Michael Denning – författare

First published in 1987, this title tracks the spy thriller from John Buchanan to Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré, and shows how these tales of spies, moles, and the secret service tell a history of modern society, translating the political and cultural transformations of the twentieth century into the intrigues of a shadow world of secret agents. Combining cultural history with narrative analysis, Cover Stories explores the two main traditions of the thriller: the thriller of the work, in which bureaucratic routines are invested with political meaning; and the thriller of leisure, in which the sports and games that kill time become a time of dangerous political contests. Examining the characteristic narrative structures of the spy novel – the adventure formulas and the plots of betrayal, disguise and doubles – Denning shows how they attempt to resolve crises and contradictions in ideologies of nation and empire, and of class and gender.

First published in 1987, this title tracks the spy thriller from John Buchanan to Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré, and shows how these tales of spies, moles, and the secret service tell a history of modern society, translating the political and cultural transformations of the twentieth century into the intrigues of a shadow world of secret agents. Combining cultural history with narrative analysis, Cover Stories explores the two main traditions of the thriller: the thriller of the work, in which bureaucratic routines are invested with political meaning; and the thriller of leisure, in which the sports and games that kill time become a time of dangerous political contests. Examining the characteristic narrative structures of the spy novel – the adventure formulas and the plots of betrayal, disguise and doubles – Denning shows how they attempt to resolve crises and contradictions in ideologies of nation and empire, and of class and gender.

Noise Uprising brings to life the moment and sounds of a cultural revolution. Between the development of electrical recording in 1925 and the outset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the soundscape of modern times unfolded in a series of obscure recording sessions, as hundreds of unknown musicians entered makeshift studios to record the melodies and rhythms of urban streets and dancehalls. The musical styles and idioms etched onto shellac disks reverberated around the globe: among them Havana's son, Rio's samba, New Orleans' jazz, Buenos Aires' tango, Seville's flamenco, Cairo's tarab, Johannesburg's marabi, Jakarta's kroncong, and Honolulu's hula. They triggered the first great battle over popular music and became the soundtrack to decolonization.

The Twofold Labors of Marx challenges the common interpretation that Marx was right about capital, but wrong about work. Instead, Denning argues that Marx's theory of labor is just as important and insightful as his analysis of capitalism. In response, he proposes to turn Capital on its head-a deliberate inversion of Marx's own famous claim that he turned Hegel's dialectic "right side up." This means reconstructing Marx's work to highlight the labor theory that's embedded within it.Denning argues we need to pay equal attention to the "circuit of labor", not just the circuit of capital; the "mystery of wages" not just commodity fetishism, and finally "Surplus population" theory and labor movements rather than just surplus value and capital movements. In other words, Marx developed a sophisticated dual analysis-examining both how capital accumulates and how labor is organized, transformed, and exploited.

The Cultural Front charts the extraordinary upsurge of cultural activity and theory in America that began during the Great Depression and embraced Disney animators and proletarian novelists alike, alongside Orson Welles, Duke Ellington, John Dos Passos, C. L. R James and Billie Holiday. Spawned by the Popular Front of the Communist Party, it grew to encompass virtually every aspect of high and popular art in the US, instigating one of the most culturally rich and exciting periods in American history.

Mechanic Accents is a widely acclaimed study of American popular fiction and working-class culture. Combining Marxist literary theory with American labor history, Michael Denning explores what happened when, in the nineteenth century, working people began to read cheap novels and the "fiction question" became a class question. In a new afterword, Denning locates his study within the context of current debates on class and cultural studies.

Over the last half of the twentieth century, culture moved to the foreground of political and intellectual life. Suddenly everyone discovered that culture had been mass produced like Ford's cars; the masses had culture and culture had a mass. Culture was everywhere, no longer the property of the cultured or the cultivated. Radical social movements around the globe invented a politics of culture.Culture In the Age of Three Worlds is a reflection on this cultural turn which was a fundamental aspect of the age of three worlds, that short half century between 1945 and 1989 when it was imagined that the world was divided into three-the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the decolonizing third world. Recasting the legacies of British cultural studies and the radical traditions of the American studies movement in a global context, Michael Denning explores the political and intellectual battles over the meanings of culture, addresses the rise of a distinctive 'American ideology,' and charts the lineaments of the global cultures that emerged as three worlds gave way to one.