In this eloquent, persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can, in turn, shape them to serve out highest goals.

    Lipstick Traces tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself. Hip, metaphorical and allusive...--Gail Caldwell, Boston Sunday Globe. Full-color illustrations and halftones.

    Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero - the figure, often a female, who suffers pain and fright but eventually rises to vanquish the forces of oppression.

    Hebdige [...] is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling StoneWith enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures - approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of devience and Marxism and come up with a very stimulating short book - Time OutThis book is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes. The book is recommended whole-heartedly to anyone who would like fresh ideas about some of the most stimulating music of the rock era - The New York Times

    The phrase "super hero" had yet to be coined when ACTION COMICS #1 hit newsstands in 1938, but once Superman entered the scene, effortlessly lifting a car above his head on that first iconic cover, the character paved the way for each of the hundreds (if not thousands) of super-powered heroes written since. SUPERMAN: A CELEBRATION OF 75 YEARS gathers a range of stories featuring the first and greatest super hero, highlighting the many roles the Man of Steel has played over the decades. In these celebrated stories, Superman is in turns the Herculean champion, the lonely alien survivor, the super-powered Boy Scout and the soul-searching leader. Over the course of seventy-five years, watch as the character grows from a simple strongman to the beloved international symbol he is today!This Volume Collects:("Superman, Champion of the Oppressed") / ("War in San Monte") -- ACTION COMICS #1-2 (1938) Writer: Jerry Siegel, Artist: Joe Shuster"How Superman Would End the War" -- Look Magazine (1940) Writer: Jerry Siegel, Artist: Joe Shuster"Man or Superman?" -- SUPERMAN #17 (1942) Writer: Jerry Siegel, Penciller: Joe Shuster, Inker: Joe Sikela"The Origin of Superman" -- SUPERMAN #53 (1948) Writer: Bill Finger, Penciller: Wayne Boring, Inker: Stan Kaye"The Mightiest Team in the World" -- SUPERMAN #76 (1952) Writer: Edmond Hamilton, Penciller: Curt Swan, Inker: John Fishchetti"The Super-Duel in Space" -- ACTION COMICS #242 (1958) Writer: Otto Binder, Artist: Al Plastino "The Girl From Superman's Past" -- SUPERMAN #129 (1959) Writer: Bill Finger, Penciller: Wayne Boring, Inker: Stan Kaye"Superman's Return to Krypton" -- SUPERMAN #141 (1960) Writer: Jerry Siegel, Penciller: Wayne Boring, Inker: Stan Kaye"The Death of Superman" -- SUPERMAN #149 (1961) Writer: Jerry Siegel, Penciller: Curt Swan, Inker: George Klein"Must There Be a Superman?" -- SUPERMAN #247 (1972) Writer: Eliot S. Maggin, Penciller: Curt Swan, Inker: Murphy Anderson "Rebirth" -- ACTION COMICS #544 (1983) Writer: Marv Wolfman, Artist: Gil Kane"The Living Legends of Superman" (excerpt) -- SUPERMAN #400 (1985) Writer: Elliot S. Maggin, Artist: Frank Miller"For the Man Who Has Everything" -- SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11 (1985)Writer: Alan Moore, Artist: Dave Gibbons"The Name Game" -- SUPERMAN #11 (1987)  Writer/Penciller: John Byrne, Inker: Karl Kesel"Doomsday" -- SUPERMAN #75 (1993)  Writer/Penciller: Dan Jurgens, Inker: Brett Breeding"What's So Funny About Truth Justice and the American Way?" -- ACTION COMICS #775 (2001)  Writer: Joe Kelly, Pencillers: Doug Mahnke, Lee BermejoInkers: Tom Nguyen, Dexter Vines, Jim Royal, Jose Marzan, Jr., Wade Von Grawbadger, Wayne Faucher"Question of Confidence" -- Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross (2003)  Writer: Chip Kidd, Artist: Alex Ross"The Incident" -- ACTION COMICS #900 (2011)  Writer: David S. Goyer, Artist: Miguel Sepulveda"The Boy Who Stole Superman's Cape" -- ACTION COMICS #0 (2012)   Writer: Grant Morrison, Artist: Ben Oliver

    The reprint from the 1970 Arlington House original sports an all-new introduction by Comics Buyer's Guide Editor Maggie Thompson and includes 16 pages of full-color comic-book art.

    Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text.Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television."We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect.The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance.These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination.In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

    Sleek and sexy, the greatest cat burglar of all time sank her claws into the Caped Crusader back in 1940 and hasn't let go since. Part homage, part how-to, this handsome treatise divulges Catwoman's stellar techniques at everything from scaling walls to tickling a gentleman's fancy without mercy. With a brief history of her many incarnations over the years, loads of terrific vintage illustrations, sections on fashion and romance, and personal tips on getting ahead, this spunky vinyl-covered volume (oooh! purple PVC!) will attract both new fans of the slinky girl kitty and time-tested aficionados. It's the purr-fect ode to The Feline Felon, The Mistress of Malevolence, The Princess of Plunder . . . a.k.a. Catwoman.

    The universe is big. Bigger than you could ever imagine. And the SILVER SURFER, the lone sentinel of the skyways, is about to discover that the best way to see it... is with someone else. Meet the Earth Girl who's challenged the Surfer to go beyond the boundaries of the known Marvel U-- into the strange, the new, and the utterly fantastic!

    Beginning with its first publication as a cautionary tale on the perils of seduction, written in reaction to the licentiousness of the court of Louis XIV, Orenstein traces the many lives the tale has lived since then, from its appearance in modern advertisements for cosmetics and automobiles, the inspiration it brought to poets such as Anne Sexton, and its starring role in pornographic films. In Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, Red appears as seductress, hapless victim, riot grrrrl, femme fatale, and even she-wolf, as Orenstein shows how through centuries of different guises, the story has served as a barometer of social and sexual mores pertaining to women. Full of fascinating history, generous wit, and intelligent analysis, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked proves that the story of one young girl's trip through the woods continues to be one of our most compelling modern myths.

    Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante, including: Does Batman have PTSD?  Why does he fight crime? Why as a vigilante? Why the mask, the bat, and the underage partner? Why are his most intimate relationships with “bad girls” he ought to lock up? And why won't he kill that homicidal, green-haired clown?Gives you fresh insights into the complex inner world of Batman and Bruce Wayne and the life and characters of Gotham CityExplains psychological theory and concepts through the lens of one of the world’s most popular comic book charactersWritten by a psychology professor and “Superherologist” (scholar of superheroes)

    The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job. People are using shame as a form of social control.

    This book by one of Wired magazine's art directors traverses the graphic world through a collection of pie charts, bar graphs, timelines, scatter plots, and more. Super Graphic offers readers a unique look at the intricate and sometimes contradictory storylines that weave their way through comic books, and shares advice for navigating the pages of some of the most popular, longest-running, and best-loved comics and graphic novels out there. From a colorful breakdown of the DC Comics reader demographic to a witty Venn diagram of superhero comic tropes and a Chris Ware sadness scale, this book charts the most arbitrary and monumental characters, moments, and equipment of the wide world of comics.

    Green Arrow and Black Canary are ready to exchange vows — but can they make it down the aisle alive? This new hardcover collects the GA/BC WEDDING SPECIAL and the first five issues of the happy couple's hot new series, and guest-stars the Justice League of America.

    In the insightful How Music Works, Byrne offers his unique perspective on music - including how music is shaped by time, how recording technologies transform the listening experience, the evolution of the industry, and much more.