Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Over the past thirty years, serial killers have become iconic figures in America, the subject of made-for-TV movies and mass-market paperbacks alike. But why do we find such luridly transgressive and horrific individuals so fascinating? What compels us to look more closely at these figures when we really want to look away? Natural Born Celebrities considers how serial killers have become lionized in American culture and explores the consequences of their fame.David Schmid provides a historical account of how serial killers became famous and how that fame has been used in popular media and the corridors of the FBI alike. Ranging from H. H. Holmes, whose killing spree during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair inspired The Devil in the White City, right up to Aileen Wuornos, the lesbian prostitute whose vicious murder of seven men would serve as the basis for the hit film Monster, Schmid unveils a new understanding of serial killers by emphasizing both the social dimensions of their crimes and their susceptibility to multiple interpretations and uses. He also explores why serial killers have become endemic in popular culture, from their depiction in The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files to their becoming the stuff of trading cards and even Web sites where you can buy their hair and nail clippings.Bringing his fascinating history right up to the present, Schmid ultimately argues that America needs the perversely familiar figure of the serial killer now more than ever to manage the fear posed by Osama bin Laden since September 11. "This is a persuasively argued, meticulously researched, and compelling examination of the media phenomenon of the 'celebrity criminal' in American culture. It is highly readable as well."—Joyce Carol Oates

    In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology--to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

    He shows with comments and sequence the human delusions and viewpoints that preoccupied the minds of the individuals before, during and after the illegal, cruel, and terrible violent crimes. -- Herbert Mullin, a serial killer who murdered thirteen people in the Santa Cruz area of California between October 1972 and February 1973.A compilation of essays, short stories, memoirs, confessions, letters, manifestoes, poetry, drawings, photographs and other works created by serial killers, mass murderers, cannibals, necrophiles, sexual sadists, psychopaths and assassins."In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all of these things I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don't believe in Man, God nor devil. I hate the whole damned human race including myself". -- Carl Panzram, murderer"I wish I could enact a law that would make a dull mind an infamous crime. I'm that embittered. They've done that much to me. Every time they waddle by with a filthy story created by a filthier mind, I wonder. There they go. Free. My potential executioners. Obese in mindand body. The men who perpetrate the world with social, cultural and historical lunacy. They get to kill me. Then I laugh. I know. The whole world has suddenly gone mad. Nothing matters". -- Charles Schmid, Jr., murderer

    His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.

    Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. Spiral Jetta is a chronicle of this journey.A lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite, Hogan initially sought firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and the 1980s—Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, and the contemporary art mecca of Marfa, Texas. Armed with spotty directions, no compass, and less-than-desert-appropriate clothing, she found most of what she was looking for and then some.

    This vision culminates in a triumphant series of works, reproduced in this book, made in all four seasons on, under, and around a magnificent oak tree near the artist's home in Scotland.

    Amazingly beautiful, the kimono has gone through many changes in the centuries since it was first imported from China, changes that reflect the way that Japanese society has also developed over the ages.

    

    Unfortunately, skillful propagandists have been so successful in promoting this romanticized view that the Lost Cause has assumed a life of its own. Misrepresenting the war's true origins and its actual course, the myth of the Lost Cause distorts our national memory. In The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying ways in which it falsifies history -- creating a volume that makes a significant contribution to Civil War historiography.

    In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people.Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl explains how to develop cities that are lively, safe, sustainable, and healthy.The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.

    Despite this, and perhaps in part because of its prevalence in the media, it is often denigrated as trivial and superficial, as a sign of vanity and narcissism. Written by a highly regarded authority on twentieth-century fashion, this Very Short Introduction offer a wide-ranging and revealing look at fashion that discusses everything from production and design, to couture and retailing, to the wider role of fashion in society. This lively book illuminates the structure of the fashion industry and the range of professionals involved in its creation, and it provides cogent insight into its historical, social and cultural contexts. It also sheds light on how fashion has developed, while raising questions about its ethical and controversial aspects, such as the use of fur, exploitative trading, and poor working conditions for laborers.

    Nothing of the scope and magnitude of this work had ever been conceived; the first complete history of modern art, it is widely regarded as the most influential art history book ever written. The Lives' colorful and detailed portraits of the most representative figures of Italian painting and sculpture trace the flowering of the Renaissance across three centuries. This single-volume edition of selections from Vasari's immense work features eight of the book's most noteworthy artists: Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian. It also includes an introduction, notes, and glossary; as well as woodcut portraits of each artist by Vasari himself. Students, teachers, and art enthusiasts will find this convenient edition an indispensable resource.

    Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film contains all of Deren's essays on her own films as well as more general essays on film theory, the relation of film to dance, various technical aspects of film production, the distinction between amateur and professional filmmaking, and the famous 1946 chapbook titled "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film," which has been reset here for the first time. There are hard-to-find articles written for magazines and art journals, as well as lectures, Q&A sessions, program notes, and manifestoes. This book will be particularly welcomed by the large audience that saw Martina Kudlacek's documentary, "In the Mirror of Maya Deren," during its theatrical release in the U.S. and Europe in 2002. The importance of Maya Deren's films and writings is further evidenced by the American Film Institute having named its highest award for independent filmmaking the "Maya Deren."

    This Very Short Introduction discusses both the history and key debates of postcolonialism, and considers its importance as a means of changing the way we think about the world.Robert J. C. Young examines the key strategies that postcolonial thought has developed to engage with the impact of sometimes centuries of western political and cultural domination. Situating the discussion in a wide cultural and geographical context, he draws on examples such as the status of indigenous peoples, of those dispossessed from their land, Algerian rai music, and global social and ecological movements. In this new edition he also includes updated material on race, slavery, and postcolonial gender politics. Above all, Young argues that postcolonialism offers a political philosophy of activism that contests the current situation of global inequality, which in a new way continues the anti-colonial struggles of the past and enables us to decolonize our own lives in the present.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable

    Individuals can forget words, phrases, even entire languages, and over the course of time speaking communities, too, let go of the tongues that were once theirs, as languages grow obsolescent and give way to others. In Echolalias, Daniel Heller-Roazen reflects on the many forms of linguistic forgetfulness.In twenty-one concise chapters, he moves among classical, medieval, and modern culture, exploring the interrelations of speech, writing, memory, and oblivion. Whether the subject is medieval literature or modern fiction, classical Arabic poetry or the birth of French language, structuralist linguistics or Freud's writings on aphasia, Heller-Roazen considers with precision and insight the forms, effects, and ultimate consequences of the persistence and disappearance of language.In speech, he argues, destruction and construction often prove inseparable. Among speaking communities, the vanishing of one language can mark the emergence of another, and among individuals, the experience of the passing of speech can lie at the origin of literary, philosophical, and artistic creation.From the infant's prattle to the legacy of Babel, from the holy tongues of Judaism and Islam to the concept of the dead language and the political significance of exiled and endangered languages today, Echolalias traces an elegant, erudite, and original philosophical itinerary, inviting us to reflect in a new way on the nature of the speaking animal who forgets.