This is the first full-length study to include Vidal's most recent novels and the first designed to meet the needs of the general reader as well as students of contemporary literature. It includes discussions of Lincoln, Empire, Hollywood, and Live from Golgotha, as well as his earlier novels. Baker...

This is the first full-length study to include Vidal's most recent novels and the first designed to meet the needs of the general reader as well as students of contemporary literature. It includes discussions of Lincoln, Empire, Hollywood, and Live from Golgotha, as well as his earlier novels. Baker and Gibson show that while Vidal's novels are tremendously entertaining, they are also serious examinations of a recurring theme - the decline of the West in general and the decline of the United States in particular. A biographical sketch precedes a general discussion of Vidal's early novels. The discussion of each novel includes sections on plot and character development, thematic issues, narrative style, and an alternative critical approach from which to read the novel. A complete bibliography of Vidal's fiction, as well as selected reviews and criticism, complete the book and will be helpful to students, librarians, and adult book discussion participants.

Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on...

Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on and transcended left-wing opposition to the Cold War cultural and political consensus. Combining readings of novels, plays, and films of the period with historical research into the national security state, the growth of the suburbs, and postwar consumer culture, Corber examines how gay men resisted the "organization man" model of masculinity that rose to dominance in the wake of the Second World War.

By exploring the representation of gay men in film noir, Corber suggests that even as this Hollywood genre reinforced homophobic stereotypes, it legitimized the gay male "gaze". He emphasizes how film noir's introduction of homosexual characters countered the national "project" to render gay men invisible, and marked a deep subversion of the Cold War mentality. Corber then considers the work of gay male writers Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin, demonstrating how these authors declined to represent homosexuality as a discrete subculture and instead promoted a model of political solidarity rooted in the shared experience of oppression.

Homosexuality in Cold War America reveals that the ideological critique of the dominant culture made by gay male authors of the 1950s laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement of the following decade. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers, including students and scholars in the fields of American literature, film, and gaystudies.

Acknowledgments Introduction: Political Myth, Popular Fiction, and American Culture by Ernest J. Yanarella and Lee Sigelman Nature, Human Nature, and Society in the American Western by John Moeller Democracy and Community in American Children's Literature by Timothy E. Cook Winning Isn't Everything:...

Acknowledgments Introduction: Political Myth, Popular Fiction, and American Culture by Ernest J. Yanarella and Lee Sigelman Nature, Human Nature, and Society in the American Western by John Moeller Democracy and Community in American Children's Literature by Timothy E. Cook Winning Isn't Everything: Sports Fiction as a Genre of Political Criticism by Thomas C. Shevory Political Change in America: Perspectives from Popular Historical Novels of Michener and Vidal by Samuel M. Hines Jr. Natural Law and Right in Contemporary American Middle-Class Literature by Ethan Fishman "Our Town" Reconsidered: Reflections on the Small Town in American Literature by Jean Bethke Elshtain The Paradox of Combat: Fictional Reflections of America at War by Cecil L. Eubanks The Machine in the Garden Revisited: American Pastorialism and Contemporary Science Fiction by Ernest J. Yanarella A Select Bibliography on Myth, Politics, and Popular Fiction

Dystopian literature is a potent vehicle for criticizing existing social conditions or political systems, and for warning against the potential negative consequences of utopian thought. This reference is a guide to dystopian theory and literature. It discusses the work of key theorists and...

Dystopian literature is a potent vehicle for criticizing existing social conditions or political systems, and for warning against the potential negative consequences of utopian thought. This reference is a guide to dystopian theory and literature. It discusses the work of key theorists and summarizes several important utopian works to provide a background. The rest of the book summarizes and analyzes numerous dystopian novels, plays, and films.

With a few notable exceptions, gay artists of earlier generations felt compelled to avoid sexual candor in their writings. Conversely, most contemporary gay poets and playwrights are free from such constraints and have created a remarkable body of work. This reference is a guide to their creative...

With a few notable exceptions, gay artists of earlier generations felt compelled to avoid sexual candor in their writings. Conversely, most contemporary gay poets and playwrights are free from such constraints and have created a remarkable body of work. This reference is a guide to their creative achievements. Alphabetically arranged entries present 62 contemporary gay American poets and dramatists. A number of these writers are well known, including Edward Albee, Harvey Fierstein, and Allen Ginsberg. Others, such as Alan Bowne, Timothy Liu, and Robert O'Hara, merit wider recognition. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the author's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies.

The radicals and liberals of the 1960s expressed ideas that continue to both attract and repel people decades later. Nostalgia books relive the Woodstock festival and the protests; past Presidents Bush and Reagan remember the era with unease; and scholars skirmish over the meaning of the period...

The radicals and liberals of the 1960s expressed ideas that continue to both attract and repel people decades later. Nostalgia books relive the Woodstock festival and the protests; past Presidents Bush and Reagan remember the era with unease; and scholars skirmish over the meaning of the period. DeLeon is the first to provide information on activists of the period and their continued activities into the 1990s. With major sections on racial democracy, peace and freedom, sexuality and gender, the environment, radical culture, and visions of alternative societies, the book includes entries on a wide selection of nationally prominent personalities of the 1960s. In addition to those who dominated those years, the volume includes earlier activists who came into prominence in the 1960s and those who have come into the limelight since the 1960s. Each entry provides a biographical sketch, but the focus is on the person's basic concepts or the essence of his or her work and the public response it generated. The volume also includes extensive bibliographies on the individuals and the period.

The Encyclopedia of the Essay is the first reference work entirely devoted to the essay as a genre.

Coverage begins with Montaigne, the first essayist, and stretches forward to Addison and Steele, The Spectator and The Tatler, Marivaux, William Hazlitt, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Robert Musil, Theodor...

The Encyclopedia of the Essay is the first reference work entirely devoted to the essay as a genre.

Coverage begins with Montaigne, the first essayist, and stretches forward to Addison and Steele, The Spectator and The Tatler, Marivaux, William Hazlitt, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Robert Musil, Theodor Adorno, Nouvelle Revue francaise, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and across the ocean to Emerson and Thoreau, E.B. White, The New Yorker and Harper's, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion -- while also looking back to classical and medieval precursors.

More than 400 writers from around the world are included, along with geographic surveys that provide an historical framework, entries on types of essays, and entries on important single essays. Entries on closely-related genres such as letters, journals, treatises, sermons and reviews expand and explore the fluid boundaries of the essay as genre.