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Buffy the Vampire Slayer transcended its cult-comic roots to achieve television success, spawning the spinoff series ""Angel"" and an academic movement along the way. This scholarly treatment takes a multidisciplinary approach to Buffy's fandom, which has expressed itself through fiction, videos, music, art, and other media. Ten essays analyze the sociology and psychology of the fan community and how it uses the Internet to share its passion. Product details Format Paperback | 219 pages Dimensions 165.1 x 228.6 ...

With the recent success of the Gas House Gang as backdrop, the National League prepared for the 1935 season. The United States was still in the Great Depression, but executives in baseball predicted a financial comeback during the year, and Chicago's ""windy"" politicians demanded a pennant-contending ballclub. Yes, there was a time when the Cubs were expected to win. This book chronicles the Cubs' 1935 season and the many on- and off-field events that impacted the game for years to come: Fans who had once turned to baseball for heroes and men of character now laughed at players' uncouth antics and fun-loving carousing reported in the morning newspapers; Babe Ruth debuted in the American League with the Boston Braves, and retired soon after; the first major league night game was played in Cincinnati; the chewing gum king was the first to broadcast all of his team's games on the radio; and the Cubs won 21 games in a row in September to take the pen...

For the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans, there was a great deal of uncertainty going into the 1985 season. The situation looked bleak for St. Louis but the season turned out to be nothing like the predictions. The Cards found themselves in a battle for the pennant. From beginning to end, that magical season is chronicled here. The book recaps the 1982 championship season and provides background information on Whitey Herzog and Gussie Busch's building of the early 1980s Cards, Busch Stadium and its characteristics particular to base running, and players of the era, including Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee and pitchers Bob Forsch and Joaquin Andujar. It then goes in-depth to discuss the Card's 1985 spring training and season and the World Series. Product details Format Paperback ...

Dark-eyed and distant Alma Rubens was one of the first female stars of the early feature film industry in the 1910s. She was a major star by 1920, but before the decade was over her screen career was marked and marred by cocaine abuse. She died in 1931 at age 33 - a Hollywood beauty, a casualty of Hollywood ""snow,"" yet much more. As an actress she was versatile, demonstrating a talent that was ahead of its time with her gentle and subtle expressions. This book contains Rubens's autobiography, a text titled ""This Bright World Again"" that was serialized in a ""New York"" newspaper in 1931. Ghost-written or not or somewhere in between, this long forgotten document deals with Rubens's addiction and despair. In addition, a new biography of Rubens takes the reader from her birth in San Francisco through an impoverished upbringing, three short-lived marriages, and her career in pictures for Triangle Film, Cosmopolitan, F...

These 17 critical essays examine the career and films of director Stanley Kubrick. Part One focuses on his more obscure initial career, including his early career, including his first newsreels, his photography for ""Look"" magazine, and his earliest films. Part Two examines Kubrick's major or most popular films. Part Three provides a thorough case study of ""Eyes Wide Shut"", with four very different essays focusing on the film's use of sound, its representation of gender, its ""carnivalesque"" qualities, and its phenomenological nature. Finally, Part Four discusses Kubrick's ongoing legacy and his impact on contemporary filmmakers. Product details Format Paperback | 264 pages ...

Led by the colorful pitcher Dizzy Dean, the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals personified Depression-era America. The players were underpaid, wore uniforms that were almost always torn and dirty, and had wandered into professional baseball from small towns in the Midwest where other jobs were scarce. Despite their lack of resources, however, and despite coming off two mediocre seasons, the Cardinals emerged triumphant in '34, winning the pennant by two games over the Giants and the World Series in seven games over the Tigers. The book chronicles that championship team which came to be known in baseball lore as the famous "Gas House Gang." This work brings to life the legendary exploits of player manager Frankie Frisch and the Dean brothers--Dizzy and Paul--who combined for 49 wins that season. The era, the team, the season, and the Series are all fully covered. Product details ...

The 1932 horror film White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi has received controversial attention from film reviewers and scholars-but it is unarguably a cult classic worthy of study. This book analyses the film text from nearly every possible viewpoint, using both academic and popular film theories. Also supplied is an extensive intellectual history of the predecessor works to White Zombie, as well as information on the significance it carried for subsequent books and films, its theatrical release around the country, its modern cultural influence, and the attempts to restore the film to its original state. Other noteworthy features of this work include an in-depth biography of White Zombie director Victor Halperin, the first complete study of his life and career, and 244 images and photographs. Product details Format ...

An Atlanta insurance salesman, George Burnett, accidentally overheard a telephone conversation and became the center of a scandal that riveted the world of college football in 1962-63. He thought he overheard Wally Butts, the athletic director and ex-football coach of the University of Georgia, give his friend Paul "Bear" Bryant, the legendary University of Alabama coach, play formations and details that helped Alabama defeat Georgia 35-0 in the 1962 season opener. Burnett's story was published by the Saturday Evening Post several months later, and Butts and Bryant both sued for libel. Butts' case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which made a historic 5-4 decision in Butts. v. Curtis Publishing that expanded the definition of "public figures." While this case has been written about frequently in Bryant biographies and elsewhere, Sumner relies on more than 3,000 pages of letters, reports, memos, depositions, and trial transcripts from archival sources...

In most forms of dancing, performers carry out their steps with a distance that keeps them from colliding with each other. Dancer, Steve Paxton in the 1970s considered this distance a territory for investigation. His study of intentional contact resulted in a public performance in 1972 in a Soho gallery, and the name ""contact improvisation"" was coined for the form of unrehearsed dance he introduced. Rather than copyrighting it, Paxton allowed it to evolve and spread. In this book, the author draws upon her own experience and research to explain the art of contact improvisation, in which dance partners propel movement by physical contact. They roll, fall, spiral, leap, and slip along the contours and momentum of moving bodies. The text begins with a history, then describes the elements that define this form of dance. Subsequent chapters explore how contact improvisation relates to self and identity; how class, race, gender, culture and physiology influence dance; h...

In 1733, John Paul Zenger began to print the New York Journal, the newspaper that was to change Zenger's life and the direction of journalism in colonial America. The material published in the Journal so incensed Sir William Cosby, the royal governor, that Zenger was arrested for seditious libel. Zenger's case was taken on by Andrew Hamilton, the foremost lawyer in the colonies, and after several months in prison the printer was found innocent. The case became a landmark of journalistic freedom, establishing that truth was the ultimate defence against charges of slander or libel, and was both emblem and incitement of America's belief in a free press. This work traces Zenger's life, the development of what was to become the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment freedom in the colonies, and its subsequent evolution on both sides of the Atlantic. Product details ...

One of the most admired and influential authors to work in and write about Appalachia, James Still excelled in every genre of literature in which he worked, from novels and short stories to poetry, children's books, and folklore. This book is intended to help readers more fully understand and appreciate the many facets of Still's literary voice and vision, collecting transcribed versions of virtually all the interviews and oral histories every conducted with James Still, along with numerous memoirs in which some of the leading voices in the Appalachian studies movement memorably express their appreciation for Still and his literary legacy.The first section of the book features written transcriptions of Still's formal interviews, most of which are difficult to locate, having been originally published in periodicals with limited distribution. The intended outcome of this section of the book is to compile all such interviews in one chronologically organized, continuous docum...

Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon are two of the most important and controversial figures of the 20th century. Here, the parallels in their lives are examined, balanced on the point of their historic 21 December 1970 meeting.' Product details Format Hardback | 248 pages Dimensions 152.9 x 234.7 x 17.5mm | 430.92g Publication date ...

This is the story of one car--a 1911 Stevens-Duryea Model Y "Big Six"--and its famous owner Percival Lowell, the American astronomer best known for his studies of Mars and mathematical prediction of the discovery of Pluto. The narrative follows the vehicle, a product of Frank Duryea--of the pioneering Duryea brothers--through its time with Lowell and through subsequent owners to its present status as a moving landmark of history. This automobile made its debut in Flagstaff, which was at that time a frontier logging and cow town of Arizona with unpaved streets in what was not yet even one of the United States. It survived the years from 1911 when delivered to Lowell, through his death in 1916, through occasional use until 1938 when it was "abandoned," then through sixty subsequent years of neglect before being restored to its original form and condition and finally returning to Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill overlooking Flagstaff. Many of the important developments ...

These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmaking, focusing on how each influenced the other and how the two were merged in diverse films and shows. Topics include the docudrama in early cinema, the industrial film as faux documentary, the fear evoked in 1950s science fiction films, the selling of ""reality"" in mockumentaries, and reality TV and documentary forms. Product details Format Paperback | 304 pages Dimensions 177.8 x 252.98 x 17.53mm ...

Drive-in movie theaters and the horror films shown at them during the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s may be somewhat outdated, but they continue to enthrall movie buffs today. More than just fodder for the satirical cannons of Joe Bob Briggs and Mystery Science Theatre 3000, they appeal to knowledgeable fans and film scholars who understand their influence on American popular culture.This book is a collection of eighteen essays by various scholars on the classic drive-in horror film experience. Those in Section One emphasize the roles of the drive-in theater in the United States - and its cultural cousin, Australia. Section Two examines how horror operated at the drive-in, the rhetoric used in coming attraction trailers, horror film premieres at drive-ins, double features, and the preproduction, production, and marketing of ""Last House on the Left"". Section Three addresses the effects of the Vietnam War and counter-culture on ""The Texas Chainsaw Massacre...