Attempting to indoctrinate the public into a new society, the Bolsheviks staged show trials--legal trials that incorporated theatrical elements such as coached defendants, memorized scripts for confession, and grueling interrogatory rehearsals. The genre of legal spectacle, whose origins lay in Soviet theater and cinema of the 1920s, moved from mass public spectacles to the courtroom, as the Bolsheviks sought to effect ever- greater social change.
In this intriguing interdisciplinary study, literature scholar Cassiday shows how Soviet show trials deliberately used avant-garde drama and cinema to educate the citizenry about the new social order. She examines how elements of theater and film were incorporated into Soviet courtrooms, turning public trials into vehicles for propaganda. Drawing on a variety of popular media from the 1920s, she reveals the origins of the show trials.

The nineteenth century was the heyday of furious contention between American political parties, and Joel Silbey has recaptured the drama and substance of those battles in a representative sampling of party pamphlets. Political parties mapped the landscape of electoral and ideological warfare, constructing images of themselves and of their adversaries that resonate and echo the basic characteristics of America's then reigning sets of ideas. The nature of political controversy, as well as the substance of politics, is embedded in these party documents, which both united and divided Americans. Unlike today's party platforms, these pamphlets explicated real issues and gave insight into the society at large. Andrew Jackson's Democrats, Millard Fillmore's Whigs, Abraham Lincoln's Republicans, and other, lesser-known parties are represented here. The pamphlets demonstrate how, for this fifty-year period, political parties were surrogates for American demands and values. Broad in scope, widely circulated, catalysts for heated debate over the decades, these pamphlets are important documents in the history of American politics.

In a brilliant monograph-length introduction, Silbey teases out and elucidates the themes each party stressed and took as its own in its fight for the soul of the nation.

The nineteenth century was the heyday of furious contention between American political parties, and Joel Silbey has recaptured the drama and substance of those battles in a representative safmpling of party pamphlets. Political parties mapped the landscape of electoral and ideological warfare, constructing images of themselves and of their adversaries that resonate and echo the basic characteristics of America's then reigning sets of ideas. The nature of political controversy, as well as the substance of politics, is embedded in these party documents, which both united and divided Americans. Unlike today's party platforms, these pamphlets explicated real issues and gave insight into the society at large. Andrew Jackson's Democrats, Millard Fillmore's Whigs, Abraham Lincoln's Republicans, and other, lesser-known parties are represented here. The pamphlets demonstrate how, for this fifty-year period, political parties were surrogates for American demands and values. Broad in scope, widely circulated, catalysts for heated debate over the decades, these pamphlets are important documents in the history of American politics.

In a brilliant monograph-length introduction, Silbey teases out and elucidates the themes each party stressed and took as its own in its fight for the soul of the nation.

In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice. Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.

The Reckoning will examine America's national trauma, rooted in its long history of slavery and civil rights abuses, but dramatically exacerbated by the impact of recent events and the Trump administration's corrupt and immoral policies.

America's failure to acknowledge this trauma, let alone root it out, has allowed it to metastasize. Whether it manifests itself in rising levels of rage and hatred, or hopelessness and apathy, the stress of living in a country many no longer recognize has affected everyone. America is suffering from PTSD - a new leader alone cannot fix it.

An enormous amount of healing must be done to rebuild faith in America's leadership and hope for the nation. It starts with The Reckoning.