From "AdBusters" to viral marketing, this brief dictionary of ideas and concepts contains over 100 extended, illuminating entries to bring the novice up to speed on the advertising/marketing world and the ideas that underlie it. For the neophyte professional, it describes the various players and strategies of the industry. For the student, it summarizes the key ideas of the most important cultural theorists introduced in advertising and marketing courses. For everyone, it helps explain the cultural, economic, and psychological role that advertising concepts play in society. A handy introduction for students and a quick reference for young professionals.

Where did you see it--that perfect quotation from Foucault or Kristeva to use in your upcoming keynote address? Stop the search and pick up Arthur Berger's handy book of over 300 concise quotations from the vast literature in cultural theory. This compilation will give you just the right snappy quote to help prepare that lecture, write that paper, fill that Power Point, or drop a few bon mots at a university reception. Organized by theoretical model (semiotic, Marxist, psychoanalytic, gender, postmodernist), Berger pulls together the most succinct, meaningful passages of the key theorists of our time for those wanting to distill cultural theory to its essence.

Berger's slim, user-friendly volume on academic writing is a gift to linguistically-stressed academics. Author of 60 published books, the author speaks to junior scholars and graduate students about the process and products of academic writing. He differentiates between business writing skills for memos, proposals, and reports, and the scholarly writing that occurs in journals and books. He has suggestions for getting the "turgid" out of turgid academic prose and offers suggestions on how to best structure various forms of documents for effective communication. Written in Berger's friendly, personal style, he shows by example that academics can write good, readable prose in a variety of genres.

A one-of-a-kind analysis of ocean cruising! In Ocean Travel and Cruising: A Cultural Analysis, noted author Arthur Asa Berger turns his critical eye to the phenomenon of ocean cruising. This academically solid yet reader-friendly book brings a multidisciplinary cultural studies approach to the subject, examining ocean cruising from economic, semiotic, sociological, psychoanalytic, and marketing perspectives, and offering insights not provided by the more traditional sociological approaches to the subject. You'll explore cruise demographics, the relationship between cruising and gender, the sociology of dining on cruise ships, hedonism and pleasure seeking, the compulsion to cruise, consolidation in the industry, the exploitation of workers on cruise ships, and a great deal more. Here's a section-by-section rundown of what's in store for you and your students in this one-of-a-kind new text: The Economics of Cruising examines cruise categories, industry consolidation, worker exploitation, and ways that cruise lines make money aside from ticket sales. This section also compares the costs of cruises vs. land-based vacations and fills you in on the typical weekly food and beverage consumption of the Carnival line's complement of ships, which sheds light on how a cruise line can, for a mere $10, provide a food array that would cost a restaurant or hotel $33 to $40. Signs at SeaThe Semiotics of Cruising provides you with a quick primer on semiotics and then discusses the cruise ship as a sign system and then breaks the system down to its component parts, discussing dining rooms, cabins/staterooms, dress codes, spatiality, luxury signifiers, the perceived elitism of the cruise experience, the role of photography, and more. A Sociological Analysis of Cruising explores cruise demographics and their meaning, time budgeting on cruises, the sociology of dining, new trends in cruising, and the meaning of gender in relation to ocean cruising. A particularly intriguing chapter is A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Cruising. Beginning with a look at the compulsion to cruise, this section explores cruising's relationship with the unconscious, the paradise myth, hedonism and pleasure seeking, the desire for unconditional love, psychological regression, and more. In Selling Smooth Sailing: Advertising and Marketing Cruises, you'll examine print advertisements from eight major cruise lines, look at what they have in common and what the differences are between the messages each cruise line hopes to convey via the style and content of their ads and brochures. Cruising (on) the Internet looks at the intersection of the information superhighway with the world of cruising. You'll learn about the cruise lines' own Web sites, travel agency sites, Internet sites designed to rate and review cruises and cruise ships, and more. Notes from a Cruise Journal shares the author's on-site reflections and impressions of a weeklong cruise from Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and back. Written in accessible, jargon-free language that will appeal to students at all levels, Ocean Travel and Cruising: A Cultural Analysis is the most recent of a very small selection of scholarly studies of ocean cruising available in English. Make it a part of your cultural studies, leisure studies, sociology, travel/tourism/hospitality, popular culture, or American studies course this semester!

A one-of-a-kind analysis of ocean cruising! In Ocean Travel and Cruising: A Cultural Analysis, noted author Arthur Asa Berger turns his critical eye to the phenomenon of ocean cruising. This academically solid yet reader-friendly book brings a multidisciplinary cultural studies approach to the subject, examining ocean cruising from economic, semiotic, sociological, psychoanalytic, and marketing perspectives, and offering insights not provided by the more traditional sociological approaches to the subject. You'll explore cruise demographics, the relationship between cruising and gender, the sociology of dining on cruise ships, hedonism and pleasure seeking, the compulsion to cruise, consolidation in the industry, the exploitation of workers on cruise ships, and a great deal more. Here's a section-by-section rundown of what's in store for you and your students in this one-of-a-kind new text: The Economics of Cruising examines cruise categories, industry consolidation, worker exploitation, and ways that cruise lines make money aside from ticket sales. This section also compares the costs of cruises vs. land-based vacations and fills you in on the typical weekly food and beverage consumption of the Carnival line's complement of ships, which sheds light on how a cruise line can, for a mere $10, provide a food array that would cost a restaurant or hotel $33 to $40. Signs at SeaThe Semiotics of Cruising provides you with a quick primer on semiotics and then discusses the cruise ship as a sign system and then breaks the system down to its component parts, discussing dining rooms, cabins/staterooms, dress codes, spatiality, luxury signifiers, the perceived elitism of the cruise experience, the role of photography, and more. A Sociological Analysis of Cruising explores cruise demographics and their meaning, time budgeting on cruises, the sociology of dining, new trends in cruising, and the meaning of gender in relation to ocean cruising. A particularly intriguing chapter is A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Cruising. Beginning with a look at the compulsion to cruise, this section explores cruising's relationship with the unconscious, the paradise myth, hedonism and pleasure seeking, the desire for unconditional love, psychological regression, and more. In Selling Smooth Sailing: Advertising and Marketing Cruises, you'll examine print advertisements from eight major cruise lines, look at what they have in common and what the differences are between the messages each cruise line hopes to convey via the style and content of their ads and brochures. Cruising (on) the Internet looks at the intersection of the information superhighway with the world of cruising. You'll learn about the cruise lines' own Web sites, travel agency sites, Internet sites designed to rate and review cruises and cruise ships, and more. Notes from a Cruise Journal shares the author's on-site reflections and impressions of a weeklong cruise from Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and back. Written in accessible, jargon-free language that will appeal to students at all levels, Ocean Travel and Cruising: A Cultural Analysis is the most recent of a very small selection of scholarly studies of ocean cruising available in English. Make it a part of your cultural studies, leisure studies, sociology, travel/tourism/hospitality, popular culture, or American studies course this semester!

Is television a cultural wasteland, or a medium that has brought people more great art, music, dance, and drama than any previous media? How do we study and interpret television? What are the effects of television on individuals and society, and how do we measure them? What is the role of television in our political and economic life? Television in Society explores these issues in considering how television both reflects and affects society.

The book is divided into two sections. The first focuses on programming and deals with commercials, ceremonial events, important series (such as "MASH" and "Lou Grant"), significant programs (a production of Brave New World on television), and the images of police on the medium. The second part of the book deals with important issues and topics related to the medium: the impact of television violence, values found on television, the impact of television on education, the significance of new technological developments, and the always thorny issue of freedom of the press. The articles are drawn together by a brilliant introductory essay by Arthur Asa Berger, who examines television as culture.

From their inception, video games quickly became a major new arena of popular entertainment. Beginning with very primitive games, they quickly evolved into interactive animated works, many of which now approach film in terms of their visual excitement. But there are important differences, as Arthur Asa Berger makes clear in this important new work. Films are purely to be viewed, but video involves the player, moving from empathy to immersion, from being spectators to being actively involved in texts. Berger, a renowned scholar of popular culture, explores the cultural significance of the expanding popularity and sophistication of video games and considers the biological and psychoanalytic aspects of this phenomenon.Berger begins by tracing the evolution of video games from simple games like Pong to new, powerfully involving and complex ones like Myst and Half-Life. He notes how this evolution has built the video industry, which includes the hardware (game-playing consoles) and the software (the games themselves), to revenues comparable to the American film industry. Building on this comparison, Berger focuses on action-adventure games which, like film and fiction, tell stories but which also involve culturally important departures in the conventions of narrative. After defining a set of bipolar oppositions between print and electronic narratives, Berger considers the question of whether video games are truly interactive or only superficially so, and whether they have the potential to replace print narratives in the culture at large.A unique dimension of the book is its bio-psycho-social analysis of the video game phenomenon. Berger considers the impact of these games on their players, from physical changes (everything from neurological problems to obesity) to psychological consequences, with reference to violence and sexual attitudes. He takes these questions further by examining three enormously popular games-Myst/Riven, Tomb Raider, and Half-Life-for their attitudes toward power, gender, violence, and guilt. In his conclusion, Berger concentrates on the role of violence in video games and whether they generate a sense of alienation in certain addicted players who become estranged from family and friends. Accessibly written and broad-ranging in approach, Video Games offers a way to interpret a major popular phenomenon.

The Victorian era is rightly associated with the industrial revolution in Britain and the ascendancy of a materialist, commercially-oriented middle class. The threat to spiritual values was felt strongly in the realm of religion but also in the secular realm of the arts and literature. This volume analyzes the drive toward cultural transcendence in the lives and works of such eminent Victorians as Tennyson, Carlyle, Browning, the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the romantic origins of anthropology. The various modes of escape from the Victorian era helps illuminate present concerns about culture and society. First published in 1970, Victorian Revolutionaries represents a major effort in the intellectual rehabilitation of Victorian art and thought. Peckham's readings of In Memoriam and Idylls of the King show Tennyson at odds with Christianity except with the notion of the immortality of the soul. The terror of meaninglessness that he discerns here is echoed in the chapter on Carlyle who views human life as issuing from mystery and proceeding in chaos, protected only by self-deception. For Browning, the perceived lack of meaning or purpose results in an existential poetics of the world as theater and the individual as actor. Peckham's chapter on the Pre-Raphaelites anticipates their later rehabilitation by arguing that their work properly understood constitutes a challenge to the institutional modernism of the late twentieth century just as they had, in turn, challenged the academic values of the Royal Academy. The West is once more living in a culturally critical period today. Any help we can get in understanding how to deal with it is bound to be of value. Not the particular strategies of these men, but the general pattern of their search in social and anthropological theory is probably the most useful thing they have to offer.

Just as a distinctive literary voice or style is marked by the ease with which it can be parodied, so too can specific aspects of humor be unique. Playwrights, television writers, novelists, cartoonists, and film scriptwriters use many special technical devices to create humor. Just as dramatic writers and novelists use specific devices to craft their work, creators of humorous materials from the ancient Greeks to today's stand-up comics have continued to use certain techniques in order to generate humor. In The Art of Comedy Writing, Arthur Asa Berger argues that there are a relatively limited number of techniques forty-five in all that humorists employ. Elaborating upon his prior, in-depth study of humor, An Anatomy of Humor, in which Berger provides a content analysis of humor in all forms joke books, plays, comic books, novels, short stories, comic verse, and essaysThe Art of Comedy Writing goes further. Berger groups each technique into four basic categories: humor involving identity such as burlesque, caricature, mimicry, and stereotype; humor involving logic such as analogy, comparison, and reversal; humor involving language such as puns, wordplay, sarcasm, and satire; and finally, chase, slapstick, and speed, or humor involving action. Berger claims that if you want to know how writers or comedians create humor study and analysis of their humorous works can be immensely insightful. This book is a unique analytical offering for those interested in humor. It provides writers and critics with a sizable repertoire of techniques for use in their own future comic creations. As such, this book will be of interest to people inspired by humor and the creative process professionals in the comedy field and students of creative writing, comedy, literary humor, communications, broadcast/media, and the humanities.

In 1946, William Bullitt, the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, U.S. Ambassador to France at the outbreak of the Second World War, and onetime close advisor to FDR, wrote the first book-length, comprehensive analysis of the emerging Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the war, as the book's new introduction by Francis P. Sempa points out, Bullitt had repeatedly urged President Roosevelt to wage war with a view toward the postwar balance of power. Bullitt recounted in this volume how the United States missed opportunities to block Soviet geopolitical gains during the war due to a fundamental misreading of the nature of the Soviet political system.Bullitt wrote The Great Globe Itself from the perspective of a key advisor to President Roosevelt who evolved into a strident critic of the president's wartime diplomacy toward the Soviet Union. When Soviet Russia became a wartime ally of the United States, Bullitt understood that the alliance would last only until the common enemy (Hitler's Germany) was defeated.Bullitt's discussion and analysis of fundamental global geopolitical realities and his prudent counsel to couple diplomacy with force in international relations are as relevant today as when he wrote the book, nearly sixty years ago.

The Genius of the Jewish Joke focuses on what is distinctive and unusual about Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. Jewish humor is humor by Jews and about Jews, in whatever medium this humor is found. Jokes are defined as short stories, meant to amuse, with a punch line, though Jewish humor exists in many other forms riddles, comic definitions, parodies as well. The book makes a "radical" suggestion about the origin of Jewish humor namely, that Sarah and Abraham's relation to God, and the name of their son Isaac (which, in Hebrew, means laughter), recognizes a special affinity in Jews for humor. Abraham does not sacrifice Isaac (humor) and, thus, humor and the Jews are linked early in Jewish history. Berger discusses techniques of humor and how they can be used to analyze jokes. He also compares "Old World Jewish Humor" the humor of the shtetl, with its fabulous schlemiels, schlimazels, schnorrers, and other characters and "New World Humor" the humor of Jewish doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professional types living mostly in the suburbs nowadays. Jewish humor is contrasted with other forms of ethnic humor, such as Polish jokes and Italian American jokes. This humor, in addition to providing pleasure, reveals a great deal about Jewish character and culture and, in addition, the human condition. Now available with a new introduction by the author, The Genius of the Jewish Joke is an entertaining and informative inquiry into Jewish humor that explores its distinctiveness, its unique spirit, and its role in Jewish identity.

This book offers a semiotically informed ethnographic study of contemporary culture in Rajasthan and in India generally. It adapts the methodology of analyzing cultures found in Roland Barthes' semiotic portrait of Japanese culture, Empire of Signs, but adds an analysis of lifestyles as explicated in the work of social anthropologist Mary Douglas, political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, and a number of other social scientists. This manuscript is, at first, a guide to Rajasthan and India, and it is that but it is also more in that it considers tourism from both an anthropological and sociological level.Berger begins with statistics on tourism and other aspects of life in Rajasthan and India, and then considers how tourism in India compares with tourism in other important tourism destinations. He refers to the "Imaginary India" as the picture created in tourists' minds with the help of guidebooks, media, and the Internet before they actually travel to India. He then discusses these representations and how they are actually different from the country itself. The trip itself then becomes the search for the authentic India--the goal is to find places before they are discovered. He calls this "Semiotic Rajasthan," where the representations are compared to actuality. After offering a discussion of semiotic theory, it interprets and analyzes a number of important aspects of Rajasthani and Indian culture such as: the Taj Mahal, the Palace of Winds in Jaipur, the notorious rat temple in Deshnok, and sacred cows. Lastly, he discusses his own trip and how the impact of Rajasthan did not fully register until he returned home.This volume's strength lies in the author's ability to write in an accessible manner, assemble the project in an interesting way, and include only that information which will guide the reader along the narrative trail. While this manuscript really is a guidebook to Rajasthan, it could also serve as a good introduction to ethnography for beginning students and an interested general audience. It moves from basic explanations, such as that of semiotics, to complex applications all with the grace of good story telling.

This brief introductory textbook to the field of communication offers the advantages of Arthur Asa Berger's informal writing style and flair for popular culture examples aimed to engage students. Designed for the basic course in communication departments, Berger introduces the key theorists who shaped our concepts of communication while also describing the varied processes and settings in which communication occurs. Messages is a strong option for instructors who want a student-friendly alternative to the standard encyclopedic textbook.This text:*Contains chapters on key contemporary topics such as social media, communication and identity, and visual communication *Includes accessible popular cultural examples ranging from advertisements to folk tales to James Bond films, all based on Berger's years of expertise as an author and scholar in mass media and popular culture*Incorporates useful pedagogical features such as exercises, quotes from key theorists, and cartoons

The island of Bali has long been characterized in the West as the last "paradise" on earth, but there is far more to this small Indonesian province. Bali Tourism presents an enlightening ethnographic study of some of the most important icons-for tourists and locals alike-in Balinese culture and society and explores the growth of this island as an "exotic" vacation destination. In addition, it offers a firsthand look at many aspects of daily life, a semiotic analysis of its dominant cultural symbols, and insights into tourists' perceptions of Bali. A thirty page photo section offers a unique glimpse at this remarkable island. Through a distinctive use of cultural analysis and psychoanalytic modes of interpretation, Bali Tourism offers an in-depth study of Balinese tourism, society, and character. This handy, easy-to-read text is an essential overview of what the island has to offer tourists and looks at the exciting possibilities-and the potential pitfalls-of visiting this extraordinary land. The book paints a vivid portrait of this country's hidden gems and popular tourist destinations, exploring the ways visitors see Bali-and how the Balinese see visitors-as well as the promise and problems Bali faces in developing its tourism industry. Bali Tourism is an ideal book to read before visiting Bali yourself-or recommending/planning a trip for others. The fresh insights it presents will help make any trip to the region more rewarding for the traveler. It is also a unique scholarly resource, complete with informative tables, references, and a bibliography, for academics and students at all levels of tourism studies.

Just as a distinctive literary voice or style is marked by the ease with which it can be parodied, so too can specific aspects of humor be unique. Playwrights, television writers, novelists, cartoonists, and film scriptwriters use many special technical devices to create humor. Just as dramatic writers and novelists use specific devices to craft their work, creators of humorous materials--from the ancient Greeks to today's stand-up comics--have continued to use certain techniques in order to generate humor.

In The Art of Comedy Writing, Arthur Asa Berger argues that there are a relatively limited number of techniques--forty-five in all--that humorists employ. Elaborating upon his prior, in-depth study of humor, An Anatomy of Humor, in which Berger provides a content analysis of humor in all forms--joke books, plays, comic books, novels, short stories, comic verse, and essays--The Art of Comedy Writing goes further. Berger groups each technique into four basic categories: humor involving identity such as burlesque, caricature, mimicry, and stereotype; humor involving logic such as analogy, comparison, and reversal; humor involving language such as puns, wordplay, sarcasm, and satire; and finally, chase, slapstick, and speed, or humor involving action.

Berger claims that if you want to know how writers or comedians create humor study and analysis of their humorous works can be immensely insightful. This book is a unique analytical offering for those interested in humor. It provides writers and critics with a sizable repertoire of techniques for use in their own future comic creations. As such, this book will be of interest to people inspired by humor and the creative process--professionals in the comedy field and students of creative writing, comedy, literary humor, communications, broadcast/media, and the humanities.

In Blind Men and Elephants, Arthur Asa Berger uses case histories to show how scholars from different disciplines and scholarly domains have tried to describe and understand humor. He reveals not only the many approaches that are available to study humor, but also the many perspectives toward humor that characterize each discipline. Each case history sheds light on a particular aspect of humor, making the combination of approaches of considerable value in the study of social research.

Among the various disciplines that Berger discusses in relation to humor are: communication theory, philosophy, semiotics, literary analysis, sociology, political science, and psychology. Berger deals with these particular disciplines and perspectives because they tend to be most commonly found in the scholarly literature about humor as well as being those that have the most to offer. Blind Men and Elephants covers a wide range of humor, from simple jokes to the uses of literary devices in films. Berger observes how humor often employs considerable ridicule directed at diverse groups of people: women, men, animals, politicians, African Americans, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, gay people, straight people, and so forth. The book also explains the risk factor in ridicule as a humorous device.

Blind Men and Elephants depicts how one entity or one situation can be viewed in as many different ways as the number of people studying it. Berger also shows how those multiple perspectives, the Rashomon Effect, can be used together to create a clearer understanding of humor. Blind Men and Elephants is a valuable companion to Berger's recent effort about humor, An Anatomy of Humor, and will be enjoyed by communication and information studies scholars, sociologists, literary studies specialists, philosophers, and psychologists.

The Victorian era is rightly associated with the industrial revolution in Britain and the ascendancy of a materialist, commercially-oriented middle class. The threat to spiritual values was felt strongly in the realm of religion but also in the secular realm of the arts and literature. This volume analyzes the drive toward cultural transcendence in the lives and works of such eminent Victorians as Tennyson, Carlyle, Browning, the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the romantic origins of anthropology. The various modes of escape from the Victorian era helps illuminate present concerns about culture and society.

First published in 1970, "Victorian Revolutionaries" represents a major effort in the intellectual rehabilitation of Victorian art and thought. Peckham's readings of "In Memoriam and Idylls of the King" show Tennyson at odds with Christianity except with the notion of the immortality of the soul. The terror of meaninglessness that he discerns here is echoed in the chapter on Carlyle who views human life as issuing from mystery and proceeding in chaos, protected only by self-deception. For Browning, the perceived lack of meaning or purpose results in an existential poetics of the world as theater and the individual as actor. Peckham's chapter on the Pre-Raphaelites anticipates their later rehabilitation by arguing that their work properly understood constitutes a challenge to the institutional modernism of the late twentieth century just as they had, in turn, challenged the academic values of the Royal Academy.

The West is once more living in a culturally critical period today. Any help we can get in understanding how to deal with it is bound to be of value. Not the particular strategies of these men, but the general pattern of their search in social and anthropological theory is probably the most useful thing they have to offer.

To be civilized involves, among other things, making, using, and buying objects. Although speculation on the significance of objects often tends to be casual, there are professionals--anthropologists, historians, semioticians, Marxists, sociologists, and psychologists--who analyze material culture in a systematic way and attempt to elicit from it reliable information about people, societies, and cultures. One reason that analyzing objects has been problematical for scholars is the lack of a sound methodology governing multidisciplinary research. Reading Matter addresses this problem by defining a comprehensive set of methodological approaches that can be used to analyze and interpret material culture and relate it to personality and society.

Berger offers discussions of the main concepts found in semiotic, historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and sociological analysis. He provides practical descriptions of the working methods of each discipline and demarcates their special areas of investigation. Berger's lively discussions include a wealth of illustrative examples that help to clarify the complex and often difficult theories that underlie interpretations of material culture. In the second part of his analysis, Berger uses these disciplines to investigate one subject--fashion and an important aspect of fashion, blue jeans, and what the author calls the "denimization" phenomenon. Here he shows how different methods of "reading" material culture end up with different perspectives on things--even when they are dealing with the same topic.

The author's focus is on the material culture of post-literate societies and cultures, both contemporary and historical. This comparative approach enables the reader to trace the evolution of objects from past to present or to see how American artifacts spread to different cultures, acquiring a wholly new meaning in the process. "Reading Matter" is an important contribution to the study of popular culture and social history. It will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural historians.

"Arthur Asa Berger" is professor emeritus of broadcast and electronic communication arts at San Francisco State University and series editor of Transaction's Communication and Mass Culture and Humor Studies series. He is the author of many books including "Manufacturing Desire" and "Agitpop."

Berger's slim, user-friendly volume on academic writing is a gift to linguistically-stressed academics. Author of 60 published books, the author speaks to junior scholars and graduate students about the process and products of academic writing. He differentiates between business writing skills for memos, proposals, and reports, and the scholarly writing that occurs in journals and books. He has suggestions for getting the "turgid" out of turgid academic prose and offers suggestions on how to best structure various forms of documents for effective communication. Written in Berger's friendly, personal style, he shows by example that academics can write good, readable prose in a variety of genres.

The average person in America watches four hours of television per day and spends the equivalent of nine years of his or her life in front of the television set. If the attention most people devote to popular culture--listening to the news, watching soap operas, reading the comics--were added up, it would reveal that most people spend an enormous amount of time with popular culture, which becomes, in large measure, their culture. Manufacturing Desire is a study of how the mass media broadcast or spread various popular arts; further, how the media and popular arts play a major role in shaping our everyday lives.

The television shows we watch, the movies we see, the radio programs we listen to, and all the comics strips we read influence social behavior. They give us ideas about what is good and evil, about how to solve problems, and about how we should relate to others. If we understand this, says Berger, then the way we think about our media-influenced culture will be far different than if we see popular culture as mindless entertainment. Berger provides an analysis of the way popular culture and the mass media simultaneously reflect and affect various aspects of American culture and society. He examines commercials, television shows, comics, film, humor, and everyday life in terms of what beliefs and values are found in them, what attitudes toward ourselves and our societies are contained in them, how they achieve their effects, and what they reflect about present-day American culture and society.

The book begins with a consideration of theoretical matters related to the study of popular culture and the mass media, and focuses on the important contributions of Gilbert Seldes on the subject. Throughout Berger makes use of a number of different perspectives to show how various disciplines, modes of analysis, philosophical positions, and belief systems help people interpret a given text. He concludes with an analysis of the impact mass media have across America, cross-culturally, and internationally. Manufacturing Desire will provide the general reader as well as specialists in communication and information, sociology, and psychology with a better understanding of the effects of mass media and popular culture on contemporary society.

This book offers a semiotically informed ethnographic study of contemporary culture in Rajasthan and in India generally. It adapts the methodology of analyzing cultures found in Roland Barthes' semiotic portrait of Japanese culture, "Empire of Signs," but adds an analysis of lifestyles as explicated in the work of social anthropologist Mary Douglas, political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, and a number of other social scientists. This manuscript is, at first, a guide to Rajasthan and India, and it is that but it is also more in that it considers tourism from both an anthropological and sociological level.

Berger begins with statistics on tourism and other aspects of life in Rajasthan and India, and then considers how tourism in India compares with tourism in other important tourism destinations. He refers to the "Imaginary India" as the picture created in tourists' minds with the help of guidebooks, media, and the Internet before they actually travel to India. He then discusses these representations and how they are actually different from the country itself. The trip itself then becomes the search for the authentic India--the goal is to find places before they are discovered. He calls this "Semiotic Rajasthan," where the representations are compared to actuality. After offering a discussion of semiotic theory, it interprets and analyzes a number of important aspects of Rajasthani and Indian culture such as: the Taj Mahal, the Palace of Winds in Jaipur, the notorious rat temple in Deshnok, and sacred cows. Lastly, he discusses his own trip and how the impact of Rajasthan did not fully register until he returned home.

This volume's strength lies in the author's ability to write in an accessible manner, assemble the project in an interesting way, and include only that information which will guide the reader along the narrative trail. While this manuscript really is a guidebook to Rajasthan, it could also serve as a good introduction to ethnography for beginning students and an interested general audience. It moves from basic explanations, such as that of semiotics, to complex applications all with the grace of good story telling.

In this entirely sophisticated and scholarly account of political culture, Arthur Asa Berger shows how the variety of cultural preferences creates the foundations of communication theory. Using the work of Aaron Wildavsky, the author shows how individualism, egalitarianism, collectivism, and fatalism form the basis of culture in complex societies. But more importantly, Berger breaks down the mechanical distinction between mass culture and elite culture, showing how they interpenetrate and crossover at the level of competitive and hierarchical frames. Agitpop, now in paperback, suggests that there is an ideological content to our popular culture, even though the creators no less than the consumers of that culture are either unaware or dimly aware that they are creating works with an ideological bent. The work takes up in quick order two examples from different areas of the hierarchical, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist cultures. From football games to the Iran-Contra Hearings, from MTV to the Human Potential Movement, from Max Headroom to humor on the Jews, and from wrestling to The Terminator, Berger takes up his master themes with a deft touch of his own. Weaving in the work of scholars from Emile Durkheim to Aaron Wildavsky he manages to make each of the chapters very much his own. For those who know the earlier work of this author, the reader will be very much at home; for those new to Berger, the volume will be a joyous revelation. The final three chapters reveal a deeper aspect of Berger's work. His interpretation of the earlier materials in terms of the semiotics of power, of textual analysis, or deconstruction of the media, and finally, an analysis and self-analysis of the larger research agenda of which this work is pivotal, should make this book central to the theoretical construction of popular and political culture. For people working in communications theory, political culture, and the sociology of knowledge, this book is a must; for everyone else, it is a joy.

The Genius of the Jewish Joke focuses on what is distinctive and unusual about Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. Jewish humor is humor by Jews and about Jews, in whatever medium this humor is found. Jokes are defined as short stories, meant to amuse, with a punch line, though Jewish humor exists in many other forms--riddles, comic definitions, parodies--as well. The book makes a "radical" suggestion about the origin of Jewish humor--namely, that Sarah and Abraham's relation to God, and the name of their son Isaac (which, in Hebrew, means laughter), recognizes a special affinity in Jews for humor. Abraham does not sacrifice Isaac (humor) and, thus, humor and the Jews are linked early in Jewish history.

Berger discusses techniques of humor and how they can be used to analyze jokes. He also compares "Old World Jewish Humor"--the humor of the shtetl, with its fabulous schlemiels, schlimazels, schnorrers, and other characters--and "New World Humor"--the humor of Jewish doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professional types living mostly in the suburbs nowadays. Jewish humor is contrasted with other forms of ethnic humor, such as Polish jokes and Italian American jokes.

This humor, in addition to providing pleasure, reveals a great deal about Jewish character and culture and, in addition, the human condition. Now available with a new introduction by the author, The Genius of the Jewish Joke is an entertaining and informative inquiry into Jewish humor that explores its distinctiveness, its unique spirit, and its role in Jewish identity.

In 1946, William Bullitt, the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, U.S. Ambassador to France at the outbreak of the Second World War, and onetime close advisor to FDR, wrote the first book-length, comprehensive analysis of the emerging Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the war, as the book's new introduction by Francis P. Sempa points out, Bullitt had repeatedly urged President Roosevelt to wage war with a view toward the postwar balance of power. Bullitt recounted in this volume how the United States missed opportunities to block Soviet geopolitical gains during the war due to a fundamental misreading of the nature of the Soviet political system.

Bullitt wrote "The Great Globe Itself" from the perspective of a key advisor to President Roosevelt who evolved into a strident critic of the president's wartime diplomacy toward the Soviet Union. When Soviet Russia became a wartime ally of the United States, Bullitt understood that the alliance would last only until the common enemy (Hitler's Germany) was defeated.

Bullitt's discussion and analysis of fundamental global geopolitical realities and his prudent counsel to couple diplomacy with force in international relations are as relevant today as when he wrote the book, nearly sixty years ago.

Is television a cultural wasteland, or a medium that has brought people more great art, music, dance, and drama than any previous media? How do we study and interpret television? What are the effects of television on individuals and society, and how do we measure them? What is the role of television in our political and economic life? Television in Society explores these issues in considering how television both reflects and affects society. The book is divided into two sections. The first focuses on programming and deals with commercials, ceremonial events, important series (such as "MASH" and "Lou Grant"), significant programs (a production of Brave New World on television), and the images of police on the medium. The second part of the book deals with important issues and topics related to the medium: the impact of television violence, values found on television, the impact of television on education, the significance of new technological developments, and the always thorny issue of freedom of the press. The articles are drawn together by a brilliant introductory essay by Arthur Asa Berger, who examines television as culture.