No society is without crime, prompting Nathaniel Hawthorne's narrator to make his famous statement in "The Scarlet Letter "that, however high its hopes are, no civilization can fail to allot a portion of its soil as the site of a prison. Crime has also been a prevailing, common theme in films that call us to consider its construction: How do we determine what is lawful and what is criminal? And how, in turn, does this often hypocritical distinction determine society?
Film, argues Carl Freedman, is an especially fruitful medium for considering questions like these. With" Versions of Hollywood Crime Cinema," he offers a series of critical readings spanning several genres. From among the mob movies, Freedman focuses on Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" trilogy--arguably the foremost work of crime cinema--crafting a convincing argument that the plot's action is principally driven by the shift from Sicily to America, which marks the shift to a capitalist society. Turning his attention to other genres, Freedman also looks at film noir and Westerns, in addition to films for which crime is significant but not central, from horror movies like Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" to science fiction and social realist films like "The Grapes of Wrath." In recent years, television has welcomed innovative works like "Boardwalk Empire, The Wire," and "The Sopranos," and Freedman discusses how television's increasingly congenial creative environment has allowed it to turn out productions whose ability to engage with these larger social questions rivals that of films from the height of cinema's Golden Age.

The fundamental argument of this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant electoral success that he enjoyed for most of his career and in his ultimate defeat during the Watergate scandal; and, second and even more important, that these connections are symptomatic of many of the most important currents in American life. The book is not just a work of political history or political biography but a study of cultural power: that is, a study in the ways that culture shapes our politics and frames our sense of possibilities and values. In its application of Marxist, psychoanalytic, and other theoretical tools to the study of American electoral politics, and in a way designed for the general as well as for the academic reader, it is a new kind of book.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues--technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism--have only become more pressing with the passage of time.
The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is--you!

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), one of the most popular and influential American authors of the twentieth century, sparked the imagination of generations of writers. His "Foundation" trilogy paved the way for science fiction that was more speculative and philosophical than had been previously seen in the genre, and his book "I, Robot" and his story "The Bicentennial Man" have been made into popular movies. First published as a teenager in John W. Campbell's groundbreaking science-fiction magazine "Astounding," Asimov published over two hundred books during his lifetime.

While most prolific writers tend to concentrate almost exclusively on a single genre, Asimov was a polymath who wrote widely on a variety of subjects. He authored mysteries, autobiographies, histories, satires, companions to Shakespeare, children's books on science, and collections of bawdy limericks. A lifelong atheist, he nevertheless wrote more than a half dozen books on the Bible.

Asimov's varied interests establish him as a premier public intellectual, one who was frequently called upon to clarify debates in science, in history, and on the effects of technology on the modern age. "Conversations with Isaac Asimov" collects interviews with a man considered to be-along with Robert Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, and Arthur C. Clarke-a founder of modern science fiction. Despite this, Asimov is perhaps best known for his many books of popular science writing. Carl Sagan once described Asimov as the greatest explainer of his age, and this talent made Asimov a natural for the interview form. His manner is always crisp and lucid, his tone always engaging, and his comments always enlightening.

Carl Freedman, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of "Critical Theory and Science Fiction," "The Incomplete Projects: Marxism, Modernity, and the Politics of Culture," and "George Orwell: A Study in Ideology and Literary Form."

Perhaps no current filmmaker has made more provocative films about American history than Oliver Stone. In this book, Carl Freedman gives a detailed and nuanced account of the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush as fictionalized in Stone's biographical films JFK, Nixon and W. Offering detailed historical perspectives alongside careful aesthetic criticism, Freedman explores how Stone uses melodrama, tragedy and farce to transform politics into national mythology. Synthesizing film criticism with political and historical analysis, the book transcends the limitations of formalism and empiricism, reflecting on both Stone's achievements as a filmmaker and American politics of the past sixty years. Oliver Stone's importance among filmmakers as the major chronicler of recent US history is the starting point for the analysis of his three 'presidential' films: JFK, Nixon and W. While not claiming equal artistic merit for Stone's films, Freedman makes some comparison with Shakespeare's history plays and draws on T.S. Eliot's notion of 'essential history' to transcend the barren dichotomy of formalism versus empiricism - that is treating historical fiction as either only pure fiction, with nothing to say about real history, or judging it as non-fiction by the extent to which it adheres to superficial historical detail. Instead the focus is on the capacity of Stone's films to illuminate the structural workings of history, contemporary and general. Freedman is thoroughly familiar with his subject, and his meticulous attention to historical accuracy and critical attention to the films is impeccable. This book has a powerfully original focus and makes a significant contribution to the field through offering these detailed historical perspectives alongside much more careful aesthetic criticism of the films. It has the potential to become not only a great source on its subject, but a model of how to approach historical fiction in general. This is an academic study but is written in such an accessible style that it will have genuine appeal to the general reader - to anyone with an interest in cinema, politics and recent history. Wide-ranging, accessible and highly original, American Presidents combines erudition and complex analysis with jargon-free writing and is sure to engage anyone interested in the intersection of American politics and cinema. The academic readership will be among humanities scholars and students of film, popular culture, media, politics, political history and modern history. It will be highly relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate students studying film or modern American history and culture.

"Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin" assembles interviews with the renowned science-fiction and fantasy author of "The Left Hand of Darkness," "The Dispossessed," "The Lathe of Heaven," and the "Earthsea" sequence of novels and stories. For nearly five decades, Le Guin (b. 1929) has enjoyed immense success--both critical and popular--in science fiction and fantasy. But she has also published well-received works in such genres as realistic fiction, poetry, children's literature, criticism, and translation. In the pieces collected here, Le Guin takes every interview not as an opportunity to recapitulate long-held views but as an occasion for in-depth intellectual discourse.

In interviews spanning over twenty-five years of her literary career, including a previously unpublished piece conducted by the volume's editor, Le Guin talks about such diverse subjects as U.S. foreign policy, the history of architecture, the place of women and feminist consciousness in American literature, and the differences between science fiction and fantasy.

Carl Freedman is professor of English at Louisiana State University and is the author of "Critical Theory and Science Fiction"; "The Incomplete Projects: Marxism, Modernity, and the Politics of Culture"; and "George Orwell: A Study in Ideology and Literary Form."