Compelled by the ubiquitous power of mass entertainment, politics has adopted theatrical language and the rhetoric of performance as the strategy for winning public favor. We have come to expect the politicians we elect to be performers. Now, more than at any other time in American history, we conceive the world of politics to be a world of theatre in which every politician's campaign must sell us something.

In this persuasive study of culture politics, Richard Nelson examines the concept of confidence and doubt as the cement that holds the nation together. He explores confidence in its...

In this stirring book Richard Nelson offers a new interpretation of the transformation of Anglo-American intellectual and aesthetic culture since 1890. He shows that southern intellectuals--aesthetic theorists, literary critics, historians, and political thinkers--confronted head on the tensions Machiavelli observed between power and value, creativity and tradition, and romanticism and realism while seeking a cultural ideal that balances politics and aesthetics.

The Antebellum South, the most militant hotbed of republicanism in the antebellum period, remained at the center of the...

Musical / 9m, 2f, 1f child, plus ensemble / Scenery: Var. sets.

The collaborators on Chess are giants of rock music and rock musicals and they have created a complex rock opera that played to full Broadway houses and standing ovations. Here the ancient game becomes a metaphor for romantic rivalries, competitive gamesmanship, super power politics and international intrigues. The pawns in this drama form a love triangle: the loutish American chess star, the earnest Russian champion and a Hungarian...