Street provides a crucial critical and cultural service by not only studying Eastwood s individual films in sharp detail but also by providing a close and serious analysis of the cultural and historic times of the films. Sam B. Girgus, author of Clint Eastwood s America
By far the most comprehensive, sustained, and detailed discussion of the Dirty Harry phenomenon. A thorough and engaging account of how a fictitious renegade cop became an enduring icon of the angry conservative backlash that sought to halt 1960s liberalism in its tracks. Nick Heffernan, author of Culture,...

From Aretha Franklin and James Baldwin to Dick Gregory and Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement deliberately used music, art, theater, and literature as political weapons to broaden the struggle and legitimize its appeal.Joe Street places these cultural forms at the center of the civil rights struggle, arguing that the time has come to recognize the extent to which African American history and culture were vital elements of the movement, calculated to broaden the movement's appeal within the larger black community. He places considerable emphasis on Amiri Baraka's interpretation of...

Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry became the prototype for a new kind of movie cop - an antihero in pursuit of his own vision of justice. In Dirty Harry's America, Joe Street argues that the movies shed critical light on the culture and politics of the post-1960s era and locates San Francisco as the symbolic cultural battleground of the time.

Identifies in 'Silicon Valley Cinema' a recent trend in twenty-first century Hollywood film.