Much writing about comedy in the last twenty years has only trivialized comedy as cheap or as temporary distraction from things that "really matter." It has either presented exhaustive taxonomies of kinds of humor--like wit, puns, jokes, humor, satire, irony--or engaged in pointless political endgames, moral dialogues, or philosophical perceptions. Comedy is rarely presented as a mode of thought in its own right, as a way of understanding, not something to be understood.Bruns' guid...

A guide to the fundamentals of understanding film history, filmmaking, and film appreciation.Film is not just a medium; it is also a language—and a global one at that. Essential Film History describes how this language emerged and how it has matured over the course of more than 125 years. Beginning with the experiments of the late nineteenth century, and tracking the development of cinematic storytelling, commercial distribution, and audience reception int...

Featuring a new Jack Reacher story by Andrew Child!A dangerous drifter, a hired gun, a grisly corpse—you never know who you’ll run into at the Hotel California.Eight deliciously talented mystery authors have lent their skills of crafting murder and suspense to this collection of gripping short stories. Each of these eight provocative tales is designed to entertain and mystify—and maybe even chill you to your core. Get lost in the w...

Featuring a new Jack Reacher story by Andrew Child!A dangerous drifter, a hired gun, a grisly corpse—you never know who you’ll run into at the Hotel California.Eight deliciously talented mystery authors have lent their skills of crafting murder and suspense to this collection of gripping short stories. Each of these eight provocative tales is designed to entertain and mystify—and maybe even chill you to your core. Get lost in the w...

Inspired by the debut album from legendary rock star Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell is a stellar collection of mysteries from some of the best writers in the genre.The fourth installment in the Music and Murder Mystery series, edited by Don Bruns, Bat Out of Hell is a nonstop thrill ride of engrossing mysteries from some of the best authors in the business. An anthology unlike any other, this collection includes a brand-new Jack Reacher story from And...

Science museums are in the business of making science accessible to the public-a public constantly bombarded with new information and research results. How the public understands this information will affect what they expect and take away from a museum's exhibits and programs. Creating Connections looks at the public understanding of research (PUR) and how it affects what science museums do. What are the opportunities and critical issues in PUR? What strategies are working and what are som...

Inspired by the debut album from legendary rock star Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell is a stellar collection of mysteries from some of the best writers in the genre.The fourth installment in the Music and Murder Mystery series, edited by Don Bruns, Bat Out of Hell is a nonstop thrill ride of engrossing mysteries from some of the best authors in the business. An anthology unlike any other, this collection includes a brand-new Jack Reacher story from And...

A series of close readings addresses the philosophical and political questions that have surrounded Blanchot and his writings for decadesSelected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleAs a novelist, essayist, critic, and theorist, Maurice Blanchot has earned tributes from authors as diverse as Jacques Derrida, Giles Deleuze, and Emmanuel Levinas. But their praise has told us little about what Blanchot's work actually says and why it has been so...

A Companion to New Media Dynamics presents a state-of-the-art collection of multidisciplinary readings that examine the origins, evolution, and cultural underpinnings of the media of the digital age in terms of dynamic changePresents a state-of-the-art collection of original readings relating to new media in terms of dynamic changeFeatures interdisciplinary contributions encompassing the sciences, social sciences, humanities and creative artsAddre...

World-renowned scholars explore how political clientelism works and evolves in the context of modern developing democracies.What happens when vote buying becomes a means of social policy? Although one could cynically ask this question just as easily about the United States’s mature democracy, Diego Abente Brun and Larry Diamond ask this question about democracies in the developing world through an assessment of political clientelism, or what is commonly known as pa...

Located on the idyllic Georgia coast, Jekyl Island was the playground of the rich at the turn of the last century. Vanderbilts, Goulds, Rockefellers, and other members of elite society vacationed there, enjoying the finest aspects of Southern hospitality that money could buy and importing the rest from New York. Indeed, the money was good: the club's one hundred members controlled one sixth of the nation's wealth.When one of the club's members is shot to death on the island, his fe...

When retired Southern sheriff-turned-New York City detective John Le Brun and his wife, Lordis, set sail in 1910 for a long-awaited honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, they expect to find relaxation in paradise. However, they soon discover they’ve been lured to the island in part to tout its attributes as a burgeoning vacation retreat to wealthy investors back home. Instead of finding tranquility among the tropical isle’s quaint villages and sandy beaches, they encounter a land...