Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

For every academic inquiry, there is a core set of books widely acknowledged as essential for understanding the topic. When it comes to the history of cable television, this new book by Brownell (history, Purdue Univ.) has immediately earned its spot in that small list of must reads. 24/7 Politics tells a compelling story about the intersection of American political institutions and the cable television industry. Brownell demonstrates how industry leaders navigated regulation and growth through particular relationships and rivalries with politicians and policy makers. Simultaneously, she explains how cable television played a significant role in transforming American democracy itself. The book's clear argument is conveyed through meticulous research blended with captivating stories, and the cast of characters ranges from franchise owners and lobbyists to policy wonks and presidents. This book provides a new way of looking at the familiar histories of both cable television and American electoral politics due to its impressive deep dives into pivotal moments where those two histories were tied together. Overall, the book manages to be accessible to general readers while also pushing the field further for scholars.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Television has long been a part of the historical and cultural conversation, though the last few decades in particular have seen a rise in television offerings that seek to engage audiences in myriad ways beyond simply "entertainment." This edited collection explores how various television series engage with morality in their respective narratives and how audiences interact with and what they ultimately take away from the viewing experience. This series of essays, written by various contributors, scrutinizes an assortment of television series ranging from the prestigious, such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and The Wire, to "lighter" fare, such as Letterkenny and The Unicorn, through a philosophical lens. The moral framework applied to each series is well researched, making this collection a sound addition to courses across disciplines from philosophy to media and film studies. The popularity of several of these series, coupled with some authors' (likely) divisive conclusions, will ensure lively student discussions in class and on the page.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

An emotionally moving page-turner, this book had this reviewer finishing it in a single sitting-a claim one does not generally apply to academic texts. Holdsworth (film and television studies, Univ. of Glasgow, UK) thoughtfully and beautifully traces the role television has played in various stages of her life. The book compels readers to consider their own uses and experiences with television. Holdsworth explores the routines of children (re)watching television, how one eats while watching television, how one watches others eat on television, and how important memories in one's life can be attached to (or activated by) television viewing. With sharp textual analysis and even sharper autobiographical writing, the author draws on theoretical work from film and television studies, disability studies, feminist studies, queer studies, autoethnography, and life writing. Scholars across all these areas of study will find much to absorb in this text, which deserves a place alongside the classics of television studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

This book aims to shift discussion of privacy and information security from the realm of personal and individual responsibility to the dependence of privacy on social networks and political action. It will enrich every reader's understanding of privacy and the social conventions that misleadingly treat privacy as each individual's own responsibility while simultaneously entwining and monetizing their personal information in unavoidable networks. Marwick (Univ. of North Carolina) makes excellent use of feminist and other social analyses in documenting how social networks and conventions incorporate inequitable power relations, which disadvantage and jeopardize many marginalized demographics. The analyses and arguments are well researched, documented, and above all cogently and convincingly presented. This work will be a point of reference for all subsequent scholarly, journalistic, and political discussions of privacy and the dangers inappropriately mined and shared personal information pose. The clear presentation of research also makes it an appropriate introduction to the topics covered. It should be in every library collection.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.

Roush (Quinnipiac Univ.), a distinguished scholar and veteran journalist, combines cause-and-effect analyses with interviews, case studies, and real-world solutions to make a plea for revolutionary reforms that would return professional business journalism to its democracy-serving role. Both societal change and the flawed business model of print journalism explain the shift from local reporting toward national journalism centered on dominant corporations. Greater inequity results because this shift deprives Main Street investors and small business owners of the facts they need for everyday decision-making. News media fragmented along political lines focus more on perceived political polarization than income inequality; business journalism compounds the problem by neglecting neutral, local coverage in favor of politically tinged overreporting on the stock market. Roush suggests fixing business journalism by "hiring reporters and editors who represent the quality and diversity of the community; changing coverage to emphasize topics of interest to smaller business owners and consumers; [and] working on a better relationship between business journalists and corporate executives" (p. 167). Overall, this book offers time-tested and novel solutions to repair business reporting in an era in which access to meaningful, trustworthy news is crucial.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; general readers; practitioners.

The recent cultural flare-ups centered on "protecting the children" from certain subjects are not a contemporary phenomenon. For centuries, products related to horror have earned the ire of certain social forces. Cleary's remarkable The Myth of Harm chronicles "five major controversies from 1931 to the present day" by tracking "the myth of harm which [has] dogged the horror genre" (p. 5). Using a form of "narrative analysis," Cleary (independent scholar) first explores film during the Golden Age of Horror in the 1930s and the subsequent development of various motion picture codes to regulate subject matter deemed harmful. Chapter 2 considers the notoriety of horror comic books from the 1940s and 1950s. Chapter 3 studies the 1980s "video nasties" debates in the UK, and the fourth chapter centers on the cultural anxiety connected to violent video games. With an examination of the "Slender Man" urban legend and the 2014 stabbing incident involving children as perpetrators and victims, Cleary interprets how the "myth of harm" resulted in severe misconceptions about youth and horror as a genre. A provocative, deeply researched, elegantly written work, Cleary's volume furthers discourse on horror and its meaning to culture.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty.

Folklorist Patricia Turner (African American studies and world arts and culture, UCLA) reports on prevalent anti-Obama memes, negative stories, and misleading communications in popular culture regarding the Obama family, from Obama's emergence on the national political scene in 2004 through the Biden inauguration in 2021. The book is not about the Obamas but about racist narratives--for example that Obama's rise to power was illegitimate because Black people need to stay in their place. Turner provides thorough documentation of vitriolic messages that have emerged, at every election cycle, and the startling similarity of that vitriol to traditional racist stereotypes. She traces the origins and spread of these memes--for example, the claim that Barack Obama was not born in the US. Her concepts of boss birthers (those who initiate the lies) and worker-bee birthers (those who spread the messages by blogs, tweets, and chain emails) are original and rich. Although she is glib in places, Turner demonstrates that Barack Obama's success at winning elections is not indicative of a post-racial America. This is not a comforting book; it is a book that alerts one to important realities, so readers ignore it at their peril.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.