New York Times Bestseller * Now a Netflix Film "Rich, tragic...monumental . . . true-crime reporting at its best."-Washington Post The bestselling account of the lives of five young women whose fates converged in the perplexing case of the Long Island Serial Killer. Now updated, with a new epilogue by the author. One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert-after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life-went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene-of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention-until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan's. There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppauge, Long Island, just a month after Shannon's disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like Shannan, all four women were petite, in their twenties, and had come from out of town to work as escorts, and they all had advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage. Lost Girls is a portrait of unsolved murders in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them. Long considered "one of the best true-crime books of all time" (Time), this edition includes a new epilogue that speaks to developments in the case, including the shocking fate of Mari Gilbert, Shannan's mother, for whom this case became the crusade of a lifetime.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins - aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony - and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho: A Casebook collects some of the finest essays on this groundbreaking film--a film that is ideal for teaching the language of cinema and the ways in which strong filmmakers can break Hollywood conventions. Psycho is a film that can be used to present the structures of composition and cutting, narrative and genre building, and point of view. The film is also a highpoint of the horror genre and an instigator of all the slasher films to come in its wake. The essays in the casebook cover all of these elements and more. They also serve another purpose: presented chronologically, they represent the changes in the methodologies of film criticism, from the first journalist reviews and early auteurist approaches, through current psychoanalytic and gender criticism. Other selections include an analysis of Bernard Hermann's score and its close relationship to Hitchcock's visual construction; the famous Hitchcock interview by Francois Truffaut; and an essay by Robert Kolker that, through the use of stills taken directly from the film, closely reads its extraordinary cinematic structure. Contributors include Robert Kolker, Stephen Rebello, Bosley Crowther, Jean Douchet, Robin Wood, Raymond Durgnat, Royal S. Brown, George Toles, Robert Samuels, and Linda Williams.

Politics Goes to the Movies introduces the topic of political representation and ideology by analyzing some of the most important politically themed films across the history of cinema in a refreshing and concise volume. Offering a survey of political cinema from 1915 to present day, topics include: propaganda, Communism, Fascism, revolutionary cinema, and contemporary documentary. Using individual case studies that begin with The Birth of a Nation and end with O.J.: Made in America, the book introduces how various strands of international politics have been woven through the fabric of cinema by contextualizing each film in its particular historical moment. In addition, Robert Kolker offers formal analyses that explore not only overtly political themes but also how the structural properties of a film can themselves be political-how political films are made, politically. Including films produced across Europe, North Africa, the US, and Latin America, this accessible and engaging book is an ideal introductory text for students of political cinema.

Politics Goes to the Movies introduces the topic of political representation and ideology by analyzing some of the most important politically themed films across the history of cinema in a refreshing and concise volume. Offering a survey of political cinema from 1915 to present day, topics include: propaganda, Communism, Fascism, revolutionary cinema, and contemporary documentary. Using individual case studies that begin with The Birth of a Nation and end with O.J.: Made in America, the book introduces how various strands of international politics have been woven through the fabric of cinema by contextualizing each film in its particular historical moment. In addition, Robert Kolker offers formal analyses that explore not only overtly political themes but also how the structural properties of a film can themselves be political-how political films are made, politically. Including films produced across Europe, North Africa, the US, and Latin America, this accessible and engaging book is an ideal introductory text for students of political cinema.

An updated and expanded version of this classic study of contemporary American film, the new edition of A Cinema of Loneliness reassesses the landscape of American cinema over the past decade, incorporating discussions of directors like Judd Apatow and David Fincher while offering assessments of the recent, and in some cases final, work from the filmmakers--Penn, Scorsese, Stone, Altman, Kubrick--at the book's core.

Almost all students have seen 2001, but virtually none understand its inheritance, its complexities, and certainly not its ironies. The essays in this collection, commissioned from a wide variety of scholars, examine in detail various possible readings of the film and its historical context. They also examine the film as a genre piece--as the summa of science fiction that simultaneously looks back on the science fiction conventions of the past (Kubrick began thinking of making a science fiction film during the genre's heyday in the fifties), rethinks the convention in light of the time of the film's creation, and in turn changes the look and meaning of the genre that it revived--which now remains as prominent as it was almost four decades ago. Constructed out of its director's particular intellectual curiosity, his visual style, and his particular notions of the place of human agency in the world and, in this case, the universe, 2001 is, like all of his films, more than it appears, and it keeps revealing more the more it is seen. Though their backgrounds and disciplines differ, the authors of this essay collection are united by a talent for vigorous yet incisive writing that cleaves closely to the text--to the film itself, with its contextual and intrinsic complexities--granting readers privileged access to Kubrick's formidable, intricate classic work of science fiction.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho: A Casebook collects some of the finest essays on this groundbreaking film--a film that is ideal for teaching the language of cinema and the ways in which strong filmmakers can break Hollywood conventions. Psycho is a film that can be used to present the structures of composition and cutting, narrative and genre building, and point of view. The film is also a highpoint of the horror genre and an instigator of all the slasher films to come in its wake. The essays in the casebook cover all of these elements and more. They also serve another purpose: presented chronologically, they represent the changes in the methodologies of film criticism, from the first journalist reviews and early auteurist approaches, through current psychoanalytic and gender criticism. Other selections include an analysis of Bernard Hermann's score and its close relationship to Hitchcock's visual construction; the famous Hitchcock interview by Francois Truffaut; and an essay by Robert Kolker that, through the use of stills taken directly from the film, closely reads its extraordinary cinematic structure. Contributors include Robert Kolker, Stephen Rebello, Bosley Crowther, Jean Douchet, Robin Wood, Raymond Durgnat, Royal S. Brown, George Toles, Robert Samuels, and Linda Williams.

The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies is a major new reference work that provides the best single-volume source of original scholarship on the intersection of film and media studies. Comprised of twenty chapters written by experts in their fields, this work presents an authoritative, in-depth, and up-to-date assessment of film and media in the early twenty-first century in the U.S. and abroad. Some essays survey particular issues, such as the changing concept of 'realism' in film. Others look at current media practices, with special attention to new media. There are contributions by industry professionals, presenting an inside look at film and media today. The Handbook deals with issues as wide ranging and pertinent as copyright, globalization, television programming, video game genres, the ideologies of media, and movie going in India. As with other Oxford Handbooks, the contributors cover the field in a comprehensive yet accessible way that is suitable for those wishing to gain a good working knowledge of an area of study and where it's headed.

An updated and expanded version of this classic study of contemporary American film, the new edition of A Cinema of Loneliness reassesses the landscape of American cinema over the past decade, incorporating discussions of directors like Judd Apatow and David Fincher while offering assessments of the recent, and in some cases final, work from the filmmakers--Penn, Scorsese, Stone, Altman, Kubrick--at the book's core.