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Radio, Morality, and Culture: Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1919–1945 examines the moral controversies surrounding radio’s development during its formative years. In comparing the fledgling medium in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, Robert S. Fortner documents how the church failed to participate in radio’s moral development and instead engaged in internecine warfare over issues of legitimacy and orthodoxy.

The church was arguing about theological turf and dealing with internal disputes while radio policy was being developed and communications history was being written. Fortner reveals how the church, doomed to play little more than a bit part in the future of radio, eventually lost its voice altogether in the continuing development of electronic media. Fortner effectively synthesizes cultural history and theory, communication studies, and the role religious organizations played in shaping the content and character of early radio. Geared to scholars of history, communications, and theology, Radio, Morality, and Culture provides a useful resource for research, scholarship, and public policy.

Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution requires that every U.S. Senator and Representative, as well as all members of any state legislature, take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. Legislators, after all, must accept the basic principles embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights when interpreting questions of law. The only way to change these principles is through amendments to the Constitution. But in an increasing number of cases, contends Michael A, Bamberger, our legislators are knowingly abdicating their responsibility to uphold the Constitution. Instead of considering the constitutionality of legislation, they vote for what is politically expedient and popular, leaving it to the courts to determine the legality of their actions. Bamberger argues that legislators have a duty to consider constitutionality and not “pass the buck” to the judiciary regardless of political pressures or even well-meaning intentions to achieve desirable policy objectives.

Reckless Legislation examines legislative consideration and avoidance of issues of constitutionality through a number of examples: the regulation of the Internet by Congress and two state legislatures; the reliance by legislatures of Minneapolis, Indianapolis, and Tennessee on “experts” to justify passage of unconstitutional laws; the repeated passage of unconstitutional laws in New York and Missouri relating, respectively, to religion and abortion to wear down the courts and the opposition; and the efforts by Congress to reverse Supreme Court decisions believed by it to be incorrect or harmful.

Bamberger urges legislators to avoid the political motives that lead to “reckless legislation,” recommending that they “make full use of the full panoply of available support services . . . for a better and deeper knowledge of the issues raised.”

The body is both a site for medical practice and a source of therapeutic and scientific tools. As such, there are a variety of meanings ascribed to the body which both affect and are affected by cultural, economic, political and legal complexities. In order to access and use body parts, Linda F. Hogle states, transformative scientific and  cultural processes are brought into play. Nowhere is this more evident than present-day Germany, where the spectre of Nazi medical experimentation still plays a large role  in national policies governing the use of body parts and the way these policies are put into practice.  In their efforts to be perceived as not repeating atrocities of the past, German medical practitioners and policy-makers reformulate ideas of bodily violation.  To further confuse the issue, the reunification of East and West Germany has engendered new questions about the relationship between individuals’ bodies, science, and the state.

Hogle shows how “universal” medicine is reinterpreted through the lens of national and transnational politics and history, using comparative examples from her research in the United. States.  Recovering the Nation’s Body is the first book to analyze the actual practices involved in procuring human tissue, and the first to examine how the German past and the unique present-day situation within the European Union are key in understanding the form that medical practices take within various contexts.