Common returns to his hometown of Chicago - a city on fire in the aftermath of the brutal police killing of teenager Laquan McDonald. With thousands of people in the streets, Chicago has become the epicenter of national debates around police violence, racism and accountability. Working with community activists and whistleblowers, Common discovers a decades-long pattern of police corruption and sophisticated cover-ups that stretch all the way to the...

In this interview conducted shortly before his death in 2014, Stuart Hall, one of the seminal figures in cultural studies, talks about his classic work Policing the Crisis, describes the political, symbolic, and material concerns that animated cultural studies in the 1970s, and offers a critical assessment of the field today. He then turns his attention to the always shifting terrain of race and identity in the United States and Britain, offering...

The veteran journalist exposes the practices of opposition research to reveal how political leaders use their influence to shape public opinion, connecting popular misconceptions to strategic smear campaigns that have influenced voters. "Behind most major political stories there is an agenda: To destroy an idea or the people advancing it. Maybe you watched someone on the news report that Donald Trump is a racist misogynist, read that Hillary Clinton...

"The legacies of Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn seem like they might be with us forever. Yet Christopher Elias finds in them startling new connections between gender, sexuality, and national security in 20th-century US politics--a paradigm he christens "security state masculinity." Elias integrates biographies of the trio with a history of gossip magazines and their tactics--such as insinuation, guilt by association, hyperbole, and alarmism,...

Documents the kaleidoscopic year during which transformative talents from Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, and Beverly Hills heavily influenced pop culture, politics, and social movements. Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Working in film, recording, and television studios, a cluster of transformative talents produced an explosion in popular culture which reflected the demographic, social,...

"What accounts for Masterpiece's longevity and influence? This book offers two reasons: the power of its drama and its aspirational appeal. Masterpiece delivers great stories, stories that transport, enthrall, enrich, and comfort us. But it also speaks to a uniquely American belief in the possibility of self-improvement, even self-transformation, through the acquisition of "culture""--

"The intimate, multi-generational story of the Kennedy family as seen through their Hyannis Port compound on Cape Cod--the iconic place where they've celebrated, mourned, and forged the closest of bonds--based on more than a hundred in-depth interviews by a Rolling Stone editor whose pieces have appeared in such publications as Town & Country, Esquire, and Vanity Fair. Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, is synonymous with the Kennedy family. It is where,...

Track the historical significance and changing fortunes of the Grand Canal. Beginning in the Sui Dynasty, explore the evolution and engineering of the canal system and its vital role in imperial economics, politics, and culture. Learn about its maintenance and management, its varied personnel, and how the health of the canal directly mirrored the political health of the empire.

Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn?the madcap follow-up to his debut novel, which was hailed by authors as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Jane Smiley, and Paul Theroux ?explores the deepest recesses of American politics and culture. Bob Honey, the disillusioned divorcee with a penchant for murder by mallet, weaves his way toward Washington DC for the ultimate showdown with a certain nefarious ?landlord, ? but nothing is as it seems, and Bob will have more...

"These impossibly cheerful essays on the routine horrors of the present era explain everything from the resurgence of measles to the fiasco of the presidency. In Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, acclaimed Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri offers perfectly logical, reassuring reasons for everything that has happened in recent American politics and culture that will in no way unsettle your worldview. In essays both new and adapted from her viral...