The origins of jazz were in the barrelhouses of New Orleans and the speakeasies of Chicago. By the nineteen fifties, a musical renaissance transformed jazz into a high art form. Paul Lopes shows how the rise of a jazz art world was a unique movement--a socially diverse community of musicians, critics, collectors, producers, and enthusiasts that struggled in various ways against cultural orthodoxy in America. This accessible, interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, American studies, African-American studies, and jazz studies.

Americans once eyed the latest Paris fashions in the hope of being chic; now fashion cool is more likely to be found on the frames of kids from LA and London. In corporate boardrooms, managers and entrepreneurs seek to adopt new ideas from competitors. Government programs aim to combat assorted social ills spread within and between nations. Musical idioms flow between jazz, dance music, and symphony halls. All this commotion about the new, the chic, the cool, and the best prompt some ideas to spread, some ideas to be reinvented through contact with other ideas, and some ideas to languish or die.

This special issue of THE ANNALS, "The Social Diffusion of Ideas and Things," devotes its attention to the hows and whys of the diffusion of ideas and things between people, organizations, and cultures. In this issue, discussion if diffusion covers a diverse range of topics:

- Fashionable clothing

- Community outreach

- Industrial pollution

- Political activism

- Morality policy

- Tobacco regulation

- Jazz music

- Diffusion theory

Studies in diffusion provide insights into social processes of innovation and communication of the transmission and adoption of new ideas, new practices, and new technologies. This special issue familiarizes readers with basic hypotheses on diffusion that guide contemporary scholarship and is a useful tool to any social scientist.

Americans once eyed the latest Paris fashions in the hope of being chic; now fashion cool is more likely to be found on the frames of kids from LA and London. In corporate boardrooms, managers and entrepreneurs seek to adopt new ideas from competitors. Government programs aim to combat assorted social ills spread within and between nations. Musical idioms flow between jazz, dance music, and symphony halls. All this commotion about the new, the chic, the cool, and the best prompt some ideas to spread, some ideas to be reinvented through contact with other ideas, and some ideas to languish or die.

This special issue of THE ANNALS, "The Social Diffusion of Ideas and Things," devotes its attention to the hows and whys of the diffusion of ideas and things between people, organizations, and cultures. In this issue, discussion if diffusion covers a diverse range of topics:

- Fashionable clothing

- Community outreach

. Industrial pollution

. Political activism

. Morality policy

. Tobacco regulation

. Jazz music

. Diffusion theory

Studies in diffusion provide insights into social processes of innovation and communication of the transmission and adoption of new ideas, new practices, and new technologies. This special issue familiarizes readers with basic hypotheses on diffusion that guide contemporary scholarship and is a useful tool to any social scientist."

The poems in Manuel Paul Lopez's The Yearning Feed, winner of the 2013 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, are embedded in the San Diego/Imperial Valley regions, communities located along the U.S.-Mexico border. Lopez, an Imperial Valley native, considers La Frontera, or the border, as magical, worthy of Macondo-like comparisons, where contradictions are firmly rooted and ironies play out on a daily basis. These poems synthesize Lopez's knowledge of modern and contemporary literature with a border-child vernacular sensibility to produce a work that illustrates the ongoing geographical and literary historical clash of cultures. With humor and lyrical intensity, Lopez addresses familial relationships, immigration, substance abuse, violence, and, most importantly, the affirmation of life. In the poem titled "Psalm," the speaker experiences a deep yearning to relearn his family's Spanish tongue, a language lost somewhere in the twelve-mile stretch between his family's home, his school, and the border. The poem "1984" borrows the prose-poetics of Joe Brainard, who was known for his collage and assemblage work of the 1960s and 1970s, to describe the poet's bicultural upbringing in the mid-1980s. Many of the poems in The Yearning Feed use a variety of media, techniques, and cultural signifiers to create a hybrid visual language that melds "high" art with "low." The poems in The Yearning Feed establish Lopez as a singular and revelatory voice in American poetry, one who challenges popular perceptions of the border region and uses the unique elements of the rich border experience to inform and guide his aesthetics.

The origins of jazz were in the barrelhouses of New Orleans and the speakeasies of Chicago. By the nineteen fifties, a musical renaissance transformed jazz into a high art form. Paul Lopes shows how the rise of a jazz art world was a unique movement--a socially diverse community of musicians, critics, collectors, producers, and enthusiasts that struggled in various ways against cultural orthodoxy in America. This accessible, interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, American studies, African-American studies, and jazz studies.