Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2022 -

Charlie Brown's America is not just another Peanuts book; it is what the author intended it to be--"a biography of Peanuts' cultural life." Ball makes a strong case that the world's foremost comic strip was very political, despite common belief to the contrary, its messages deftly shrouded in allegory, ambiguousness, and intentional vagueness by Charles Schulz. The book comprises an introduction to Schulz's life and career, and six chronological chapters dissect social and political matters through the adventures and words of the strip's characters--the Cold War and Linus's security blanket; Charlie Brown's "outsider" status; Lucy's psychiatry booth; race with the 1968 integration of African American Franklin; the Vietnam War through pilot Snoopy's daring, never-ending search for the Red Baron; environmental degradation, overpopulation, and capitalist materialism played out by Sally's conversion of Charlie's baseball field into a victory garden and lush orchard; and feminist/sex/gender identity and abortion rights as exemplified by the Peanuts girls: Peppermint Patty, Lucy, Sally, and Marcie. Ball's coverage is wide reaching, extending to television specials, licensing, and merchandising; the exhaustive research includes interviews, speeches, fan correspondence, and secondary sources; and the writing flows freely. Though Oxford University Press's editing leaves much to be desired, this excellent book provides abundant new material and many fascinating insights.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty, researchers, and professionals.

Fascism has always coursed through the veins of popular politics and the power struggles in modern states. As the world becomes increasingly digitalized, fascist trends start to mushroom across platforms online, blending extreme nihilism, hyper-traditionalism, right-wing authoritarianism, xenophobia, anti-scientism, and any populist sentiment of the day to the detriment of science, reason, and democracy. In Digital Fascism, Fuchs (Univ. of Westminster, UK) seeks to understand the phenomenon of fascism in the virtual world by analyzing how fascism is communicated online. Comprising 16 chapters based on materials published previously and reworked for this volume, the book begins with discussions of several critical theorists working during the mid-part of the 20th century, including Franz L. Neumann, Gunther Anders, M. N. Roy, and Martin Heidegger. These discussions form the theoretical foundations of the book, and the authors subsequently test and address these insights and observations across online mediascapes. Peppered with examples from social media, the book illustrates how easily current digital technologies can be turned into instruments of regressive mythmaking, ideological indoctrination, and authoritarian control. A timely addition to critical media studies, this book will be useful to students of digital culture at large and social media in particular.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and general readers.

The presidency of Donald Trump, especially his unorthodox rise to power, leadership style, reliance upon populism, and unprecedented use of new media, generated voluminous scholarly research and debate. Kamalipour (North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State Univ.) brings together 35 scholars from across the world to provide insights into how the "Trump effect" registered in various countries. In the foreword, Cees Hamelink argues that Trump is best seen as a bully and disrupter. Early chapters evaluate Trump's effect on Americans' perceptions of the international arena as expressed, for example, by increased embrace of isolationism and sense of threat from China, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. Later chapters examine, e.g., how particular countries' media ecosystems covered the Trump presidency. Contributing authors generally find a love-hate relationship in Trump media coverage, possibly reflecting larger social trends involving polarization. Also mentioned are the delicate relationships respective countries maintain with the US. Notably, despite the common focus on media, varied methodological approaches are employed, and the specific questions addressed differ substantially. The result is a robust treatment overall, providing rich context for readers curious about how other countries covered the Trump presidency. Most significantly, the book may stimulate new lines of inquiry among those already interested in this critical topic.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.

A title in the publisher's "Keywords" series, this collection of 55 essays by as many contributors, each focusing on a single term, lays out the salient arguments defining important topics and issues in contemporary comics studies. The essays generally follow interdisciplinary approaches to their specific topics (including, for example, "Disability," "Lowbrow," "Panel," and "Trans-/*"), providing historical and scholarly context for each concept as well as related critical vocabularies for understanding and discussing the topic with fluency. Entries address a diverse range of comics studies subjects, covering everything from technical features of comics ("Border" and "Sequence," for example) to issues of representation (e.g., "Gender," "Latinx," and "Southern"). A few essays discuss particular comic titles, such as Archie and Watchmen, that have attained a definitive status in popular culture and have even become franchises represented by works in other media. Another strength of this collection is that each contribution is the work of an established scholar of the discipline or genre/concept discussed, whose academic work is cited by other contributors throughout the book and represented in the excellent list of references. This book is and will continue to be a must-have source for new and experienced comics scholars.Summing Up: Essential. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. General readers.

Min (Pace Univ.) combines a concise history of journalism--from the printing press to the blockchain--with cross-disciplinary theory and survey data to show why the hectic quest of professional journalism for technology- and market-focused innovation deserves reconsideration and advocate for slow practices that return journalism to its core mission in democratic society. Newsroom interviews and content analysis of trade magazines help illustrate journalism's ceaseless effort to find and use new technological tools with the potential to reinvent and save professional journalism. It also reveals journalists who say this new, fast pace is both inevitable and fear-inducing--oversimplified and inaccurate news reports are among the consequences. In contrast, Min traces successful culture shifts at USA Today, The Guardian, and BuzzFeed to the values of slow journalism, including long-form storytelling, in-depth reporting, and a corporate culture committed equally to innovation and important journalism. In a nutshell, Min argues, "[By] obsessively resorting to technological innovation, journalism avoids looking at the profession's structural problems and its self-inflicted wounds. [...] While technology evolves fast, journalism needs to go slow, considering the roles it plays in people's lives." This well-researched plea for deliberately reflective journalism practice is bound to inspire debate and productive follow-up inquiry.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and practitioners.