The Vulnerable Empowered Woman assesses the state of women’s healthcare today by analyzing popular media representations—television, print newspapers, websites, advertisements, blogs, and memoirs—in order to understand the ways in which breast cancer, postpartum depression, and cervical cancer are discussed in American public life. Tasha N. Dubriwny’s analysis concludes with a call to re-politicize women’s health through narratives that can help us imagine women, and their relationship to medicine, differently.

A Kosher Christmas portrays how Jews are shaping the public and private character of Christmas by transforming December into a joyous holiday season belonging to all Americans through unique and innovative responses, including transforming Hanukkah into the Jewish Christmas; creating a national Jewish tradition of patronizing Chinese restaurants and comedy shows on Christmas Eve; volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens on Christmas Day; and blending holiday traditions into an interfaith hybrid celebration of “Chrismukkah.”

War Culture and the Contest of Images analyzes the relationships among contemporary war, documentary practices, and democratic ideals. Using carefully chosen case studies, Dora Apel examines a wide variety of images and cultural representations of war in the United States and the Middle East, including photography, performance art, video games, reenactment, and social media images. Simultaneously, she explores the merging of photojournalism and artistic practices, the effects of visual framing, and the construction of both sanctioned and counter-hegemonic narratives in a global contest of images.

Life after Death Row examines the post-incarceration struggles of individuals who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated. Drawing upon research on trauma, recovery, coping, and stigma, the authors weave a nuanced fabric of grief, loss, resilience, hope, despair, and meaning to provide the richest account to date of the struggles faced by people striving to reclaim their lives in contemporary American society after years of wrongful incarceration.

Specters of War: Hollywood’s Engagement with Military Conflict looks at the way war has been brought to the screen in various genres and at different historical moments throughout the twentieth century. Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that Hollywood has emerged as a place where national narratives are created and circulated so that audiences can engage with fantasies, ideologies, and anxieties that take hold at a given time, only to change with the political climate.

Set in Haiti following the 2004 coup and enhanced by research carried out after the 2010 earthquake, Killing with Kindness analyzes the impact of official development aid on recipient non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their relationships with local communities. It offers rich ethnographic comparisons of two Haitian women’s NGOs working in HIV/AIDS prevention and examines participation and autonomy as well as donor policies that inhibit these goals. 

Set in Haiti following the 2004 coup and enhanced by research carried out after the 2010 earthquake, Killing with Kindness analyzes the impact of official development aid on recipient non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their relationships with local communities. It offers rich ethnographic comparisons of two Haitian women’s NGOs working in HIV/AIDS prevention and examines participation and autonomy as well as donor policies that inhibit these goals. 

The Leading Man analyzes the evolution and the significance of the interaction between Hollywood and Washington to trace the history of the cinematic presidential image. Burton W. Peretti shows that traditional practices of presidential image making go back to George Washington, and then places the fourteen presidents of the cinematic era, from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama, at the center of the story. He demonstrates how movies have been the main force in promoting image and drama over the substance of governing.

In Learning the Hard Way, Edward W. Morris explores and analyzes detailed ethnographic data to examine the purported gender gap between boys and girls in educational achievement at two low-income high schools—one rural and predominantly white, the other urban and mostly African American. He explains how race, class, and geographic location combine to influence and complicate the construction of gender identities in high school students and affect the respective academic performance of the students he studied.

In Learning the Hard Way, Edward W. Morris explores and analyzes detailed ethnographic data to examine the purported gender gap between boys and girls in educational achievement at two low-income high schools—one rural and predominantly white, the other urban and mostly African American. He explains how race, class, and geographic location combine to influence and complicate the construction of gender identities in high school students and affect the respective academic performance of the students he studied.

Real Gangstas relies on the tradition of urban ethnography to provide a unique and intimate look at the lives of street gang members in Indianapolis, IN. For eighteen months, Timothy R. Lauger interviewed and observed a mix of fifty-five gang members, former gang members, and non-gang street offenders, many from the “Down for Whatever Boyz.” Through this research, Lauger is able to understand and explain the reasons for gang membership, including a chaotic family life, poverty, and the need for violent self-assertion in order to foster the creation of a personal identity.

Now available for the first time as a three-volume set, The New Anthology of American Poetry offers the most compelling and wide-ranging selection of poems from the nation’s beginnings to the present day. Extensive introductions, notes, and footnotes make the great poems of each period fully accessible.

Death of the Moguls is a detailed assessment of the last days of the “rulers of film” from Hollywood’s classical era. Using rare, behind-the-scenes stills, Wheeler Winston Dixon details such game-changing factors as the de Havilland decision, the Consent Decree, how the moguls dealt with their collapsing empires in the era of television, and the end of the conventional studio assembly line to create a compelling narrative of the end of the studio system at each of the Hollywood majors.

Academic Motherhood tells the story of one hundred women who are both professors and mothers and how they navigated their professional lives at different career stages. It is based on a longitudinal study that asks how women faculty on the tenure track manage work and family in their early careers when their children are under the age of five, and again in mid-career when their children are older. Policy recommendations that support faculty with children and mechanisms for problem-solving at personal, departmental, institutional, and national levels are provided.

At what moments and in what ways did Jews play a central role in American capitalism? Chosen Capital addresses this question head-on by exploring Jews’ impact on American capitalism as both its architects—through their participation in specific industries—and as its most vocal critics through their support of unionism and radical political movements. Essays are contributed by a stellar list of scholars.

Beyond Health, Beyond Choice is a multidisciplinary collection of essays written by thirty-seven contributors that examines the role of feminist theory in the promotion of breastfeeding by public health authorities. Essays are arranged thematically and consider breastfeeding in relation to health care; work and family; embodiment (specifically breastfeeding in public); economic and ethnic factors; guilt; violence; and commercialization.

The Health Care Safety Net in a Post-Reform World examines how national health care reform will impact safety net programs that serve low-income and uninsured patients. With contributions from leading health care scholars, it is the first comprehensive assessment of the safety net following enactment of national health care reform.

African American culture is often considered expressive, dramatic, and even defiant, and this matrix has dominated our understanding of black communities and texts. In The Sovereignty of Quiet, Kevin Quashie explores how a different kind of expressiveness, from protests to readings to landmark texts, as represented in the idea of quiet could change common conceptions and provide a more nuanced view of black culture.

Moving Color is the first book-length study of the beginnings of color cinema. It traces the legacy of color history from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the cinema of the early twentieth century and explores the implications of this genealogy on experimental and contemporary digital cinemas.

We Are in This Dance Together uses in-depth interviews with over sixty workers, managers, and policy makers to document and analyze events leading up to the female-led factory strike in March 2001 at a high-end producer of men’s suits in Mexico and the strike’s aftermath—including harassment from managers, corrupt union officials and labor authorities, and violent governor-sanctioned police actions. It illustrates how the women’s shared identity as workers and mothers, deserving of dignity, respect, and a living wage, became the basis for radicalization and led to further civic organizing against the state, the company, and the corrupt union to demand justice.

Since its original publication in 2004, The Case That Never Dies has become the standard account of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. Now, in a new afterword, Lloyd C. Gardner presents a surprise conclusion based on recently uncovered pieces of evidence that were missing from the initial investigation as well as an evaluation of Charles Lindbergh’s role in the search for the kidnappers. Out of the controversies surrounding the actions of Colonel Lindbergh, Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the New Jersey State Police, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Gardner presents a well-reasoned argument for what happened on the night of March 1, 1932.

The End of American Lynching questions how we think about the dynamics of lynching, what lynchings mean to the society in which they occur, how lynching is defined, and the circumstances that lead to lynching. Ashraf H. A. Rushday looks at three lynchings over the course of the twentieth century—one in Coatesville, Pennsylvania in 1911, one in Marion, Indiana in 1930, and one in Jasper, Texas in 1998—to see how Americans developed two distinct ways of thinking and talking about this act before and after the 1930s.

Though satellites are now used by a wide array of entertainment, communications, and information technologies, from radio stations to GPS devices, the business of making, launching, and maintaining satellites is still shrouded in mystery. Down to Earth presents the first comprehensive overview of the geopolitical maneuvers, financial investments, scientific innovations, and ideological struggles that take place behind the scenes of this fascinating industry.

Luis F. B. Plascencia’s Disenchanting Citizenship explores two interrelated issues: U.S. citizenship and the Mexican migrants’ position in the United States. Through an extensive and multifaceted collection of interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, ethno-historical research, and public policy analysis, Plascencia probes the ways in which citizenship discourses are understood and taken up by individuals. The book uncovers citizenship’s root as a Janus-faced  construct that encompasses a simultaneous process of inclusion and exclusion. This notion of citizenship is mapped on to the migrant experience, arguing that the acquisition of citizenship can lead to disenchantment with the very status desired. Using the experience of Mexican migrants, Plascencia expands the understanding of the dynamics of U.S. citizenship as a form of membership and belonging.

Narrative Landmines explores how rumors fit into and extend narrative systems and ideologies, particularly in the context of terrorism, counter-terrorism, and extremist insurgencies.  Beyond face-to-face communication, this book also addresses the role of new and social media in the creation and spread of rumors. Its concern is to foster a more sophisticated understanding of how oral and digital cultures work alongside economic, diplomatic, and cultural factors that influence the struggles between states and non-state actors in the proverbial battle of hearts and minds.  By providing fresh data from Singapore, Iraq, and Indonesia, the authors make a compelling argument for understanding rumors in these contexts as “narrative IEDs”, weapons that can aid the extremist cause.

In The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking, Lisa Jarvinen focuses specifically on how Hollywood lost a lucrative international Spanish-speaking audience between 1929 and 1939, along with talent it had carefully nurtured in the United States. Employing studio records from Warner Bros., Fox Films, and United Artists, Jarvinen examines the lasting effects of the transition to sound on both Hollywood practices and cultural politics in the Spanish-speaking world. Using case studies based on archival research in the United States, Spain, and Mexico, she shows how language, as a key marker of cultural identity, led to new expectations from audiences and new possibilities for film producers.

In The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking, Lisa Jarvinen focuses specifically on how Hollywood lost a lucrative international Spanish-speaking audience between 1929 and 1939, along with talent it had carefully nurtured in the United States. Employing studio records from Warner Bros., Fox Films, and United Artists, Jarvinen examines the lasting effects of the transition to sound on both Hollywood practices and cultural politics in the Spanish-speaking world. Using case studies based on archival research in the United States, Spain, and Mexico, she shows how language, as a key marker of cultural identity, led to new expectations from audiences and new possibilities for film producers.

In Main Street and Empire, Ryan Poll argues that the small town, as evoked by the image of “Main Street,” is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which the nation’s “everyday” stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global level. It brings together a wide range of literary, cultural, and political texts to examine how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century.

In Emily Dickinson in Love, John Evangelist Walsh provides the first full-length work to solve this puzzle based wholly on documented facts and the poet’s own writings. He identifies the lover as Otis Lord, a friend of the poet’s father, and portrays the broad dimensions of their clandestine thirty-year romance.

Becoming Mexipino is a social-historical interpretation of two ethnic groups, one Mexican, the other Filipino, whose paths led both groups to San Diego, California from 1900 to 1965. Rudy Guevarra traces their earliest interactions under Spanish colonialism, when they did not strongly identify as Mexican or Filipino, to illustrate how these historical ties and cultural bonds laid the foundation for what would become close interethnic relationships and communities in twentieth-century San Diego as well as in other locales throughout California and the Pacific West Coast.

The Malthusian Moment locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in a twentieth-century revival of interest in Thomas Malthus’s theory of population growth, shedding new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the role of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the Civil Rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”

The Malthusian Moment locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in a twentieth-century revival of interest in Thomas Malthus’s theory of population growth, shedding new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the role of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the Civil Rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”

Overpotential charts the twists and turns in the ongoing quest to create the perfect fuel cell. By exploring the gap between the theory and practice of fuel cell power, Matthew N. Eisler opens a window into broader issues in the history of science, technology, and society after the Second World War, including the sociology of laboratory life, the relationship between academe, industry, and government in developing advanced technologies, the role of technology in environmental and pollution politics, and the rise of utopian discourse in science and engineering.

Many Americans were surprised following the attacks of 9/11 at how easily the United States embraced torture as well as the supposedly lesser evil of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Extraordinary rendition—sending people captured in the “war on terror” to nations long counted among the world’s worst human rights violators—hid from the public eye cruel and bloody interrogations. In Rendition to Torture, Alan W. Clarke explains how the United States adopted torture as a matter of official policy; how and why it turned to extraordinary rendition as a way to outsource more extreme, mutilating forms of torture; and outlines the steps the United States took to hide its abuses.

In the 1990s, American civil society got upended and reordered as many social, cultural, political, and economic institutions were changed forever. Pretty People examines a wide range of Hollywood icons who reflect how stardom in that decade was transformed as the nation itself, signaling significant changes to familiar ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and nationality.

Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, and Thomas Travisano continue the standard of excellence set in Volumes I and II of this extraordinary anthology. Volume III provides the most compelling and wide-ranging selection available of American poetry from 1950 to the present. Its contents are just as diverse and multifaceted as America itself and invite readers to view the world of poetry in the larger historical context of American culture. Nearly three hundred poems allow readers to explore canonical works by such poets as Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath, as well as song lyrics from such popular musicians as Bob Dylan and Queen Latifah.