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The late 1960s and early 1970s constituted a remarkable period for spiritual experimentation and for the proliferation of new religious groups. Now the children born into these religions have come of age. While their parents made the decision as adults to embrace alternative religious practices, the children have been raised with a very different orientation toward the larger society. While they take their religious communities for granted, many of these children gaze with curiosity at the surrounding secular world which their parents, not they, chose to reject. The contributors to this volume examine children from many different alternative religious movements worldwide, including The Family, Hare Krishna, Wiccans, and Pagans, Messianic Communities, and the Rajneesh (Osho) Movement. The essays explore two general questions: 1) What impact does the presence of children have on a new religion's lifestyle and chance of surviving into the future? 2) Is child abuse more likely to occur in unconventional religions, or are children born into them, the 'new' religions have grown up and have become an important and rapidly changing social force that we cannot reasonably dismiss or wisely ignore

Children of the Rainforest explores the lives of children growing up in a time of radical change in Amazonia. The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Matses, a group of hunter-gatherer forest dwellers who have lived in voluntary isolation until fairly recently. Having worked with them for over a decade, returning every year to their villages in the rainforest, Camilla Morelli follows closely the life-trajectories of Matses children, watching them shift away from the forest-based lifestyles of their elders and move towards new horizons crisscrossed by concrete paving, lit by the glow of electric lights and television screens, and centered around urban practices and people. The book uses drawings and photographs taken by the children themselves to trace the children’s journeys-lived and imagined-from their own perspectives, proposing an ethnographic analysis that recognizes children’s imaginations, play, and shifting desires as powerful catalysts of social change.

A classic work in the history of science. Readers will want to get their hands on this influential classic, available for the first time in decades.  This newly reissued debut book in the Rutgers University Press Classics imprint is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. This search was a hazardous enterprise carried out by rival labs who worked against the known laws of nature, with no guarantee of success or safety.Acclaimed scientist and sci-fi author John Drury Clark writes with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy about the development of the explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. The resulting volume is as much a memoir as a work of history, sharing a behind-the-scenes view of an enterprise which eventually took men to the moon, missiles to the planets, and satellites to outer space.

Abortion Care as Moral Work brings together the voices of abortion providers, abortion counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians to discuss how and why providing abortion care is moral work. The collection offers voices not usually heard as clinicians talk about their work and their thoughts about life and death. In four subsections--Providers, Clinics, Conscience, and The Fetus--the contributions in this anthology explore the historical context and present-day challenges to the delivery of abortion care. Contributing authors address the motivations that lead abortion providers to offer abortion care, discuss the ways in which anti-abortion regulations have made it increasingly difficult to offer feminist-inspired services, and ponder the status of the fetus and the ethical frameworks supporting abortion care and fetal research. Together these essays provide a feminist moral foundation to reassert that abortion care is moral work.

2022 Eisner Award Winner for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist framework, treating manga as the exotic antithesis to American and European comics. In reality, the history of manga is deeply intertwined with Japan's avid importation of Western technology and popular culture in the early twentieth century.  Comics and the Origins of Manga reveals how popular U.S. comics characters like Jiggs and Maggie, the Katzenjammer Kids, Felix the Cat, and Popeye achieved immense fame in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Modern comics had earlier developed in the United States in response to new technologies like motion pictures and sound recording, which revolutionized visual storytelling by prompting the invention of devices like speed lines and speech balloons. As audiovisual entertainment like movies and record players spread through Japan, comics followed suit. Their immediate popularity quickly encouraged Japanese editors and cartoonists to enthusiastically embrace the foreign medium and make it their own, paving the way for manga as we know it today.  By challenging the conventional wisdom that manga evolved from centuries of prior Japanese art and explaining why manga and other comics around the world share the same origin story, Comics and the Origins of Manga offers a new understanding of this increasingly influential artform.

Feminist Manifestos for Media and Communication brings together evidence-based manifestos for media and communication that take a feminist perspective and add up to a provocative vision of feminist media practices and of feminist communication. The book discusses critical problems and complaints in ways that identify and make the case for actionable, concrete solutions to media problems and deficiencies; it shows how feminist thinking can be usefully and effectively applied to a wide range of journalism, media, and communication practices. The manifestos are not “only” about women but rather offer specific, feasible blueprints for restructuring media in ways that make them fairer and more equitable along many vectors of identity, so that media can better serve democracy. These manifestos give concrete solutions to specific problems that can and should be implemented by journalists, media practitioners, students, faculty, and scholars. The manifestos are organized around three sets of demands: for better media practices, for more participatory online spaces, and for more precise and appropriate language.

Each month brings new scientific findings that demonstrate the ways in which human activities, from resource extraction to carbon emissions, are doing unprecedented, perhaps irreparable damage to our world. As we hear these climate change reports and their predictions for the future of Earth, many of us feel a sickening sense of dÉjÀ vu, as though we have already seen the sad outcome to this story.  Drawing from recent scholarship that analyzes climate change as a form of “slow violence” that humans are inflicting on the environment, Climate Trauma theorizes that such violence is accompanied by its own psychological condition, what its author terms “Pretraumatic Stress Disorder.” Examining a variety of films that imagine a dystopian future, renowned media scholar E. Ann Kaplan considers how the increasing ubiquity of these works has exacerbated our sense of impending dread. But she also explores ways these films might help us productively engage with our anxieties, giving us a seemingly prophetic glimpse of the terrifying future selves we might still work to avoid becoming.   Examining dystopian classics like Soylent Green alongside more recent examples like The Book of Eli, Climate Trauma also stretches the limits of the genre to include features such as Blindness, The Happening, Take Shelter, and a number of documentaries on climate change. These eclectic texts allow Kaplan to outline the typical blind-spots of the genre, which rarely depicts climate catastrophe from the vantage point of women or minorities. Lucidly synthesizing cutting-edge research in media studies, psychoanalytic theory, and environmental science, Climate Trauma provides us with the tools we need to extract something useful from our nightmares of a catastrophic future.

Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century provides readers with a comprehensive survey of topics, methodologies, and theories in the discipline, drawing on contributions from leading anthropologists around the world. As a discipline, medical anthropology provides situational analysis of health, disease, and disability to show how the experiences of medical experts, patients, and their broader communities are informed by their social and cultural contexts. Adopting a keywords-driven approach, Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century provides readers with an introduction to the concepts and approaches that have animated medical anthropology over the course of the twentieth century. Authors put these keywords into dialogue with their ethnographic and archival research to demonstrate how these concepts can be expanded to address contemporary phenomena related to health, disease, and disability. Mapping Medical for the Twenty-First Century provides newcomers to medical anthropology with a robust introduction to the discipline, while providing experienced readers a set of chapters that explore the discipline in novel and exciting ways.

Shock therapy is making a comeback today in the treatment of serious mental illness. Despite its reemergence as a safe and effective psychiatric tool, however, it continues to be shrouded by a longstanding negative public image, not least due to films such as the classic One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, where the inmate of a psychiatric clinic (played by Jack Nicholson) is subjected to electro-shock to curb his rebellious behavior. Beyond its vilification in popular culture, the stereotype of convulsive therapy as a dangerous and inhumane practice is fuelled by professional posturing and public misinformation. Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, has in the last thirty years been considered a method of last resort in the treatment of debilitating depression, suicidal ideation, and other forms of mental illness. Yet, ironically, its effectiveness in treating these patients would suggest it as a frontline therapy, bringing relief from acute symptoms and saving lives. In this book, Edward Shorter and David Healy trace the controversial history of ECT and other "shock" therapies. Drawing on case studies, public debates, extensive interviews, and archival research, the authors expose the myths about ECT that have proliferated over the years. By showing ECT's often life-saving results, Shorter and Healy endorse a point of view that is hotly contested in professional circles and in public debates, but for the nearly half of all clinically depressed patients who do not respond to drugs, this book brings much needed hope.

Winner of the 2017 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological AssociationAlthough humans have long depended on oceans and aquatic ecosystems for sustenance and trade, only recently has human influence on these resources dramatically increased, transforming and undermining oceanic environments throughout the world. Marine ecosystems are in a crisis that is global in scope, rapid in pace, and colossal in scale. In The Tragedy of the Commodity, sociologists Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark explore the role human influence plays in this crisis, highlighting the social and economic forces that are at the heart of this looming ecological problem. In a critique of the classic theory “the tragedy of the commons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin, the authors move beyond simplistic explanations-such as unrestrained self-interest or population growth-to argue that it is the commodification of aquatic resources that leads to the depletion of fisheries and the development of environmentally suspect means of aquaculture. To illustrate this argument, the book features two fascinating case studies-the thousand-year history of the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean and the massive Pacific salmon fishery. Longo, Clausen, and Clark describe how new fishing technologies, transformations in ships and storage capacities, and the expansion of seafood markets combined to alter radically and permanently these crucial ecosystems. In doing so, the authors underscore how the particular organization of social production contributes to ecological degradation and an increase in the pressures placed upon the ocean. The authors highlight the historical, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape how we interact with the larger biophysical world. A path-breaking analysis of overfishing, The Tragedy of the Commodity yields insight into issues such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change.

Though today’s LGBTQ people owe a lot to the generations who came before them, their historical inheritances are not always obvious.  Working with the archives of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society, artist E.G. Crichton decided to do something to bridge this generation gap. She selected 19 innovative LGBTQ artists, writers, and musicians, then paired each of them with a deceased person whose personal artifacts are part of the archive.   Including 25 pages of vivid images, Matchmaking in the Archive documents this monumental creative project and adds essays by Jonathan D. Katz, Michelle Tea, and Chris Vargas, who describe their own unique encounters with the ghosts of LGBTQ history. Together, they make the archive come alive in remarkably intimate ways.

Explosive! Amazing! Terrifying! You won’t believe your eyes!    Such movie taglines were common in the 1950s, as Hollywood churned out a variety of low-budget pictures that were sold on the basis of their sensational content and topicality. While a few of these movies have since become canonized by film fans and critics, a number of the era’s biggest fads have now faded into obscurity. The Cool and the Crazy examines seven of these film cycles, including short-lived trends like boxing movies, war pictures, and social problem films detailing the sordid and violent life of teenagers, as well as uniquely 1950s takes on established genres like the gangster picture.  Peter Stanfield reveals how Hollywood sought to capitalize upon current events, moral panics, and popular fads, making movies that were “ripped from the headlines” on everything from the Korean War to rock and roll. As he offers careful readings of several key films, he also considers the broader historical and commercial contexts in which these films were produced, marketed, and exhibited. In the process, Stanfield uncovers surprising synergies between Hollywood and other arenas of popular culture, like the ways that the fashion trend for blue jeans influenced the 1950s Western. Delivering sharp critical insights in jazzy, accessible prose, The Cool and the Crazy offers an appreciation of cinema as a “pop” medium, unabashedly derivative, faddish, and ephemeral. By studying these long-burst bubbles of 1950s “pop,” Stanfield reveals something new about what films do and the pleasures they provide.

The concept of "un-Americanism," so vital to the HUAC crusade of the 1940s and 1950s, was resoundingly revived in the emotional rhetoric that followed the September 11th terrorist attacks. Today's political and cultural climate makes it more crucial than ever to come to terms with the consequences of this earlier period of repression and with the contested claims of Americanism that it generated."Un-American" Hollywood  reopens the intense critical debate on the blacklist era and on the aesthetic and political work of the Hollywood Left. In a series of fresh case studies focusing on contexts of production and reception, the contributors offer exciting and original perspectives on the role of progressive politics within a capitalist media industry.Original essays scrutinize the work of individual practitioners, such as Robert Rossen, Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, and Edward Dmytryk, and examine key films, including The Robe, Christ in Concrete, The House I Live In, The Lawless, The Naked City, The Prowler, Body and Soul, and FTA.

An author receives a mysterious e-mail begging her to tell the story of Clare of Assisi, the thirteenth-century Italian saint. At first annoyed by the request, the author begins to research Saint Clare and becomes captivated by her life. We too are transported into the strange and beautiful world of medieval Italy, witnessing the daily rituals of convent life. At the center of that life is Saint Clare, a subversive and compelling figure full of contradictions: a physically disabled woman who travels widely in her imagination, someone unforgivingly harsh to herself yet infinitely generous to the women she supervises, a practitioner of self-abnegation who nevertheless knows her own worth. A visionary who liberated herself from the chains of materialism and patriarchy, Saint Clare here becomes an inspirational figure for a new generation of readers.

Joyce Carol Oates’s prize-winning story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” takes up troubling subjects that continue to occupy her in her fiction: the romantic longings and limited options of adolescent women; the tensions between mothers and daughters; the sexual victimization of women; and the American obsession with violence.  Inspired by a magazine story about a serial killer, its remarkable portrait of the dreamy teenager Connie has made it a feminist classic.  Connie’s life anticipates the emergence of American society from the social innocence of the fifties into the harsher contemporary realities of war, random violence, and crime.  The story was the basis for the movie Smooth Talk, which became the subject of much feminist debate.This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Oates’s life, an authoritative text of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” an essay by Oates on Smooth Talk, the original Life article about the serial killer, ten critical essays (including two about the film), and a bibliography.The contributors are Brenda O. Daly, Christina Marsden Gillis, Don Moser, Tom Quirk, B. Ruby Rich, R.J.R. Rockwood, Larry Rubin, Gretchen Schulz, Marie Mitchell Oleson Urbanski, Joyce M. Wegs, Marilyn C. Wesley, and Joan D. Winslow.

Home Girls, the pioneering anthology of Black feminist thought, features writing by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and contains work by many of feminism's foremost thinkers. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides Barbara Smith the opportunity to look back on forty years of the struggle, as well as the influence the work in this book has had on generations of feminists. The preface from the previous Rutgers edition remains, as well as all of the original pieces, set in a fresh new package. Contributors: Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willi (Willie) M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Spears Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita J. Weems.

What do we know about the women who played an important role in creating the literature of the Beat Generation? Until recently, very little. Studies of the movement have effaced or excluded women writers, such as Elise Cowen, Joyce Johnson, Joanne Kyger, Hettie Jones, and Diane Di Prima, each one a significant figure of the postwar Beat communities. Equally free-thinking and innovative as the founding generation of men, women writers, fluent in Beat, hippie, and women's movement idioms, partook of and bridged two important countercultures of the American mid-century. Persistently foregrounding female experiences in the cold war 1950s and in the counterculture 1960s and in every decade up to the millennium, women writing Beat have brought nonconformity, skepticism, and gender dissent to postmodern culture and literary production in the United States and beyond.

Between 1890 and 1920, the forces accompanying industrialization sent the familiar nineteenth-century world plummeting toward extinction. The traditional countryside with its villages and family farms was eclipsed by giant corporations and sprawling cities. America appeared headed into an unknown future.In lively, accessible prose, John Chambers incorporates the latest scholarship about the social, cultural, political, and economic changes which produced modern America. He illuminates the experiences of blacks, Asians, Latinos, as well as other working men and women in the cities and countryside as they struggled to improve their lives in a transformed economy. He explores the dimensions of the new consumer society and the new information and entertainment industries: newspapers, magazines, the movies. Striding these pages are many of the prominent individuals who shaped the attitudes and institutions of modern America: J. P. Morgan and corporate reorganization; Jane Addams and the origin of modern social work; Mary Pickford and the new star-oriented motion picture industry; and the radical labor challenge of “Big Bill” Haywood and the “Wobblies.”While recognizing a “progressive ethos”-a mixture of idealistic vision and pragmatic reforms-which dominated the mainstream reforms that characterized the period, Chambers elaborates the role of civic volunteerism as well as the state in achieving directed social change. He also emphasizes the importance of radical and conservative political forces in shaping the so-called “Progressive Era.”The revised edition in this classic work has an updated bibliography and a new preface, both of which incorporate particularly the new social and cultural research of the past decade.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the U.S. Left in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. An outstanding orator, writer, and tactician, Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of the American labor movement. Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, she devoted her life to the advancement of civil liberties. Here, Mary Anne Trasciatti traces Flynn’s personal and political life to explore the broader social issues of a fraught era.  Born in 1890, Flynn began her activist career by joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) when she was just sixteen, and she ended it as the first female chair of the American Communist Party, a position she held from 1961 until her death in 1964. In the intervening years she organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women’s rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportation, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Above all, she showed absolute devotion to workers and their struggles.  Slandered as an “un-American” in the anticommunist fervor of the 1940s and 1950s, Flynn was eventually ousted from the very organization she helped found, the American Civil Liberties Union, and imprisoned for two years. Though her own movement abandoned her, her commitment to the cause never wavered. This stirring biography illuminates Flynn’s inspiring life and worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of labor and civil liberties history.

2017 EISNER AWARD NOMINEE for Best Academic/Scholarly WorkIn the late 1970s and early 1980s, writer-artist Frank Miller turned Daredevil from a tepid-selling comic into an industry-wide success story, doubling its sales within three years. Lawyer by day and costumed vigilante by night, the character of Daredevil was the perfect vehicle for the explorations of heroic ideals and violence that would come to define Miller’s work.    Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism is both a rigorous study of Miller’s artistic influences and innovations and a reflection on how his visionary work on Daredevil impacted generations of comics publishers, creators, and fans. Paul Young explores the accomplishments of Miller the writer, who fused hardboiled crime stories with superhero comics, while reimagining Kingpin (a classic Spider-Man nemesis), recuperating the half-baked villain Bullseye, and inventing a completely new kind of Daredevil villain in Elektra. Yet, he also offers a vivid appreciation of the indelible panels drawn by Miller the artist, taking a fresh look at his distinctive page layouts and lines.   A childhood fan of Miller’s Daredevil, Young takes readers on a personal journey as he seeks to reconcile his love for the comic with his distaste for the fascistic overtones of Miller’s controversial later work. What he finds will resonate not only with Daredevil fans, but with anyone who has contemplated what it means to be a hero in a heartless world.    Other titles in the Comics Culture series include Twelve-Cent Archie, Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948, and Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics.

2006 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleThousands of religious traditions have appeared over the course of human history but only a relative few have survived. Some speak of a myriad of gods, others of only one, and some recognize no gods at all. Volumes have been written attempting to prove the existence or nonexistence of supernatural being(s). So, if religion is not about God, then what is it about?In this provocative book, Loyal Rue contends that religion, very basically, is about us. Successful religions are narrative (myth) traditions that influence human nature so that we might think, feel, and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively. Through the use of images, symbols, and rituals, religion promotes reproductive fitness and survival through the facilitation of harmonious social relations. Drawing on examples from the major traditions-Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism-Rue shows how each religion, in its own way, has guided human behavior to advance the twin goals of personal fulfillment and social coherence.As all faiths are increasingly faced with a crisis of intellectual plausibility and moral relevance, this book presents a compelling and positive view of the centrality and meaning of religion.

From The Wild Angels in 1966 until its conclusion in 1972, the cycle of outlaw motorcycle films contained forty-odd formulaic examples. All but one were made by independent companies that specialized in producing exploitation movies for drive-ins, neighborhood theaters, and rundown inner city theaters. Despised by critics, but welcomed by exhibitors denied first-run films, these cheaply and quickly produced movies were made to appeal to audiences of mobile youths. The films are repetitive, formulaic, and eminently forgettable, but there is a story to tell about all of the above, and it is one worth hearing. Hoodlum Movies is not only about the films, its focus is on why and how these films were made, who they were made for, and how the cycle developed through the second half of the 1960s and came to a shuddering halt in 1972.

The 2010s might be remembered as a time of increased polarization in American life. The decade contained both the Obama era and the Trump era, and as the nation’s political fissures widened, so did the gap between the haves and have-nots. Hollywood reflected these divisions, choosing to concentrate on big franchise blockbusters at the expense of mid-budget films, while new players like Netflix and Amazon offered fresh opportunities for low-budget and independent filmmakers. As the movie business changed, films ranging from American Sniper to Get Out found ways to speak to the concerns of a divided nation.  The newest installment in the Screen Decades series, American Cinema in the 2010s takes a close look at the memorable movies, visionary filmmakers, and behind-the-scenes drama that made this decade such an exciting time to be a moviegoer. Each chapter offers an in-depth examination of a specific year, covering a wide variety of films, from blockbuster superhero movies like Black Panther and animated films like Frozen to smaller-budget biopics like I, Tonya and horror films like Hereditary. This volume introduces readers to a decade in which established auteurs like Quentin Tarantino were joined by an exceptionally diverse set of new talents, taking American cinema in new directions.

During a one-hundred-day period in 1994, Hutus murdered between half a million and a million Tutsi in Rwanda. The numbers are staggering; the methods of killing were unspeakable. Utilizing personal interviews with trauma survivors living in Rwandan cities, towns, and dusty villages, We Cannot Forget relates what happened during this period and what their lives were like both prior to and following the genocide.Through powerful stories that are at once memorable, disturbing, and informative, readers gain a critical sense of the tensions and violence that preceded the genocide, how it erupted and was carried out, and what these people faced in the first sixteen years following the genocide.

Nominated for the 2022 Eisner Award - Best Academic/Scholarly Work The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse tells the remarkable story of how a self-described "preacher's kid" from Birmingham, Alabama, became the so-called "Godfather of Gay Comics." This study showcases a remarkable fifty-year career that included working in the 1970s underground comics scene, becoming founding editor of the groundbreaking anthology series Gay Comix, and publishing the graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, partially based on his own experience of coming of age in the Civil Rights era.    Through his exploration of Cruse's life and work, Andrew J. Kunka also chronicles the dramatic ways that gay culture changed over the course of Cruse's lifetime, from Cold War-era homophobia to the gay liberation movement to the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage. Highlighting Cruse's skills as a trenchant satirist and social commentator, Kunka explores how he cast a queer look at American politics, mainstream comics culture, and the gay community's own norms.   Lavishly illustrated with a broad selection of comics from Cruse's career, this study serves as a perfect introduction to this pioneering cartoonist, as well as an insightful read for fans who already love how his work sketched a new vision of gay life.

This book is a plea and a plan for a more daring form of climate politics. In the United States, the climate movement has failed in the all-important task of shutting down fossil fuels. Elected politicians – even those who support renewable energy - remain committed to the extraction of petroleum and methane. Those industries have effectively captured the federal government, converting it into a petrostate. What is to be done? Hughes proposes a widespread and sustained campaign of sabotage against fossil fuels. His strategy is risky and unlawful – but not entirely unpopular. Libertarians and other lovers of private property object to the construction of pipelines across farms and ranches. In trials of saboteurs, they could exercise the little-known power of jury nullification to make pipelines unprotectable. With trepidation, Hughes offers this last resort against the approaching climate catastrophe. Time is short, unfortunately, and we are running out of better options.

Although she remains one of the all-time most recognizable Hollywood icons, Marilyn Monroe has seldom been ranked among the greatest actors of her generation. Critics have typically viewed her film roles as mere extensions of her sexpot star persona. Yet this ignores both the subtle variations between these roles and the acting skill that went into the creation of Monroe’s public persona.  Some Kind of Mirror offers the first extended scholarly analysis of Marilyn Monroe’s film performances, examining how they united the contradictory discourses about women’s roles in 1950s America. Amanda Konkle suggests that Monroe’s star persona resonated with audiences precisely because it engaged with the era’s critical debates regarding femininity, sexuality, marriage, and political activism. Furthermore, she explores how Monroe drew from the techniques of Method acting and finely calibrated her performances to better mirror her audience’s anxieties and desires.  Drawing both from Monroe’s filmography and from 1950s fan magazines, newspaper reports, and archived film studio reports, Some Kind of Mirror considers how her star persona was coauthored by the actress, the Hollywood publicity machine, and the fans who adored her. It is about why 1950s America made Monroe a star, but it is also about how Marilyn defined an era.

In the Godfather Garden is the true story of the life of Richie “the Boot” Boiardo, one of the most powerful and feared men in the New Jersey underworld. The Boot cut his teeth battling the Jewish gang lord Abner Longy Zwillman on the streets of Newark during Prohibition and endured to become one of the East Coast’s top mobsters, his reign lasting six decades. To the press and the police, this secretive Don insisted he was nothing more than a simple man who enjoyed puttering about in his beloved vegetable garden on his Livingston, New Jersey, estate. In reality, the Boot was a confidante and kingmaker of politicians, a friend of such celebrities as Joe DiMaggio and George Raft, an acquaintance of Joseph Valachi-who informed on the Boot in 1963-and a sworn enemy of J. Edgar Hoover. The Boot prospered for more than half a century, remaining an active boss until the day he died at the age of ninety-three. Although he operated in the shadow of bigger Mafia names across the Hudson River (think Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a cofounder of the Mafia killer squad Murder Inc. with Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro), the Boot was equally as brutal and efficient. In fact, there was a mysterious place in the gloomy woods behind his lovely garden-a furnace where many thought the Boot took certain people who were never seen again.Richard Linnett provides an intimate look inside the Boot’s once-powerful Mafia crew, based on the recollections of a grandson of the Boot himself and complemented by never-before-published family photos. Chronicled here are the Prohibition gang wars in New Jersey as well as the murder of Dutch Schultz, a Mafia conspiracy to assassinate Newark mayor Kenneth Gibson, and the mob connections to several prominent state politicians. Although the Boot never saw the 1972 release of The Godfather, he appreciated the similarities between the character of Vito Corleone and himself, so much so that he hung a sign in his beloved vegetable garden that read “The Godfather Garden.” There’s no doubt he would have relished David Chase’s admission that his muse in creating the HBO series The Sopranos was none other than “Newark’s erstwhile Boiardo crew.”