inspiring personal narratives and empirical studies in Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia name formidable obstacles and systemic biases that all women faculty—from diverse intersectional and transnational identities and from tenure track, terminal contract, and administrative positions—encounter in their higher education careers. They provide practical, specific, and insightful guidance to fight back, prevail, and thrive in challenging work environments. This new volume comes at a crucial historical moment as the United States grapples with a resurgence of white supremacy and misogyny at the forefront of our social and political dialogues that continue to permeate the academic world.
Contributors: Marcia Allen Owens, Sarah Amira de la Garza, Sahar Aziz, Jacquelyn Bridgeman, Jamiella Brooks, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Kim Case, Donna Castaneda, Julia Chang, Meredith Clark, Meera Deo, Penelope Espinoza, Yvette Flores, Lynn Fujiwara, Jennifer Gomez, Angela Harris, Dorothy Hines, Rachelle Joplin, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, Cynthia Lee, Yessenia Manzo, Melissa Michelson, Susie E. Nam, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Jodi O’Brien, Amelia Ortega, Laura Padilla, Grace Park, Stacey Patton, Desdamona Rios, Melissa Michal Slocum, Nellie Tran, Rachel Tudor, Pamela Tywman Hoff, Adrien Wing, Jemimah Li Young
Annalee Newitz
Duke University Press, 2006
Newitz looks at representations of serial killers, mad doctors, the undead, cyborgs, and unfortunates mutated by their involvement with the mass media industry. Whether considering the serial killer who turns murder into a kind of labor by mass producing dead bodies, or the hack writers and bloodthirsty actresses trapped inside Hollywood’s profit-mad storytelling machine, she reveals that each creature has its own tale to tell about how a freewheeling market economy turns human beings into monstrosities.
Newitz tracks the monsters spawned by capitalism through b movies, Hollywood blockbusters, pulp fiction, and American literary classics, looking at their manifestations in works such as Norman Mailer’s “true life novel” The Executioner’s Song; the short stories of Isaac Asimov and H. P. Lovecraft; the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson and Marge Piercy; true-crime books about the serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer; and movies including Modern Times (1936), Donovan’s Brain (1953), Night of the Living Dead (1968), RoboCop (1987), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001). Newitz shows that as literature and film tell it, the story of American capitalism since the late nineteenth century is a tale of body-mangling, soul-crushing horror.
Murphy Henry
University of Illinois Press, 2013