Spanning across playwrights, performers, critics, and theatrical commemorations, this book raises controversy about familiar figures and brings attention to neglected ones. Thomas F. Connolly opens his book with a provocative essay subtitled "Notional Culture." The first sentence: "Postmodernism makes others of us all," introduces Connolly's confrontational approach to the study of culture. The introduction takes readers from Montaigne's "Cannibals" to Madison Avenue "gangsta" wannabes, while explicating the impulses behind formal classification that have driven intellectual pursuits from the...