The Marx Brothers are universally considered to be classic Hollywood's preeminent comedy team and Duck Soup is generally regarded as their quintessential film. A topical satire of dictatorship and government in general, the movie was a critical failure and box-office let-down on its initial release in 1933. J. Hoberman's study of the film traces its reputation history, from the initial disappointment of its release, to its rise to cult status in the 1960s when the Marx's anarchic, anti-establishment humor seemed again timely. Hoberman places Duck Soup, alongside analogous comedies-Dr. Strangelove (1964), the Beatles films, Morgan! (1966), The President's Analyst (1967) and The Producers (1968). It attained canonical stature as a touchstone for Woody Allen and would be recognized by the Library of Congress in the 1990s. Hoberman's analysis provides a historical and political context as well as an in-depth production history, drawing on primary sources and emphasizing director McCarey's prior work along with the Marx Brothers as well as the situation at Paramount, a substantial synopsis, and an account of the movie's initial reception, concluding with its subsequent elevation to comic masterpiece.

Reviled, rioted over and banned as pornographic even as it was recognized by many as an unprecedented visionary masterpiece, Jack Smith's "Flaming Creatures" is one of the most important and influential underground movies ever released in America. J. Hoberman's monograph details the creative making--and legal unmaking--of this extraordinary film, a source of inspiration for artists as disparate as Andy Warhol, Federico Fellini and John Waters. Described by its maker as "a comedy set in a haunted music studio," the story of "Flaming Creatures" is here augmented with a dossier of personal recollections, relevant documents and remarkable, previously unpublished on-set photographs by Norman Solomon. Expanding on notes originally prepared for the 1997 retrospective on Jack Smith at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the monograph includes further material on his unfinished features "Normal Love" and "No President," as well as shorter film fragments.

Testosterone has inspired dreams - of restored youth, recharged sexual appetites, faster running, quicker thinking, bigger muscles - since it was first synthesized in 1935. This provocative book investigates the complex, bizarre, and sometimes outrageous history of synthetic testosterone and other male hormone therapies. Exploring many little-known social arenas - both inside and outside the medical world - in which these substances are becoming increasingly available and accepted, "Testosterone Dreams" examines the implications and dangers of their use in professional sports, in the workplace, in our sex lives, and beyond. "Testosterone Dreams" tells the story of testosterone's growing and sometimes concealed influence in our culture over the past 70 years. It explores such controversial topics as the invention and marketing of the male menopause, the disturbing history of hormonal and other medical treatments aimed at boosting or suppressing women's sexuality, and hormone doping in sporting events such as the Tour de France and the Olympics, and in Major League Baseball. It brings to light the hidden use of hormone doping by policemen, soldiers, and other workers in a variety of jobs. It also discusses the burgeoning steroid use in the gay community and its relation to AIDS, and takes a hard look at the pharmaceutical industry's promotional campaigns to create new markets for testosterone products. "Testosterone Dreams" is the first book to bring together the whole story of testosterone and to consider its social and ethical implications: Where does therapy end and performance enhancement begin? How are changing medical technologies affecting how we think about our identities as men and women and the elusive goal of 'well-being'? This book will be essential reading as we move inexorably toward the wide-open, libertarian pharmacology that is now making these drug regimes available to a wider and wider clientele.

One of the world's most erudite and entertaining film critics on the state of cinema in the post-digital--and post-9/11--age. This witty and allusive book, in the style of classic film theorists/critics like Andre Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, includes considerations of global cinema's most important figures and films, from Lars von Trier and Zia Jiangke to "WALL-E," "Avatar" and "Inception."