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Oklahoma drought refugees seeking livelihood in California, rural white Mississippians, and African American migrants making new lives in Chicago all represented the dramatic transitions across the spectrum of American life during the Great Depression. These vastly different groups of Americans still shared common experiences of desperation and poverty during the 1930s. This book focuses on literary works by three Depression-era authors William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Richard Wright and supplies dozens of primary source documents that serve to illuminate the harsh realities of life...

"Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes" explores the uses of violence in the films Tarantino has written, directed, and produced. Arguing that extreme violence is central to Tarantino's art, the book helps readers understand its purpose in his films--as metaphor, as movement, and as motivation. For Tarantino, the book explains, violence serves the purposes of film. In each of his movies, he explores the boundaries of taste and audience reaction, using violence and shock to bring questions of responsibility and expectation to the forefront of discussions on cinema.

After introductory...

In 1985 The WELL, a dial-up discussion board, began with the phrase: You own your own words. Though almost everything else about online discussion has changed in the two decades since, those words still describe its central premise, and this basic idea underlies both the power and the popularity of blogging today. Appropriately enough, it also describes American journalism as it existed a century and a half before The WELL was organized, before the concept of popular involvement in the press was nearly swept away on the rising tide of commercial and professional journalism. In this book,...

Due to the mechanical typewriter and the Linotype machine, printed materials during the World War I era were produced quickly and widely distributed. In a time without media other than those on paper, printed materials like newspapers, magazines, books, letters, and army orders were critical for communication. This book examines the range of documents written during World War I or within a few years of the end of the conflict to reveal the experiences of the doughboys who participated in "the war to end all wars."

Through documents such as military communications, newspaper...

The introduction of the DVD marked the beginning of one of history's most successful technological innovations, and capped a 75-year development of home-viewing possibilities. Never before have film fans had access in their living rooms to something so remarkably close to the theatrical experience. In addition, because a DVD can hold much more than a single movie, it has allowed films to be marketed with a variety of extras, sparking both a new packaging industry and greater interest on the part of home viewers. This book provides an examination of the DVD's impact, both on home viewing...

As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This book--a follow-up volume to Barlow's "Rise of the Blogosphere," which examined the historical context for the modern blog--provides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between. Given that millions of blogs have been created...

What was the role of The Jeffersons in changing views regarding race and equality in America in the 1970s? How did The Golden Girls affect how society views older people? Was The Office an accurate (if exaggerated) depiction of the idiosyncrasies of being employees in a modern workplace? How did the writers of The Simpsons make it acceptable to air political satire through the vehicle of an animated cartoon ostensibly for kids?

Readers of this book will see how television situation comedies have consistently held up a mirror for American audiences...

Why do Americans have so much trouble seeing eye to eye today? Is this new? Was there ever an American consensus? "The Cult of Individualism: A History of an Enduring American Myth" explores the rarely discussed cultural differences leading to today's seemingly intractable political divides. After an examination of the various meanings of individualism in America, author Aaron Barlow describes the progression and evolution of the concept from the 18th century on, illuminating the wide division in Caucasian American culture that developed between the culture based on the ideals of the...

In the competing traditions of Marshall McLuhan and Langdon Winner, authors Aaron Barlow and Robert Leston take readers on a revealing tour of the Internet "after" the explosion of the blogosphere and social media. In the world "Beyond the Blogosphere," information has surpassed its limits, the distinction between public and private selves has collapsed, information is more untrustworthy than it ever was before, and technology has exhibited a growth and a "desire" that may soon exceed human control.

As Langdon Winner pointed out long ago, "tools have politics." In an eye-opening journey...