Americans are a lazy group who remain stubbornly optimistic. At least, that’s what Heath and Adams indicate in their book, *Why We Read What We Read—*a discussion of modern bestsellers, an analysis of said literature, and a generally... Read More

The United States has been feeling the profound effects of Japan’s cultural influence over the last decade. This influence can be traced back through several different pop cultural icons such as martial arts, monsters (Godzilla),... Read More

"-30-" is newspaper jargon to signify the end of a dispatch or story, and these fifteen essays, says Madigan, an editor and writer for the Chicago Tribune, will help readers understand what is killing the big-city papers. The Chicago... Read More

Anime and manga began as a world apart. Removed from Western culture and the “real world,” saturated with Japanese exotisme, they were, nonetheless, often part of American science fiction conventions, where fans garbed as their... Read More

She took a swing at golf and a stab at fencing, tried to dig gardening and flirted with photography. From belly dancing to Buddhism, the author desperately searched for something—anything—she could embrace with the kind of wanton... Read More

The movie Western was more than a quarter of a century old by the time Gene Autry galloped onto the screen in the mid-1930s. It had evolved during the silent-film era from a thinly disguised artifact of civic boosterism into a formulaic... Read More

It’s tempting to think of the current era as unique. Popular culture and the news media are filled with pronouncements that society is in the process of the greatest transformation since the development of agriculture, or since the... Read More

Graphic novels have risen high on the book sales chain, attracting both critical acclaim (read Pulitzer) and marketing success ($100 million in sales). How did comic books, once looked down on as something to be feared and discouraged,... Read More