Showing titles in Media Studies

Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the "burn pits" where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material.

“My favorite book of the year.”—Doug McMillon, CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Harvard Business School Professor of Strategy Bharat Anand presents an incisive new approach to digital transformation that favors fostering connectivity over focusing exclusively on content. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF...

In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.

When Ted Turner started out in business, he owned a small billboard company in rural Georgia. Over the decades, he built a multi-billion empire that included CNN, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), MGM studios, and the Atlanta Braves. Risk-taking, careful planning, and steely determination are the hallmarks of this brash, outspoken, and wildly successful media mogul. On the other side of the world, his counterpart—Australian-born Rupert Murdoch—began with one small newspaper and parlayed it into more than 100 newspapers and magazines around the globe.

In the depths of a summer night, seven drugged children are found dumped on a highway verge in northern Maine. Their memories have been wiped. There is no record of their disappearance. Unknown to the world, they are pawns in a secret war. No therapy or hypnosis can release the kids from their amnesia. They’re soon given up for adoption, begin their lives afresh, and then over time they’re forgotten. Until twenty years later, when two of them go on murderous rampages, as if suddenly woken from slumber.

Family Guy and Philosophy brings together low-brow, potty-mouthed, cartoon humor and high-brow philosophical reflection to deliver an outrageously hilarious and clever exploration of one of TVs most unrelenting families. (Okay, its not that high-brow.)  

On December 15, 1985, powerful mafia don Carlos Marcello, referring to JFK's death, told a fellow Texas prison inmate, in part, that, "Yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed." This changes everything about not only the president's assassination but also reveals Marcello's complicity in the deaths...

There are some places where so many seemingly unexplainable things happen that it is really hard to believe that there’s not some kind of explanation to make sense of it all. The Skinwalker Ranch is such a place. Unbelievable and still unexplained paranormal activities set the Skinwalker Ranch apart.

In the early 20th century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of ways. The Great War remade the world's map, created new global powers, and brought forth some of the biggest problems still facing us today. But it also birthed a new art form: the horror film, made from the fears of a generation ruined by war. From Nosferatu to Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War.

We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives. In his dazzling new book, de Botton takes twenty-five archetypal news stories - including an airplane crash, a murder, a celebrity interview and a political scandal - and submits them to unusually intense analysis with a view to helping us navigate our news-soaked age.

From UFOs to the New World Order, the inside story of how conspiracy theories won over America. In November 2017, a serial climate change denier and anti-vaxxer was elected President of the United States. The rise of Donald Trump marked the beginning of a new American epoch: the age of the conspiracy theorist. Now, Anna Merlan goes undercover in America’s sprawling network of conspiracy theorists.

A field guide to the visionaries and the fans who are reinventing the art of storytelling. Not long ago we were spectators, passive consumers of mass media. Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. And while we watch more television than ever before, how we watch it is changing in ways we have barely slowed down to register. No longer content in our traditional role as couch potatoes, we approach media as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will.

“Methamphetamine was a huge part of this case . . . It was a horrible murder driven by drugs.” — Prosecutor Cal Rerucha, who convicted Matthew Shepard's killers On the night of October 6, 1998, twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard left a bar with two alleged “strangers,” Aaron...

An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy’s modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the ’80s and the ’90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the...

Kitty Wandsworth pledges to restore the truth in this factual analysis of the press coverage of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, examining the period between their star-studded wedding to the day they fled Britain for the haven of North America. This unemotional and statistically-based work shows that, although there were waves of negative coverage, this was largely driven by key decisions made by the royal pair, and was a reaction to their unpopular actions rather than due to systemic racism.

Independent researcher, writer, and podcast host Isaac Weishaupt reveals the history of occult belief systems that have anticipated the return of our alien gods.

Inspired by the most popular subjects on Isaac Weishaupt’s podcast, Conspiracy Theories & Unpopular Culture, this book explores familiar topics that have an insidious truth hidden from the masses. Using occult doctrine cited from Freemasonry, Kabbalah, and Gnosticism; Isaac guides the listener through the symbolism of the concepts most frequently discussed by the conspiracy theory community.

Beneath the outward appearance of legitimate government and accountable officials there lurk hidden agendas, shadowy personalities and special interest groups seeking to seize control of the nation for their own ends. These 'states within a state', unfettered by legal norms and unworried by public opinion, are known as 'deep states'.

Science doesn't speak for itself. Neck-deep in work that can be messy and confounding and naïve in the ways of public communication, scientists are often unable to package their insights into the neat narratives that the public requires. Enter celebrities, advocates, lobbyists, and the funders behind them, who take advantage of scientists' reluctance to provide easy answers, flooding the media with misleading or incorrect claims about health risks. In Bad Advice, Paul A. Offit shares hard-earned wisdom on the dos and don'ts of battling misinformation.

Bloomsbury presents Daredevil: Born Again by Chris Ryall, read by Seth Podowitz. Explore the Stories Behind the Legends What happens when a hero loses everything? In Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again, the comic’s titular hero has his life destroyed after his most...