He leaped from his chair, ripped off his microphone, and lunged at his ex-wife. Security guards rushed to intercept him. The audience screamed, then cheered. Were producers concerned? Not at all. They were getting what they wanted: the money shot.

From "classy" shows like Oprah to "trashy" shows like Jerry Springer, the key to a talk show's success is what Laura Grindstaff calls the money shot--moments when guests lose control and express joy, sorrow, rage, or remorse on camera. In this new work, Grindstaff takes us behind the scenes of daytime television talk shows, a genre focused on...

Winner of the 2004 C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Seems Like Murder Here offers a revealing new account of the blues tradition. Far from mere laments about lost loves and hard times, the blues emerge in this provocative study as vital responses to spectacle lynchings and the violent realities of African American life in the Jim Crow South. With brilliant interpretations of both classic songs and literary works, from the autobiographies of W. C. Handy, David Honeyboy Edwards, and B. B. King to the poetry of Langston Hughes and the novels...

Human, hunger, happiness, hope, heart and Halliday all start with h, as does ham. Accident? Maybe But seldom have the flour of the humanistic and the egg yolk of honesty mixed more swellingly with the yeast of desire and the salt of self-doubt -not to mention the olive paste of ambition.

David M. Halperin is one of the most eminent thinkers in the world of gay and critical studies. In this new work, he revisits and refines the argument he set forth in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: the idea that both hetero- and homosexuality are not biologically determined but, instead, socially constructed. How to Do the History of Homosexuality builds on this seminal argument, answers its critics and makes greater allowances for continuities in the history of sexuality. Above all, Halperin offers a vigorous defence of the historicist approach, one that sets a premium on the...

This wide-ranging study of sexuality, aesthetics, and epistemology covers everything from the aesthetics of war to the works of Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon, synthesizing queer theory and psycholanalysis.

Analyzing the effects of regulation and deregulation on Latin American labor markets, Law and Employment joins the ongoing debate about the virtues and costs of legislating mandatory benefits for workers. Of the numerous labor regulations that were altered or created in Latin America during the last thirty years, many have had unintended and far-reaching results. Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman, and Carmen Pages document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws. They challenge the...

"The eye that gathers impressions is no longer the eye that sees a depiction on a surface; it becomes a hand, the ray of light becomes a finger, and the imagination becomes a form of immediate touching."-Johann Gottfried Herder
Long recognized as one of the most important eighteenth-century works on aesthetics and the visual arts, Johann Gottfried Herder's "Plastik" (Sculpture, 1778) has never before appeared in a complete English translation. In this landmark essay, Herder combines rationalist and empiricist thought with a wide range of sources-from the classics to Norse legend,...

""Toward a Just World" is an insightful and thoughtful history. The first half of the twentieth century and the heroic efforts of those who sought international justice during that time will be much better understood and appreciated thanks to this fascinating book." Robert F. Drinan, Georgetown University
A century ago, there was no such thing as international justice, and until recently, the idea of permanent international courts and formal war crimes tribunals would have been almost unthinkable. Yet now we depend on institutions such as these to air and punish crimes against humanity,...

We know a great deal about the role the environment plays in organizing primate social systems and in shaping reproductive success and survival. But how do primate life histories affect social systems and behaviour? Does the baboon's reproductive pattern, for example, play a role in the organization of baboon troops? Does chimpanzee maturation factor into the formation of bands and marauding males?