Winner of the 2018 Book Award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association.Ongoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for Audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the "bad sixties." These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy. These warped messages contribute to "selective amnesia," a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.

Public Speaking: Liberating Your Promise provides students with a collection of carefully selected readings that not only helps them develop critical skills related to public speaking, but also fosters powerful self-discovery. Students learn how public speaking can help them reveal their true selves and connect with others in meaningful ways. The text addresses a variety of public speaking topics that will help students strengthen their technique and successfully deliver speeches centered on specific subjects for a specific purpose. Dedicated readings explore specialized speeches, building confidence and improving impact, managing the first impression, organizing one's thoughts, and persuasive and influential speaking. Throughout, students are encouraged and challenged to deeply connect with their ideas, beliefs, passions, and personal truths to effectively and competently speak to topics of the day. Developed to help students discover their unique voices, Public Speaking is an exemplary resource for courses in communication and public speaking. The text could also support college orientation or first-year courses or programs, as well as courses within any discipline that emphasize speechmaking or public speaking.