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In the current edition of the American Interest, reviewer James Rosen delivers a positive assessment of Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites' recent book, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Praising the book for its thorough treatment of nine case studies involving some of the most influential images of the twentieth century, Rosen writes:

[No Caption Needed] is a penetrating and provocative analysis of the way certain popular photographs, whether produced by professionals or amateurs, acquire the power to change public policy and with it the course of history.… The author's analytical achievement is enabled by an extraordinary feat of research and reporting. They have unearthed hidden facts, from both the backstory and the aftermath, surrounding each of their nine chosen photographs.…

[But] almost as compelling… are the stories of their subsequent appropriation. No Caption Needed details the uses and abuses of these nine iconic photographs by propagandists and peddlers of all kinds, with results that prove alternately haunting, playful, predictable, mercenary, dishonest and sometimes just plain twisted.…

Pick up a copy of the American Interest to read the rest of the review.
Also see the authors' No Caption Needed blog and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Louis Lucaites, author of No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy has posted an apropos commentary about the Earth Day themed cover image on today's Time Magazine to his No Caption Needed blog. Detailing a photoshopped version of Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of WWII troops on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi raising a giant conifer in place of the flag, Lucaites makes the image an occasion to deliver some interesting commentary on the history of the original photograph's appropriation and the particularly fetishistic way that the Time Magazine editors have chosen to use it today. Lucaites writes:

By most accounts Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi is the most reproduced photograph of all time—ever!…

Such reproductions have occurred not just in traditional print media, but on stamps (twice), commemorative plates, woodcuts, silk screens, coins, key chains, cigarette lighters, matchbook covers, beer steins, lunchboxes, hats, t-shirts, ties, calendars, comic books, credit cards, trading cards, post cards, and human skin, and in advertisements for everything from car insurance to condoms and strip joints.…

All of this is to say that on the face of things there is nothing particularly noteworthy about Time's appropriation of the image this week to frame and promote its "green" agenda in a special issue on the "War on Global Warming," … but my interest here is in mapping out how the particular appropriation of the original photograph coaches an attitude that seems to rely on tired and clichéd conceptions of American exceptionalism. Put simply, it is not just an appeal to be "green" (although it is that), but it also functions to translate the meaning of being "green" into a symbolic register that both defines environmentalism in terms of U.S. nationalism—"green is the new red, white, and blue"—and, more, makes something of an imperialistic fetish out of it.

Read the rest of Lucaites piece on the No Caption Needed blog, or read an excerpt from Lucaite's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Roger Ebert is arguably one of the twentieth century's most influential film critics, and since his departure from the spotlight several years ago, his presence at the helm of his award winning show At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, or as the Chicago Sun-Times resident film critic, has been missed by film buffs the world over. Now, Ebert will finally make his return, even though, as the New York Time's A. O. Scott reports, he will be leaving TV behind:

One of the guys… who made the crazy idea that movie critics could thrive on TV seem like a no-brainer, recently announced his departure from the airwaves. On April 1 Roger Ebert published a letter to readers of the Chicago Sun-Times that was essentially a farewell to the long-running, widely syndicated weekly program that has made him not simply the best-known movie reviewer in America, but the virtual embodiment of this curious profession.

But the real news in Mr. Ebert's letter was his return to regular written criticism. A recurrence of cancer of the salivary gland in the summer of 2006 might have left him unable to speak—a problem recent surgery failed to solve—but he has hardly lost his voice.…

And you can find some of the best of Ebert's writing in the recent, Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, featuring reviews, interviews, and essays on everything from The Godfather to GoodFellas, from Cries and Whispers to Crash.

Archived in Books for the News | Film and Media
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How many videos are available on YouTube? That number isn't easy to find. But consider this: ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. The simile about drinking from a firehose doesn't do justice to the flood.

How can you find anything worth watching in a collection of content exploding like a super nova? Well, you could rely on the wisdom of the crowd and restrict your YouTube viewing to just those videos that are rated five stars. How many is that? I heard that cited a few weeks ago as seven million, which means it's probably up to eight million now. Have at it. Five stars has got to be good, right?

Or you could be guided by Dan Colman at Open Culture who has assembled a list of "50+ Smart Video Collections on YouTube." We are happy to see our YouTube channel among them.

Colman's list is interesting in a number of ways. A YouTube channel is like a publisher's imprint—it reflects editorial direction and judgment. Gather quality imprints and you have a quality collection of content. The obvious need to compile such a list exhibits the dysfunctional aspects of YouTube: the system of search and recommendation does not work well enough to find relevant, high-quality content.

That's reminiscent of the early days of the worldwide web, when many users compiled and posted lists of worthwhile websites, simply because the existing search engines were so bad at finding good content. On the strength of such recommendations the Google search algorithm gained traction and, eventually, dominance.

Maybe a search engine will be invented that can find quality video content or maybe a critical role will need to be played by producers whose imprimatur signifies quality and the collection-building skills of people like Dan Colman. Or to put it another way: the functionality of Web 2.0 can disintermediate content, but it seems apparent that the navigational skills of publishers and librarians are still needed in the vast sea stretching before us.

Archived in Commentary | Film and Media
Posted by DB at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy authors Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites undertook a fascinating survey of some of the most iconic images of the last century, analyzing their profound effects on the American political and social landscape. Since the 2007 publication of their book, the authors have also started a blog where they continue their critique of the role that photojournalism and other visual practices play in democratic society, bringing their ideas to bear on current issues and new media in real-time.

Today's posting showcases the work of another UCP author, photographer Ashley Gilbertson and his extraordinary images of the war in Iraq which have illustrated the pages of the New York Times and other publications since the beginning of the U. S. invasion in 2003. The No Caption Needed blog offers a brief slide show of Gilbertson's work taken from his recent book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. Navigate to www.nocaptionneeded.com to check it out as well as read the other insightful critiques of visual media the author's offer.

To find out more about Gilbertson's book see the press's special website featuring an exclusive half-hour interview with the author where he relates his experiences photographing the war in Iraq as well as some of the his own ideas about the importance and impact of his images on public culture.

Archived in Books for the News | Film and Media | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Based on Eric Klinenberg's Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, a new play by Steven Simoncic looks at the 1995 heat wave that hit the city of Chicago with 106 degree temperatures and caused the deaths of over seven hundred people—one of the deadliest disasters in Chicago's history. Reviewing the play for the Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Heidi Weiss writes:

Mayor Daley is known to be an avid theatergoer. But it's unlikely that he, or City Council members, or a slew of officials from major city agencies who were on the job during the summer of 1995, will be stopping in at Pegasus Players in the coming weeks to catch Heat Wave. If they do, they will be subjected to a most uncomfortable two hours.

As for everyone else, this world premiere (produced with Live Bait Theater) will serve as a vivid reminder of a moment when (a decade before Hurricane Katrina) both municipal government and that far more diffuse thing that might be termed "the human safety net" failed miserably.

More about the play is available at the Pegasus players website. More about the book is at our website and in our interview with Eric Klinenberg.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Film and Media | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
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Marcia Lausen's recent book, Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design took center stage in an article on ballot design appearing in last Sunday's International Herald Tribune. Noting the relevance of Lausen's book, Alice Rawsthorn writes for the IHT:

With Super Tuesday now behind us, and the November 2008 presidential election looming, it seems timely to consider how to avoid a repetition of the 2000 punch-card catastrophe. Marcia Lausen, a graphic designer and professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, does so in the book Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design. As well as analyzing what went wrong in Florida eight years ago, she suggests how the design of ballots and the rest of the voting process could be improved in the future.…

Often, good information design is rooted in sticking to simple rules. Obvious though many of those rules may seem, the U.S. electoral debacle of 2000 illustrates the peril of ignoring them, while Lausen's book shows how effective they can be.

Read the rest of the article on the IHT website.

Also see the Design for Democracy website produced by the book's co-publishers, the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Archived in Film and Media | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Kevin Rozario's The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America was one of several books in a review essay about America's complex relationship with disaster published in last Friday's Financial Times. Arguing that American's find disaster simultaneously terrifying and entertaining, the FT's Michael Skapinker uses Rozario's book to help explain this social paradox, especially in terms of the way this conflicted attitude is reflected in the media. Skapinker writes:

Kevin Rozario, who teaches American studies at Smith College, Massachusetts, writes astutely about disaster, particularly its relationship with entertainment. As he notes in The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America, the link predates the modern movie industry.

A few months after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent fires, Lucile Garrett went with her parents to see a re-enactment of the event at a theatre in Minneapolis. "On the stage," she recalled, "was a miniature reproduction of San Francisco, on the night of the fire … Then suddenly we were favoured with a great rumbling! The hills on which the city was built shook and tottered! … Finally the hills cracked open, the tottering buildings fell, and the whole city burst into flames. It continued to burn for some minutes and at last they lowered the curtain on the glorious blaze."

Like the events of September 11 almost a century later, the terrible filmic quality of disasters is often inescapable. Anthony Lane, the New Yorker critic, wrote in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: "Of course you could argue that last Tuesday was an instant dismissal of the fantastic—that people gazed up into the sky and immediately told themselves that this was the real thing. Yet all the evidence suggests the contrary; it was the television commentators as well as those on the ground who resorted to a phrase book culled from the cinema: 'It was like a movie', 'It was like Independence Day.' 'It was like Die Hard.' 'No, Die Hard 2.'

Read the rest of the article on the FT website.

Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Books for the News | Film and Media | History | Sociology
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Last Thursday the Times Higher Education ran an enthusiastic review of Vanessa R. Schwartz's new book It's So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture. In the review THE contributor and professor of film studies Ginette Vincendeau notes how the thesis of Schwartz's book makes a fascinating departure from conventional views about the relationship between the postwar French and American film industries. Vincendeau's review begins:

In this provocative and original book, the American cultural historian Vanessa Schwartz revisits the vexed question of Franco-American cinematic relations in the postwar period. Much has been written on the subject, but Schwartz has no time for clichés about French "protectionism" or American "imperialism". Instead, the central thesis of It's so French! Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture is that the French and the Americans were much more receptive (even affectionate) towards each other than Cold War-inspired rhetoric has made out. Furthermore, France as represented in American and French films of the 1950s and 1960s was key to the development of "cosmopolitan film culture".

Contrary to the common view that pits French art cinema against commercial Hollywood films, Schwartz claims that from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s American representations of Frenchness successfully merged high art and popular culture, and French cinema meant more than highbrow auteur films. This she demonstrates via a set of major French cultural icons, from belle époque Paris to Brigitte Bardot.

The review concludes:

It's so French!, based on impressive scholarship and superbly illustrated, builds a solid case for France's role in the growth of "cosmopolitan film culture".

The book is a stimulating corrective to entrenched views of Franco-American cinematic relations as necessarily conflictual.

Read the rest of the review on the THE website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Reviews
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In a news release from Vanderbilt University's news office, John G. Geer, author of In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns observes that Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire may mean that she and her supporters direct fewer negative attacks at Barack Obama. But Geer does not necessarily see this as a good thing:

"The public would be better served if all of the remaining candidates undergo this type of scrutiny.… Many pundits view negative ads as counterproductive, but nothing could be further from the truth."

Geer said that there are many incentives for candidates in both parties to run negative ads that address legitimate issues. "Attack ads contain more substantive information than positive ads," he said. "Therefore, they generate a dialogue that helps voters understand the respective positions of the candidates."

In addition, attack ads toughen up the eventual nominee for the general election, when the attacks will come faster and harder. "How candidates handle the criticism will provide insight to how they might govern, since those who occupy the Oval Office are the frequent target of harsh attacks," he said.

To find out more about Geer's unconventional take on advertising in presidential campaings read the rest of the article on the VU news service website. You may preview a sample of the book on Google Book Search. And, turning the tables, see Geer subjected to an attack ad.

Archived in Books for the News | Film and Media | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chicago magazine has a nice piece in the December issue about the inspiration behind Francis Ford Coppola's new film—his first in ten years—Youth Without Youth. If you've been paying attention, of course, you already know some of the story. The literary inspiration for the film is the book of the same name by Mircea Eliade and the book was placed in Coppola's hands by Wendy Doniger, a professor of religion here at U of C and a longtime friend of Coppola.

The magazine article by Robert Loerzel tells more about the friendship:

Doniger says she and Coppola were members of a "little coven of misfits and existentialists" at Great Neck High School on Long Island in the mid-1950s. "We were anti–Doris Day," Doniger says. They wrote Hemingwayesque stories, listened to jazz in Greenwich Village, and smoked cigarettes. Doniger remembers Coppola as a "gawky" boy with a head full of ideas.

But don't read that "gawky boy" comment as too dismissive. Loerzel writes that "Coppola offers a little more detail: 'She was, in fact, the first girl I ever kissed.'"

We have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Fiction | Film and Media
Posted by DB at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philosophy is perhaps the least visual of all the disciplines, yet as Tamara Chaplin reveals in her new book Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television, by the end of the twentieth century some of the most prominent postwar French philosophers of the day including Bachelard, Badiou, Foucault, Lyotard, and Lévy managed to appear on over 3500 televised programs. In the upcoming edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education Nina C. Ayoub describes one of the more memorable performances detailed in Chaplin's book:

When the psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan agreed to appear in 1974 on Un certain regard, he insisted in advance, outrageously, that he would not be addressing everyone, only the "nonidiots." Despite what many viewed as incomprehensible talk—"Was this linguistically tortured charlatanism, or inspired brilliance?," quips Ms. Chaplin—the show was highly entertaining. "You don't really have to understand him to appreciate his satanic humor and to be fascinated by the insolent spectacle. …," France Soir reported. "Lacan beats Jerry Lewis on his own ground," offered Le Figaro. It was good television.

Read the rest of the Chronicle piece on their website.

Archived in Film and Media | History | Philosophy | Reviews
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Two articles on Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites's No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy ran this month, both of which cite the book for its controversial look at some of the most influential images of the last century, and how such images have radically changed the political and social landscape of America. An article in the November 29 London Review of Books (only available to subscribers) begins with a critique of "one of the most reproduced photographs in American history"—Joe Rosenthal's image of U.S. troops struggling to raise an American flag on top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. The LRB's David Simpson writes:

The Pulitzer-prize winning photo of the Suribachi Summit… was actually of a second flag-raising, staged with a larger flag after the fighting had died down. Literally speaking it was not so much a struggle against military odds as a struggle against gravity. This was known at the time, and was a sufficiently sensitive issue for both Time and Life to refrain from publishing it until it had become so ubiquitous as to be beyond complex questioning. That happened very fast. The photo became more or less instantly a leitmotif of American popular culture and a key item in the manufacture of consent by politicians and advertisers alike.…

Debates about the authenticity of photographs, especially war photographs, have been commonplace since at least the American Civil War. In No Caption Needed Robert Hariman and John Lucaites are less concerned with these debates than the ways in which iconic images have been used to propose and renegotiate various kinds of 'democratic citizenship' and 'civic identity.' Here original truths matter less than accumulated traditions or assumptions.… For these authors the Iwo Jima flag works because it is aesthetically compelling, … because it converts military into civic action, and because it effaces the personalities of the soldiers in the service of a common and anonymous effort. …

The review continues:

The authors think we have a 'need' for these iconic images, and often suggest that democracy is better for them. But it is a fine line (if there is a line) between the vigorous, deliberative debate conducted by empowered citizens… and the consumption of patriotic propaganda.

A feature in the Chronicle of Higher Education also focused on the author's take on the powerful yet complicated impact of iconic images on American culture. You can read the Chronicle piece online at their website, read an excerpt from the book, or navigate over to the authors' blog where they frequently post provocative critiques of notable images in contemporary photojournalism.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our entire voting process, from registering to vote to following instructions at the polling place, can be almost as confusing as those infamous Florida ballots. Tackling this grave problem head-on, Design for Democracy presents adaptable design models that can improve almost every part of the election process by maximizing the clarity and usability of ballots, registration forms, posters and signs, informational brochures and guides, and even administrative materials for pollworkers. This handsome volume also lays out specific guidelines—covering issues like color palette, typography, and image use—that anchor the comprehensive election design system devised by the group of specialists from whose name the book takes its title. Part of a major AIGA strategic program, this group’s prototypes and recommendations have already been used successfully in major Illinois and Oregon elections and, collected here, are poised to spread across the country.

Read the press release.

Archived in Film and Media | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you who don't pay much attention to Canadian politics, Ontario just finished its provincial elections in which Premier Dalton McGuinty was re-elected for a second term in Canada's most-populous province. But also up for re-election was Ontario's election process itself. This year voters were asked to cast ballots for both a new provincial government and for a referendum that would change dramatically the way Ontario's officials are elected. But many voters who were often unexpectedly asked to fill out not one but two ballots found themselves confused and disoriented by unclear voting instructions and hard to read ballots—probably two significant factors in the proposed referendum's failure. Enter Marcia Lausen, author of Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design who argues that though often overlooked as a significant part of elections, design can have a significant impact on the voting process by maximizing the clarity and functionality of ballots, registration forms, and even the polling locations themselves. Last Sunday she was called in by the Toronto Star to critique Ontario's election material. Reporter Ryan Bigge writes:

Lausen's critique of my Notice of Registration card (NRC) is thoroughly humbling. Lausen rapidly lists visual inefficiencies: too many sizes and weights of type; text centered for no apparent reason; indentations that follow no known system of logic, and at least 12 different type styles used. In Design For Democracy, Lausen suggests limiting type to two sizes (small and large) and two weights (light and bold).

My Notice of Registration's yellow-and-black-bumblebee colour scheme is described as "fine" by Lausen, although she says the use of colour could be more functional. Overall, my NRC earns a "C" from Lausen, who sees no evidence that a graphic designer was involved with the finished product.…

Read the rest of Lausen's ballot critique on the Toronto Star's website or find out more about the book on the UCP website.

Archived in Books for the News | Film and Media | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“‘A filmmaker is a man like any other; and yet his life is not the same.… This is, I think, a special way of being in contact with reality.’ Or so says Michelangelo Antonioni, the legendary filmmaker behind the stark landscapes and social alienation of Blow-Up and L’Avventura, who here reveals his idiosyncratic relationship with reality. Through autobiographical sketches, theoretical essays, and interviews, The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema explores the director’s unique brand of narrative-defying cinema as well as the motivations and anxieties of the man behind the camera.”

Read the press release.

Archived in Film and Media | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Royko would have been 75 today.

Royko was born in Chicago and never left it. He wrote for the Chicago Daily News, then the Sun-Times, and finally for the Tribune. His career should be measured in column inches. He wrote 7,500 columns. You do the math.

The Chicago Outfit is going to jail and the Cubs are in a pennant race. Wonders never cease. Hell freezes over. It would be great to get Royko's take on such bizarre phenomena.

Hoist an extra beer for Royko today. Something domestic. Read and re-read.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Film and Media
Posted by DB at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kevin Rozario's new book, The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America, recently received some positive press from the Chicago Tribune's cultural critic, Julia Keller. Keller writes:

With a Minnesota bridge lying in jagged-edged tatters and the residue of Katrina still haunting New Orleans, the United States never seems to run short of catastrophes. But the way we look at devastation—nature-made, in Katrina's case, or man-made, with the 9/11 terrorist attacks—is a crucial index of the way we think about God and progress, argues Kevin Rozario in his new book, The Culture of Calamity: Disaster & The Making of Modern America. Rozario, an American Studies professor at Smith College, traces the history of our nation's response to large and terrible events, from Puritan days to the current CNN-saturated world of wall-to-wall disaster coverage. Broad in its historical sweep, sharp and pointed in its insights, this is academic writing at its spirited and relevant best.

Rozario's book was also given an enthusiastic review in this month's Library Journal praising Rozario's "interesting and complex" examination of American resilience in the face of disaster. (Scroll down the page about half way.)

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Film and Media | History | Reviews
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This week has been a tragic one in the world of cinema. Both Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, and his colleague Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni passed away within hours of one another this Monday, July 30th 2007; a coincidence that is perhaps indicative of the creative and intellectual space shared by the two masters of modern moviemaking. Both filmmakers became well known for their radically innovative visual styles and insightful explorations of modern society, and both have left behind a legacy of filmmakers and fans heavily influenced by their works, evidenced by the many articles published recently to mark their passing.

The New York Times has published several fascinating retrospectives on the two directors, and Roger Ebert, who discusses Bergman's films in Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert has also posted an article on Bergman to his website. But for those interested in more in-depth study, the press has two new books: the forthcoming The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema—a collection of essays, theory, and autobiographical sketches of Michelangelo Antonioni's life and work, and the recently published The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography—a fascinating portrait of the life of the late Ingmar Bergman. One of our international partners, Amsterdam University Press, has also recently released Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide, which at over 1000 pages, qualifies as one of the most comprehensive references on Bergman's work available.

Archived in Commentary | Film and Media
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Robert Hariman and Louis Lucaites, authors of No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy have recently started their own blog at www.nocaptionneeded.com. As a companion resource to their new book, the blog is "dedicated to discussion of the role that photojournalism and other visual practices play in a vital democratic society." Bringing the author's ideas to bear on current issues and new media, almost in real-time, we definitely recommend you check it out.

In No Caption Needed, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites provide the definitive study of the iconic photograph as a dynamic form of public art. Their critical analyses of nine individual icons explore the photographs themselves and their subsequent circulation through an astonishing array of media, including stamps, posters, billboards, editorial cartoons, TV shows, Web pages, tattoos, and more. As these iconic images are reproduced and refashioned by governments, commercial advertisers, journalists, grassroots advocates, bloggers, and artists, their alterations throw key features of political experience into sharp relief. Iconic images are revealed as models of visual eloquence, signposts for collective memory, means of persuasion across the political spectrum, and a crucial resource for critical reflection.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every day, the media present us with thousands of photographs of world events, accompanying and illuminating the stories of the day. Most of those images are forgotten as soon as the day's paper is discarded—but a very small number take on a larger life, resonating with the public and influencing opinions, emotions, and actions. These iconic images—a cluster of marines struggling to plant the American flag on Iwo Jima, a naked Vietnamese girl running in terror from a napalm attack, an unarmed man stopping a tank in Tiananmen Square—are seared into our brains, instantly calling up emotional memories of the past century's major events. But why are these images so transcendent? Out of innumerable photos, why did these particular ones become icons? And what role should such images, and photojournalism itself, play in public life? In No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites explore the creation, dissemination, and the effects of iconic photographs taking us back to the circumstances in which these photos were taken and setting them in their full historical and cultural contexts.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two University of Chicago Press authors were honored last Tuesday at the Society of Midland Author's annual awards ceremony. Roger Ebert's Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert received the top prize for adult non-fiction books, while Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark also weighed in as a finalist in the same category.

The awards contest is described on the Society's website as a "competition … open to authors and poets who reside in, were born in, or have strong ties to the twelve-state Midwestern Heartland." Ebert is an Illinois native while Gilfoyle is a professor of history at Loyola University Chicago. The winners will receive cash prizes, plaques, and of course, recognition from one of the Midwest's most distinguished literary societies.

Back in November we reprinted Ebert's interview with Robert Altman on this blog. Our website also features “A Millennium Park Trivia Quiz” based on Gilfoyle's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Awards | Film and Media
Posted by TXM at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"When a film is not a document, it is a dream. … At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood." Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography.

More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.

Read the press release.

Archived in Biography | Film and Media | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Royko, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author, died ten years ago today—on April 29, 1997. Royko, a man whom Jimmy Breslin called "the best journalist of his time," was one of the most thorough and incisive chroniclers of the American experience over his long career, writing successively for the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune.

A few days ago the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum assembled family, friends, and former colleagues for a tribute to Royko. Rick Kogan, Carol Marin, and Sam Sianis (owner of the Billy Goat tavern) were among the speakers.

The Chicagoland blog published by the Chicago Reader had a nice piece about Royko, pointing out the continuing relevance of his progressive views and insightful writing. Tributes have also appeared in, of course, the Tribune and the Sun-Times—pieces that are remarkably different in focus—the Trib on his writing, the Sun-Times on his personality.

The University of Chicago Press was pleased publish two volumes of the best of Royko's columns; One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko and its encore, For the Love of Mike: More of the Best of Mike Royko. You can sample a few classic Royko columns on our website—such as his column on the ex-Cub factor, a discourse on the Chicago hotdog, the day Jackie Robinson came to Wrigley Field, and the unveiling of the Picasso. Read excerpts from One More Time and excerpts from For the Love of Mike.

Archived in Commentary | Film and Media
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It is widely known that acclaimed film critic and author Roger Ebert has been fighting a fierce battle with cancer ever since 2002. For four years Ebert was able to endure treatment while continuing to host his TV show as well as publish his most recent book, Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert. But 2006 found him bedridden after undergoing a series of more serious surgeries for his condition. All the while his audiences have eagerly awaited his return to the cinema, and as the Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro reports, they finally received their wish. Caro reports:

It was about 15 minutes before the opening of the 9th Annual Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival when the festival's namesake quietly entered the theater from the back, marking his first public appearance since cancer surgery on his jaw in June. … Several surgeries later, the 64-year-old film critic—who has since appeared only sporadically in the Chicago Sun-Times and not at all on his syndicated television show Ebert & Roeper—still can't speak or completely close his mouth. Yet he was back where he grew up and attended the University of Illinois, wearing a blue blazer with a peach-colored handkerchief in the pocket and walking slowly down the theater aisle dispensing handshakes and hugs to those from near and far who came to see him and the movies he selected for five days of viewing.

We are glad to see that that one of our favorite film critics is back on his feet. And we can't wait for his next book!

Archived in Commentary | Film and Media
Posted by TXM at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The December 24 issue of the Denver Post ran a review by Stephen Rosen comparing and contrasting several of this year's top titles in books about the cinema. In the review, Rosen covers several of Ebert's guides and essay collections but reserves special praise for Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert. Rosen remarks:

While the ailing Roger Ebert has been able to publish his annual paper-bound Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007, the best addition to his many titles is the new hardbound Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, which contains selected writings from the past 40 years of his Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

And indeed, with Awake in the Dark, both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a complete picture of this indispensable critic's important contributions to the cinema and cinephilia. Thus Awake in the Dark is a must-have for anyone desiring a fascinating (and compulsively readable) chronicle of film since the late 1960s.

Archived in Film and Media | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The reviews keep coming for From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner; a consensus is developing that Turner has articulated an important new understanding of the relationship between the aspirations of the 1960s counterculture and the utopian visions of the creators and promoters of cyberspace.

Giles Slade reviewed the book about a week ago in the Los Angeles Times:

Turner is eager to trace the complex legacy of cybernetic theory and ideology from its World War II-era birthplace (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Radiation Laboratory) through the counterculture of the 1960s to the rise of networked computing and the misleading ideology of purity that underlies contemporary views of cyberspace. … Turner describes how the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and early '70s eventually turned away from the political work of community-building toward the increasingly elitist belief that small technologies would transform consciousness and that together machinery and consciousness would provide the basis of a new social order.

As Slade summarizes the book in his review, Turner traces the central role of Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network in facilitating the transformation of counterculture into cyberculture. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley.

"One of the many strengths of Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Slade concludes, "is that it articulates the sociological forces that created this revolution in our time. Twenty-nine dollars will never buy you more book than this."

Read the introduction and an excerpt.

Archived in Film and Media | History | Reviews
Posted by DB at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taking its inspiration from Ebert's own critical methodology as set forth in his new book Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, Tara Ison's review for the L.A. Times balances her critique of Ebert's work "between the bottom line and the higher reaches, between the answers to the questions (1) Is this [book] worth my money? and (2) Does this [book] expand or devalue my information about human nature?"

Her answers?

(1) Yes, this is a meaty and comprehensive collection of over 40 years' worth of impassioned film writing—not merely reviews but profiles and essays as well; and (2) Yes; Ebert indeed expands our knowledge of human nature through his incisive analysis of the 20th century's (arguably) primary form of artistic expression, of its evolution and its lure.

If Ebert's book can live up to his own stringent standards you know it's got to be good. Ebert's masterful blend of entertaining and intelligent essays on everything from Star Wars to Meryl Streep is truly an indispensable chronicle of the American cinema since the late 1960s.

Archived in Film and Media | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Robert Altman died yesterday at the age of 81. To mark his passing and his profound influence on contemporary film, we reprint Roger Ebert's interview of Altman as published in Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert.

I think I’ve interviewed Robert Altman more often than anybody else in the movie business. That has something to do with his method of making a movie, which is to assemble large groups of people and set them all in motion at once. There are always visitors on the set. Altman presides as an impresario or host. He likes to introduce people. I wonder if he dislikes being alone. Kathryn, his wife of forty years, is always somewhere nearby, a coconspirator.

Once we both found ourselves at a film festival in Iowa City that was held only once. We both thought Pauline Kael was going to be there, which was why we’d agreed to come. Pauline later said she’d never been invited. Bob and I sat on a desk in a classroom and discussed the delicately moody Thieves Like Us, one of his most neglected films. Other times, I visited the sets of Health, A Wedding, and Gosford Park, and watched him rehearse the Lyric Opera adaptation of A Wedding years later.

Continue reading "In memory of Robert Altman" »

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Film and Media
Posted by DB at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In reviewing Roger Ebert's new book Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert for the online magazine Blogcritics, blogger Nick Dirga poses the question, "can you be America's most well-known movie critic, a television star and household name, and still be kind of underrated? If you're Roger Ebert," Dirga contends, "quite possibly."

Though Roger Ebert is one of America's most popular movie critics, Dirga's review points out that Ebert's fame often overshadows his important critical contributions to American cinema. According to Dirga, "Awake In The Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, serves as a fine way to remind us that Ebert is [more than just a popular TV personality,] but "first and foremost, a gifted writer." Dirga continues: "Some of the strongest writing in Awake In The Dark is a look inside Ebert's thoughts on the nature of film. 'A movie is not about what it is about,' [Ebert] writes. 'It is about how it is about it.' His celebrity may overshadow what a fine teacher he is."

Awake in the Dark is a treasure trove not just for fans of this seminal critic, but for anyone desiring a fascinating and intelligent critical discussion of contemporary American cinema.

Archived in Film and Media | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. With Awake in the Dark, both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert's work. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a picture of this indispensable critic's numerous contributions to the cinema and cinephilia. From The Godfather to GoodFellas, from Cries and Whispers to Crash, the reviews in Awake in the Dark span some of the most exceptional periods in film history, from the dramatic rise of rebel Hollywood and the heyday of the auteur, to the triumph of blockbuster films like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the indie revolution that is still with us today.

Noted film scholar David Bordwell observes in his foreword to this volume that if Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were godmother and godfather to the movie generation, then Roger Ebert is its voice from within—a writer whose exceptional intelligence and daily bursts of insight and enthusiasm have shaped the way we think about the movies. Awake in the Dark, therefore, will be a treasure trove not just for fans of this seminal critic, but for anyone desiring a fascinating and compulsively readable chronicle of film since the late 1960s.

Read the press release.

Archived in Film and Media | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have previously noted the fond regard that geeks hold for the Whole Earth Catalog. Two more testimonials have burbled up through the ether. Tim O'Reilly, publisher of all those techie books with animals on their covers, says on his blog, O'Reilly Radar:

We shamelessly copied the name of the Whole Earth Catalog for our groundbreaking Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, but that's the least of our debts to Stewart [Brand] and crew. A huge amount of the O'Reilly sensibility, a mix of practicality and idealism, was learned from the Whole Earth Catalog.

Cory Doctorow also notes his affection and the influence of WEC, writing on BoingBoing:

Count me among those who were heavily influenced by the Catalogs. I have a complete set in a storage locker in Toronto. I used to pore through them for hours on rainy days, marvelling at the flowering of the mission of "access to tools and ideas."

The comments of O'Reilly and Doctorow are occasioned by the announcement of the Stanford University Libraries' upcoming symposium From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog. Taking its title from Fred Turner's recent book, the symposium will explore the the "extraordinary impact of the Whole Earth Catalog and the American counterculture on contemporary computing and everyday life." The symposium will be held on November 9, 2006, 7–9 pm, at Stanford's Cubberley Auditorium.

If you'd like to find out more about the ways that Stewart Brand has shaped modern digital culture, check out our excerpts from Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture. We have the introduction to the book as well as an excerpt from Chapter Four, "Taking the Whole Earth Digital.

Archived in Author Events | Film and Media | History
Posted by TXM at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent review in Booklist gives a thumbs-up to Roger Ebert's new book, Awake in the Dark: Forty Years of Reviews, Essays, and Interviews:

Ebert, probably the most prolific film critic of all time, here distills his massive life's work into a single volume. After a nostalgic introduction recounting his initial forays into criticism, he presents reviews of the best films of each of the last 38 years, from Bonnie and Clyde to Crash, and a selection of foreign films, documentaries, and 'overlooked and underrated' works. More compelling are longer 'think pieces' on such topics as colorization, the movie ratings system, digital projection, and Star Wars' deleterious effect on Hollywood. Those, and a selection of star profiles and interviews, allow him to share his expertise and voice his passion in a fashion that daily reviewing seldom permits.

You can see previews of Awake in the Dark on Ebert's own Web site, which this month features some of the reviews, interviews, and other pieces from the book. Excerpts from the book are also being featured in the movie section of the Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ebert continues to recover from a recent surgery, but will return to writing reviews soon, according to the Sun-Times. In the meantime check out this collection of essential writings from the film industry's most influential critic.

Archived in Film and Media | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Listen to Stephen Colbert's controversial performance at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner, or take a look at recent Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, and you'll see that humor has become much more than a laughing matter. In fact, as Paul Lewis argues in Cracking Up, American humor has grown ever more purposeful and embattled over the past thirty years.

Covering topics that range from the revealing jokes of Jon Stewart to the deceiving one-liners of George W. Bush, and from the tongue-in-cheek sadism of Hanibal Lecter to the gentle humor of hospital clowns, Lewis shows that this purposeful comedy is both good and bad for Americans. In a culture that both enjoys and quarrels about jokes, it expresses our most nurturing and hurtful impulses, informs and misinforms us, and exposes as well as covers up the shortcomings of our leaders. In short, humor is delightful, relaxing, and distracting—and that's precisely why we must recognize that by freeing us from the constraints of logic and the restraints of conscience, jokes and jokers can do real harm.

Read the press release.

Archived in Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're reading this then you're probably already aware of how much digital technology has insinuated itself into our daily routines. But just how much could we, or should we, devote to our online lives? The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal recently ran a review of two books about the increasing popularity of "virtual realities" including our own Edward Castronova's Synthetic Worlds:

Mr. Castronova's Synthetic Worlds argues that virtual reality is a thriving place with millions of inhabitants world-wide. And it bears close watching… Synthetic Worlds explains the trend, obvious to anyone who has dipped into the online subculture over time, that virtual worlds are populated differently now than they used to be: they began as the province of nerds and outcasts but are now approaching the mainstream—as reflected in recent media reports and the increasing share of quotes in such coverage drawn from the housewife and married-dad demographics.

Read an interview with the author, or check out his blog.

Archived in Economics | Film and Media | Philosophy | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Roger Ebert's forthcoming book Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert; Forty years of Reviews, Essays, and Interviews, details almost a half century's worth of cinematic expertise from a man the Library Journal calls one of American cinema's "most respected and influential movie critics." More from the LJ review:

The book clearly summarizes Ebert's pantheon of best films, or at least movies that have meant the most to him. Also included are appreciations and interviews with notable actors and filmmakers. Always alert to trends and defending film as an art form, Ebert never fails to connect with his readers.

With Awake in the Dark, both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a picture of this indispensable critic’s numerous contributions to the cinema and cinephilia.

Archived in Chicago | Film and Media | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Washington Post recently reviewed John G. Geer's In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Reviewer Dan Balz wrote: "Geer has set out to challenge the widely held belief that attack ads and negative campaigns are destroying democracy. Quite the opposite, he argues in his provocative new book: Negativity is good for you and for the political system. Geer believes that democracy is strengthened by vigorous debate and asserts that negative ads contribute to, rather than detract from, that dialogue…. Negative ads, he says, are far more likely to be about substance rather than personal attacks and are more likely to be supported by documentation than positive appeals. He argues that negative ads are more specific than positive appeals and therefore more useful to voters in weighing the relative merits of presidential candidates. He also says the media have been far too alarmist about the level of negativity and the effects of attack ads on the political process…. Geer states what others before him has said: Negativity has long been part of American politics…. While conceding that negativity has steadily increased, he challenges the belief that the rise results from scurrilous personal attacks by one candidate against another…. Negativity has increased because the two parties, now more ideologically divided than in the past, have more to argue about…. What has really changed, according to Geer, is awareness of negativity by the media."

In Defense of Negativity, Geer's study of negative advertising in presidential campaigns from 1960 to 2004, asserts that the proliferating attack ads are far more likely than positive ads to focus on salient political issues, rather than politicians' personal characteristics. Accordingly, the ads enrich the democratic process, providing voters with relevant and substantial information before they head to the polls.

An important and timely contribution to American political discourse, In Defense of Negativity concludes that if we want campaigns to grapple with relevant issues and address real problems, negative ads just might be the solution.

Archived in Film and Media | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
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Always inspiring, sometimes maddening, consummately controversial, Mieke Bal has provoked and engaged thinkers around the world since she arrived on the intellectual scene more than thirty years ago. And now, the sparks that fly off the pages of her most influential pieces have converged to make cerebral fireworks. Encompassing Bal's wide-ranging work in fields from critical theory and visual studies to narratology and feminist Bible scholarship, A Mieke Bal Reader brings together the best of her powerful essays, capturing a dynamic mind in peak form. Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | Literature | Press Releases
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