Distributed Presses

With election mania in full swing, we invited film scholar Michael Coyne, author of Hollywood Goes to Washington: American Politics on Screen, to provide some must-see film clips that reveal how politics and the popular media are often entangled:

There's a long history of the interchangeability of the celebrity of politics and the politics of celebrity. The most obvious examples are John Kennedy, the President with the movie-star face, and Ronald Reagan, the ex-movie star who became President.

But films have at times certainly tried to shape political opinion. One famous example of Hollywood's deliberate intervention into the realm of politics was Louis B. Mayer's and Irving Thalberg's filmed contribution to the 1934 campaign for the Governorship of California, in which they successfully depicted Democratic challenger Upton Sinclair as the candidate of malcontents, misfits, radicals and foreigners, and the GOP incumbent Frank Merriam as the stalwart protector of American home and hearth. Similarly, due to a series of devastating TV ads, Lyndon Johnson was able to present himself as the candidate of peace and stability in 1964, in contrast to Barry Goldwater, who was painted as reckless, hellbent on smashing Social Security and apt to provoke nuclear war. Who can forget the effectiveness of the infamous “Daisy Girl” ad, conjuring up the drama and terror of atomic holocaust, and representing LBJ as the world's great hope for peace?:

Continue reading " Presidential Politics on the Big Screen" »

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Posted to Film and Media | Press Releases | Reaktion

Photographer Eddee Daniel, author of Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, was recently interviewed on Milwaukee's "Morning Blend." In Urban Wilderness, Daniel guides us down the waterways of the Menomonee watershed and reveals how preserving urban rivers is key the quality of life and economic success of a thriving city such as Milwaukee. See the complete interview, including images from the interior of the book, here.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Author Events | Center for American Places | Press Releases

With the Chicago Cubs about to begin their postseason series against the LA Dodgers on Wednesday night, we asked Dana press author and loyal Cubs fan, Dan Gordon, to give us some insight into the minds of Cub fans everywhere:

Baseball's playoffs are approaching, and we Cubs fans are looking forward to them with a complex mix of anticipation and dread. Will they make a quick exit, as they did in 2007? Will they instead get tantalizingly close to the World Series, as they did in 2003, only to break our hearts? Could we dream, dare I say it, of a championship?

As editor of Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans, my perspective has changed in the past couple of years. I know just how much baseball is a brain game, for fans as well as players. My hope despite past disappointment has something to do with, yes, my frontal lobe (see chapter 1). I even know a little bit about how we can believe in a baseball "curse," even though there's no scientific evidence of such a thing (chapter 4).

Of course, my biggest hope is that I'll be rereading chapter 7 joyously, rather than for consolation. You guessed it—that one's about agony and ecstasy in the brain. To put it another way, it's not whether they win or lose—it's whether they win.

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Posted to Dana Press | Press Releases | Psychology

Newly published this month is The Other Venice, a lyrical collection of nonfiction essays written by prolific essayist Predrag Matvejević and translated by Russell Valentino. Matvejević plumbs the depths of Venice's canals and peers into its narrow alleys, reimagining this ancient city through the people, places, and ideas that flourished within its confines. Whether the trattoria and taverns that line the canals, the culinary history of regional bread and breadmaking, or the excavation of islands and ships from swampy lagoons, The Other Venice infuses the city with the mystery and intrigue of ancient traditions and treasured secrets. An intimate and compelling travel memoir, The Other Venice sweeps us into an unfamiliar cityscape where the mysteries of the Old World mingle with modern life.

Read The Other Venice press release.

Learn more about The Other Venice.

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Posted to Literature | Press Releases | Publicity | Reaktion

Byron Coley and Thurston Moore reviewed New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg in the most recent issue of Arthur Magazine. Nestled in amongst the album reviews of Coley and Moore's "Bull Tongue" section, we find:

. . . New York Calling is a really great anthology. Everybody we talk to who remembers New York before it became a fucking Disney subsidiary moans about the current lack of soul on Gotham's streets. . . .

New York Calling collects essays by a swell bunch of writers—from Jim Knipfel to Richard Meltzer to Tom Robbins to Robert Sietsema—all of whom memorialize things and people and places that seem to have been lost forever. It's a wonderful read. . . .

Visit the Arthur Magazine Site

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Posted to Cultural Studies | History | Press Releases | Reaktion

The archetypal Western conjures up images of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or even the Lone Ranger—the solitary cowboy shooting his way through uncivilized country. But in its nascent form, the Western was a complex genre that embraced surprisingly diverse themes. In The West in Early Cinema, Nanna Verhoeff examines the earliest films made between 1894 and 1915, and reveals how the films meditate on a world far beyond the West, speaking to the relentless march of civilization.

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Posted to Amsterdam University Press | Film and Media | Press Releases

In his fascinating new book, Jonathan D. Moreno investigates the deeply intertwined worlds of cutting-edge brain science, U.S. defense agencies, and a volatile geopolitical landscape where a nation's weaponry must go far beyond bombs and men. The first-ever exploration of the connections between national security and brain research, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense reveals how many questions crowd this gray intersection of science and government and urges us to begin to answer them.

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Posted to Dana Press | History and Philosophy of Science | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases

Wave-rocked boats, stoic villagers, windswept vistas of the seashores: the paintings of Winslow Homer have long been iconic representations of American life and landscapes. Yet, his works had a richer and deeper scope than many realize. Winslow Homer: Poet of the Sea opens up a new door in the scholarship on Winslow Homer's work as it investigates the integral role of the sea.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Press Releases | Terra Foundation for American Art

For most of us, neuroscience research is a rarified world of laboratory experiments that has little to do with our everyday lives. Yet, sooner than we may expect, new discoveries in neuroscience will directly affect the way we live, work, and think. Acclaimed science writer Sandra Ackerman has been on the front lines of the ethical debates in neuroscience, and in Hard Science, Hard Choices she offers a concise, yet informed, examination of the ethical challenges facing neuroscience today.

Top scholars and scientists in neuroscience, law, and ethics convened at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., last May to debate the latest findings in neuroscience and their potential impact on society. Ackerman's clear, engaging narrative synthesizes their discussions and explores the controversial issues that emerged with the newest neuroscience discoveries. The volume is divided into three topics—Neuroimaging, Drugs on the Brain, and Neurotechnology—and each section examines the numerous facets of neuroscience's ethical quandaries. From the definition of consciousness in brain damaged patients, to the long-term health effects of Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs on children, to the use of neuroimaging in courts of law, Hard Science, Hard Choices reveals that the consequences of brain research are not tomorrow's problems—we have already entered uncharted scientific territory.

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Posted to Biology | Dana Press | History and Philosophy of Science | Math and Physics | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases

The sight of blooming flowers and lush green fields fills some people with dread. Cuddly kittens and puppies cause others to cry instead of smile. And a bumblebee will send many running for the nearest building. Why? It's all due to one of the most subtle yet widespread medical afflictions of our times: the allergy.

In this engaging and groundbreaking social history, Mark Jackson unearths the rich and wide-ranging roots of this "modern malady." Until the early twentieth century, the allergy didn't even exist. And even when it was first diagnosed in the early 1900s, the allergy was merely considered a rare affliction of the affluent and it subsisted as a scorned subfield of immunological research. Yet with advances in medical research and the rapidly increasing number of diagnoses, doctors quickly realized that the allergy knew no bounds of race or class.

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Posted to Biology | History and Philosophy of Science | Press Releases | Reaktion

Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the bombing of British cathedrals in World War II, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on September 11: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The Destruction of Memory reveals the extent to which a nation weds itself to its landscape; Robert Bevan argues that such destruction not only shatters a nation's culture and morale but is also a deliberate act of eradicating a culture's memory and, ultimately, its existence.

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Read an Excerpt

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases | Reaktion

Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the bombing of British cathedrals in World War II, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on September 11: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The Destruction of Memory reveals the extent to which a nation weds itself to its landscape; Robert Bevan argues that such destruction not only shatters a nation's culture and morale but is also a deliberate act of eradicating a culture's memory and, ultimately, its existence.

Read an Excerpt at The Australian

Abe Hayeem's Review in Building Design

Lucy Daniel's Review in Finanancial Times

Steven Poole's Review in The Guardian

Dan Cruickshank's Review in The Independent

Featured on BBC 4's Front Row on January 26th.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Press Releases | Reaktion

The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum recently conducted a survey that shows a sampling of the adult population in the United States finds it easier to recall the five main characters from The Simpsons than to name the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Approximately one in five adults could name all five Simpsons. Only one in one thousand could name all five freedoms.

Here is the apparently obscure, but beloved amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Visit the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum's Site

Visit the National Archives

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Posted to Books for the News | Chicago | Commentary | Education | Law | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases

We throw away tons of trash every day, and often never consider where it goes after the garbage truck picks it up. But the fate of the discarded fragments of our lives is a long journey, one which ultimately ends at isolated sites and lots across America. Photographers John Willis and Tom Young spent nearly four years documenting one such site, as they captured the subtle yet powerful narratives hidden within the paper waste bales at a mill in western Massachusetts. The result is Recycled Realities, a compelling visual essay of their explorations.


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John Willis' web site

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Center for American Places | Press Releases

From National Lampoon's Vacation to the disastrous camping trips immortalized in Calvin and Hobbes, the American family vacation has often been portrayed as a non-stop comedy of errors. But despite the often humorous complications, a family vacation is also an earnest escape from ordinary life and all its relentless demands. Many families do not retreat to luxurious resorts and tropical getaways, but instead go to city parks, public beaches, or even their own backyards to find relief and relaxation. Justin Kimball chronicles in Where We Find Ourselves this poignant slice of American life, capturing the gritty outdoor environments where ordinary people take vacations and the complex interactions that occur there.

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Visit Justin Kimball's web site

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Center for American Places | Press Releases

There is certainly no shortage of biographies of Pablo Picasso. In fact, there has been so much written on the artist that the uninitiated--the general reader looking for basic and contextual information--might not know where to turn. Pablo Picasso by Mary Ann Caws solves this problem. Fresh, lean, and highly accessible, Pablo Picasso offers an introduction to the life and work of the Spanish master, focusing on his relationships with seminal figures of twentieth-century cultural life.


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Posted to Art and Architecture | Press Releases | Reaktion

You heard it in President Bush's "State of the Union" address. America needs more investment for basic research programs in the physical sciences. Always ahead of the curve, Temporary Services and Whitewalls now bring you Prisoners' Inventions, highlighting the work of the incarcerated.

Imagine that your house is only six by nine feet, your mattress is just two inches thick, you are known solely by an identification number, and nearly all basic necessities are outlawed or severely limited. How do the over 2 million prison inmates who live like this throughout the United States function day-to-day? In 2001, the artists' collective Temporary Services asked an incarcerated artist named Angelo to document the myriad ways that prisoners adapt to their confinement. The resulting compilation offered here, Prisoners' Inventions, is a wholly original work that reveals a rarely seen aspect of prison life.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Press Releases | Whitewalls

In 2004, alarm bells sounded nationwide with the release of the National Endowment for the Arts' report "Reading at Risk." The report declared that less than half of the American adult population read literature for pleasure and thus American literary culture was in dire straits. But now there is hope with the publication of The Reader, a witty and engaging literary magazine that celebrates the act of reading and the joys of literature in all their facets.

This newest issue examines "Americans" on the literary stage, with a fascinating range of articles that ably tackle the broad subject. Features include essays on Carson McCullers, Anne Bradstreet, and Toni Morrison; a piece by Lawrence Weschler on Rebecca Solnit; and an essay on the Brooklyn Bridge by Erica Wagner. The issue also contains regular features such as a literary quiz, book reviews, new fiction and poetry, and a publishing industry gossip column "Our Spy in NY." A rich and engaging quarterly for the book lover and bibliophile, The Reader throws open the door of the literary world to readers from all walks of life.


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Posted to Literature | Liverpool University Press | Press Releases

"I'm gonna get medieval on yo' ass." When Marsellus Wallace declares this statement in the film Pulp Fiction, we know he is about to bring down an especially fierce and exacting punishment. But is the cultural gulf between medieval times and the present day actually as wide as we imagine? Robert Mills examines here how medieval literature and images of sexuality, torture, and religious ecstasy resonate today with contemporary issues, revealing that the chasm between medieval times and modernity is smaller than one might imagine.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | History | Medieval and Renaissance | Press Releases | Reaktion

Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Medium, Criminal Minds: Psychology plays an increasingly larger role in today's popular conceptions of police crime solving. But it's not just on television. The psyches of criminals, witnesses, and law enforcement officers are becoming an ever more important part of prosecuting and solving cases, and The Popular Policeman and Other Cases skillfully dissects this complex new dynamic operating in legal systems around the world. . . .


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Posted to Amsterdam University Press | Press Releases | Psychology

"A testament to the right-on spirit of 1967 and a document of a complex period when 'turn on, tune in, drop out' was a political mantra. . . . This provides a welcome reminder." The Guardian

"A mesmerising attempt to revive interest in the liberating spirit of the pyschedelic moment." New Statesman

"Turn on, tune in, drop out": That mantra defined the 1960s, and from tie-dyed shirts to Cream record album covers, psychedelic was the name of the gave--a kitschy mix of stream-of-consciousness poetry, surrealistic music, vividly colored dreamy art, and acid-dropping hippies too strung out to know what was going on. Or so the story goes. Summer of Love reclaims psychedelia from this realm of drug-related kitsch, offering a rare in-depth examination of psychedelia's true power as a social aesthetic and how it was intedgral to the powerful poliitcal shockwaves that reverbertated throughout America and Europe in the 1960s.

Summer of Love dives into the heart of the decade's madness: the LSD parties and "acid-evangelists," iconic fashions, artist collectives, and the radical politics that upended meanings of freedom, art, and justice. Jonathan Harris and Christoph Grunenberg gather here a fresh and incisive collection of essays that explore how psychedelia, in its multiple visual and chemical manifestations, was the engine of the counterculture. The contributors expolore a fascinating range of topics--from the ocunterculture in San Francisco to the psychedelic scenes in New York and "swinging London"; and from the art of Andy Warhol and the Beatles' seminal Sgt. Pepper album to the complex and volatile anti-war and civil rights movements

An unparallelled re-evalutation of 1960's psychedelia and its legacy, Summer of Love offers a profound and considered examination of an oft-referenced but still poorly understood pivotal era in modern history.

Christoph Grunenberg is director of Tate Liverpool, where he curated the recent exhibition "Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era." Jonathan Harris is professor of art history at the University of LIverpool. He is author of several books, including Art, Money, Parties: New Institutions in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art; Federal Art and National Culture; and The New Art History: A Critical Introduction.

Christoph Grunenberg and Jonathan Harris are available for interviews. Please contact Harriett Green at (773) 702-4217 for more information

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Posted to History | Liverpool University Press | Press Releases