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Projecting Paranoia - Conspiratorial Visions In American Film

by Ray Pratt

35,78€ + 10% CARD

 A lit cigarette glows in the dark. A faceless voice describes sinister forces that are hard at work behind the scenes-a hidden conspiracy that controls our lives and perhaps even our thoughts. Then, like a ghost in the night, the voice is gone, leaving a residue of unease and a whisper of paranoia.As emblematic as Deep Throat in All the Presidents Men or the Cigarette Smoking Man in the wildly popular X-Files, that ghostly presence stands in for numerous other voices in a wide range of American films from the classic era of film noir through Oliver Stones JFK and Curtis Hansons L.A. Confidential. In this sweeping and idiosyncratic synthesis of film and politics, Ray Pratt shows us how such movies are deeply rooted in postwar American culture and continue to exert an enormous influence on the national imagination.For decades American cinema has mirrored and promoted the postmodern anxieties and paranoid perceptions embedded in our society. Tapping into the moviegoing audiences own projected fears, many Hollywood films seem to confirm our belief that there are indeed secret sinister forces at work and that our lives are at risk because of them.Pratt revisits blockbusters and cult favorites alike and shows how their images of conspiracy have been fostered by the publics increasing distrust of large organizations, producing in turn a cinematic narrative of resistance that challenges the status quo. He offers Seven Days in May and Dr. Strangelove as signposts of Cold War hysteria; Chinatown, The Conversation, and Missing as clear reflections of our distrust of political and corporate elites in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate; and Blue Velvet and The Stepfather as dark countermyths to the family values touted by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He also considers gender paranoia in films like Klute, Fatal Attraction, and Silence of the Lambs and reminds us that sometimes, as in Serpico, our guardian police forces need a bit of guarding themselves. Deftly interweaving cultural, political, and film theory with fresh insights into film noir detectives, nuclear angst, sexual predators, and government conspiracies, Projecting Paranoia is essential reading for anyone interested in the American psyche or great moviemaking.
ENGLISH

Projecting Paranoia - Conspiratorial Visions In American Film

by Ray Pratt

33,60€ + 10% CARD

 A lit cigarette glows in the dark. A faceless voice describes sinister forces that are hard at work behind the scenes-a hidden conspiracy that controls our lives and perhaps even our thoughts. Then, like a ghost in the night, the voice is gone, leaving a residue of unease and a whisper of paranoia.As emblematic as “Deep Throat” in All the President’s Men or the “Cigarette Smoking Man” in the wildly popular X-Files, that ghostly presence stands in for numerous other “voices” in a wide range of American films from the classic era of film noir through Oliver Stone’s JFK and Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential. In this sweeping and idiosyncratic synthesis of film and politics, Ray Pratt shows us how such movies are deeply rooted in postwar American culture and continue to exert an enormous influence on the national imagination.For decades American cinema has mirrored and promoted the postmodern anxieties and paranoid perceptions embedded in our society. Tapping into the moviegoing audience’s own projected fears, many Hollywood films seem to confirm our belief that there are indeed secret sinister forces at work and that our lives are at risk because of them.Pratt revisits blockbusters and cult favorites alike and shows how their images of conspiracy have been fostered by the public’s increasing distrust of large organizations, producing in turn a cinematic “narrative of resistance” that challenges the status quo. He offers Seven Days in May and Dr. Strangelove as signposts of Cold War hysteria; Chinatown, The Conversation, and Missing as clear reflections of our distrust of political and corporate elites in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate; and Blue Velvet and The Stepfather as dark countermyths to the “family values” touted by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He also considers gender paranoia in films like Klute, Fatal Attraction, and Silence of the Lambs and reminds us that sometimes, as in Serpico, our guardian police forces need a bit of guarding themselves. Deftly interweaving cultural, political, and film theory with fresh insights into film noir detectives, nuclear angst, sexual predators, and government conspiracies, Projecting Paranoia is essential reading for anyone interested in the American psyche or great moviemaking.
ENGLISH

Are We There Yet? - The Golden Age Of American Family Vacations

by Susan Sessions Rugh

~~21,12€~~ 19,01€ 10% OFF

 When TV celebrity Dinah Shore sang “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” 1950s America took her to heart. Every summer, parents piled the kids in the back seat, threw the luggage in the trunk, and took to the open highway. Chronicling this innately American ritual, Susan Rugh presents a cultural history of the American middle-class family vacation from 1945 to 1973, tracing its evolution from the establishment of this summer tradition to its decline. The first in-depth look at post-World War II family travel, Rugh’s study recounts how postwar prosperity and mass consumption—abetted by paid vacation leave, car ownership, and the new interstate highway system—forged the ritual of the family road trip and how that ritual became entwined with what it meant to be an American. With each car a safe haven from the Cold War, vacations became a means of strengthening family bonds and educating children in parental values, national heritage, and citizenship.Rugh’s history looks closely at specific types of trips, from adventures in the Wild West to camping vacations in national parks to summers at Catskill resorts. It also highlights changing patterns of family life, such as the relationship between work and play, the increase in the number of working women, and the generation gap of the sixties.Distinctively, Rugh also plumbs NAACP archives and travel guides marketed specifically to blacks to examine the racial boundaries of road trips in light of segregated public accommodations that forced many black families to sleep in cars—a humiliation that helped spark the civil rights struggle. In addition, she explains how the experience of family camping predisposed baby boomers toward a strong environmental consciousness.Until the 1970s recession ended three decades of prosperity and the traditional nuclear family began to splinter, these family vacations were securely woven into the fabric of American life. Rugh’s book allows readers to relive those wondrous wanderings across the American landscape and to better understand how they helped define an essential aspect of American culture. Notwithstanding the rueful memories of discomforts and squabbles in a crowded car, those were magical times for many of the nation’s families.
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Iconography Of Malcolm X

by Graeme Abernethy

29,14€ + 10% CARD

 The first systematic examination of the image of Malcolm X, a uniquely conspicuous cultural figure who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as "the most feared man in American history," and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity.
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The Last Liberal Republican - An Insider'S Perspective On Nixon'S Surprising Social Policy

by John Roy Price

44,55€ + 10% CARD

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 A memoir from one of Richard Nixonâ€™s senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price provides firsthand insight into key moments regarding Nixonâ€™s political and policy challenges in the domestic social policy arena.
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The Cost Of Voting In The American States

by Michael J. Pomante, Quan Li e Scot Schraufnagel

~~108,15€~~ 97,34€ 10% OFF

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 Using Racial Threat Theory arguments, this book demonstrates that American states with larger or growing Black and Hispanic populations have more restricted voting, and that these restrictive voting laws disproportionately demobilize these populations in predictable ways.
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Indians In Unexpected Places

by Philip J. Deloria

22,51€ + 10% CARD

 Chronicles how Indians came to represent themselves in Wild West shows, Hollywood films, sports, music, and their use of the automobile. This book examines longstanding stereotypes of Indians as invariably violent, suggesting that, even as such views continued in American popular culture, they were also transformed by the violence at Wounded Knee.
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Confederate Exceptionalism - Civil War Myth And Memory In The Twenty-First Century

by Nicole Maurantonio

15,90€ + 10% CARD

 Along with Confederate flags, the men and women who recently gathered before the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts carried signs proclaiming "Heritage Not Hate." Theirs, they said, was an "open and visible protest against those who attacked us, ours flags, our ancestors, or our Heritage." How, Nicole Maurantonio wondered, did "not hate" square with a "heritage" grounded in slavery? How do so-called neo-Confederates distance themselves from the actions and beliefs of white supremacists while clinging to the very symbols and narratives that tether the Confederacy to the history of racism and oppression in America? The answer, Maurantonio discovers, is bound up in the myth of Confederate exceptionalism—a myth whose components, proponents, and meaning this timely and provocative book explores. The narrative of Confederate exceptionalism, in this analysis, updates two uniquely American mythologies—the Lost Cause and American exceptionalism—blending their elements with discourses of racial neoliberalism to create a seeming separation between the Confederacy and racist systems. Incorporating several methods and drawing from a range of sources—including ethnographic observations, interviews, and archival documents—Maurantonio examines the various people, objects, and rituals that contribute to this cultural balancing act. Her investigation takes in "official" modes of remembering the Confederacy, such as the monuments and building names that drive the discussion today, but it also pays attention to the more mundane and often subtle ways in which the Confederacy is recalled. Linking the different modes of commemoration, her work bridges the distance that believers in Confederate exceptionalism maintain; while situated in history from the Civil War through the civil rights era, the book brings much-needed clarity to the constitution, persistence, and significance of this divisive myth in the context of our time.
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Hopi Runners - Crossing The Terrain Between Indian And American

by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert

22,51€ + 10% CARD

 Long before Hopis won trophy cups or received acclaim in American newspapers, Hopi clan runners competed against each other on and below their mesas-and when they won footraces, they received rain. Hopi Runners provides a window into this venerable tradition at a time of great consequence for Hopi culture.
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Modernity And The Great Depression - The Transformation Of American Society, 1930-1941

by Kenneth J. Bindas

22,51€ + 10% CARD

 Explores how the worst economic, social, and political crisis in the last century created the space for a national conversation about the ideals of modernity order, planning, and reason.
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Going To The Dogs - Greyhound Racing, Animal Activism, And American Popular Culture

by Gwyneth Anne Thayer

41,08€ + 10% CARD

 The first cultural history of greyhound racing in America, this book charts the sport's meteoric rise--and equally meteoric decline--against the backdrop of changes in American culture during the twentieth century.
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Getting Physical - The Rise Of Fitness Culture In America

by Shelly Mckenzie

31,14€ + 10% CARD

 From Charles Atlas to Jane Fonda, the fitness movement has been a driving force in American culture for more than half a century. In this first book on the modern history of exercise in America, Shelly McKenzie chronicles the governmental, scientific, commercial, and cultural forces that united - sometimes unintentionally - to make exercise an all-American habit.
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Carbon Nation - Fossil Fuels In The Making Of American Culture

by Bob Johnson

31,14€ + 10% CARD

 Fossil fuels don't simply impact our ability to commute to and from work. They condition our sensory lives. Carbon Nation ranges across film and literary studies, ecology, politics, journalism, and art history to chart the course by which prehistoric carbon calories entered into the American economy and body. It reveals how fossil fuels remade our ways of being, knowing, and sensing in the world.
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Gospel According To The Klan - The Kkk''S Appeal To Protestant America, 1915-1930

by Kelly J. Baker

35,78€ + 10% CARD

 Shows that the Ku Klux Klan based its justifications for hatred on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans. Analyzes the complex religious arguments the Klan crafted to gain acceptability and credibility, and reveals how successful those messages were--and how they still resonate today.
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Indian-Made - Navajo Culture In The Marketplace, 1868-1940

by Erika Bsumek

33,11€ + 10% CARD

 Breaks new ground in exploring the complex link between Indian identity and the emergence of tourism in the Southwest, the layers of meaning that surrounded the branding process of "Indian-Made" goods, and the connections between a consumer-oriented marketplace and the production of race.
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Ski Style - Sport And Culture In The Rockies

by Annie Gilbert Coleman

33,11€ + 10% CARD

 Annie Coleman has written the first cultural history of skiing in the United States, telling how this European sport evolved into an American industry combining recreation, tourism, consumption, and wildness.
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Imagining Tombstone - The Town Too Tough To Die

by Kara L. Mccormack

22,51€ + 10% CARD

 A meditation on the marketing of "authenticity," Imagining Tombstone considers this "most authentic western town in America" as the intersection of history and mythmaking, entertainment and education, the wish to preserve, the will to succeed. Imagining Tombstone shows how the town's tenacity depends on far more than a "usable past".
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1927 And The Rise Of Modern America

by Charles Shindo

22,51€ + 10% CARD

 The 1920s proved to be a transitional decade for the US, shifting the nation from a production-driven economy to a consumption-based one, with adventurous citizens breaking new ground even as many others continued clinging to an outmoded status quo. In his new book, Charles Shindo reveals how one year in particular encapsulated the complexity of this transformation in American culture.
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Magic Bean - The Rise Of Soy In America

by Matthew Roth

43,71€ + 10% CARD

 At the turn of the twentieth century, soybeans grew on so little of America's land that nobody bothered to track the total. By the year 2000, they covered upward of 70 million acres. How this little-known Chinese transplant turned into a ubiquitous component of American farming, culture, and cuisine is the story Matthew Roth tells in Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America.
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Producer Of Controversy - Stanley Kramer, Hollywood Liberalism, And The Cold War

by Jennifer Frost

41,08€ + 10% CARD

 With films ranging from High Noon to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Stanley Kramer (1913-2001) was one of the most successful and prolific director-producers of his day. Producer of Controversy is the first book to take a close-up look at Kramer's career, films, and liberal politics in an effort to explain his contributions and historical significance.
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From Greenwich Village To Taos - Primitivism And Place At Mabel Dodge Luhan''S

by Flannery Burke

15,90€ + 10% CARD

 The story of art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and the literary and artistic figures she attracted to northern New Mexico between 1917 and 1929.
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Pesticides, A Love Story - America''S Enduring Embrace Of Dangerous Chemicals

by Michelle Mart

35,78€ + 10% CARD

 Easy to use, effective, and safe: who couldnâ€™t love synthetic pesticides? Apparently most Americans still do. Why - in the face of dire warnings, rising expense, and declining effectiveness - do we cling to our chemicals? Michelle Martâ€™s book, a cultural history of pesticide use in postwar America, offers an answer.
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Friended At The Front - Social Media In The American War Zone

by Lisa Ellen Silvestri

43,26€ + 10% CARD

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 Documents the revolutionary evolving US military guidelines for social media engagement. Lisa Ellen Silvestriâ€™s interviews, observations, and research reveal how social network sites present both an opportunity to connect with civilians back home, as well as an obligation to do soâ€"one that can become controversial for troops in a war zone.
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Friended At The Front - Social Media In The American War Zone

by Lisa Ellen Silvestri

41,08€ + 10% CARD

 Documents the revolutionary evolving US military guidelines for social media engagement. Lisa Ellen Silvestriâ€™s interviews, observations, and research reveal how social network sites present both an opportunity to connect with civilians back home, as well as an obligation to do soâ€"one that can become controversial for troops in a war zone.
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