By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds...

Climate change anxiety is one of the biggest mental health threats of our times. If you find it hard to tear yourself away from doomscrolling, or it feels impossible not to worry about the world we are leaving to future generations, then you are not alone.Surviving Climate Anxiety is the essential guide to coping with the psychological toll of the environmental crisis.In this helpful and ground-breaking book, the world's leading climate anxiety expert, psychologist Dr Thoma...

Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films, such as Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936), a sensational true tale of "a Holl...

In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over nine tumultuous days in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. The blowback was profound: the major studios pledged to never again employ a known Communist or unrepentant fellow traveler. The declaration marked the onset of the blacklist era, a time when political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the ent...

From 1934 to 1954 Joseph I. Breen, a media-savvy Victorian Irishman, reigned over the Production Code Administration, the Hollywood office tasked with censoring the American screen. Though little known outside the ranks of the studio system, this former journalist and public relations agent was one of the most powerful men in the motion picture industry. As enforcer of the puritanical Production Code, Breen dictated "final cut" over more movies than anyone in the history of American cinema...

In 1847, young Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand left Vermont to seek his fortune in the West, but in Wisconsin his business ventures failed, and a medical practice among hard-up settlers added little to his pocketbook. During the Civil War he organized and ran one of the army’s biggest hospitals but resigned when dark rumors surfaced about him. Back home, he accepted with mixed feelings the one prestigious position available to him: superintendent of the state’s first hospital for the insane....

Conventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming.To the unjaded viewersh...

As this bestseller predicted, Trump has only grown more erratic and dangerous as the pressures on him mount. This new edition includes new essays bringing the book up to date—because this is still not normal.Originally released in fall 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a runaway bestseller. Alarmed Americans and international onlookers wanted to know: What is wrong with him?That question still plagues us. The Trump administratio...

As this bestseller predicted, Trump has only grown more erratic and dangerous as the pressures on him mount. This new edition includes new essays bringing the audiobook up to date—because this is still not normal.Originally released in fall 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a runaway bestseller. Alarmed Americans and international onlookers wanted to know: What is wrong with him?That question still plagues us. The Trump administ...

'I have success, money, women. I've been lionised by the public and the media. The world is at my feet. I've spread my wings and here I am, soaring above everything and everyone. But in reality, the descent has already begun.'Thomas Dekker was set to become one of pro cycling’s superstars. But before long, he found himself sucked in by the lure of hedonistic highs and troubled by the intense pressure to perform.In The Descent, Dekker tells his story of hotel room b...

From the origin story of Baba Yaga, to a monster named, Jenny with iron teeth. A woman buried alive in the bog thousands of years ago, lives on, stealing the bones of anything she touches. A mysterious cave imparts on a group of twenty-somethings a curse that leaves the affected with an inescapable chill. A mysterious old woman rewards a kind sister and punishes a callous one, but over time, the gift provided to the kind sister becomes more and more unsettling. A wolf attack upsets the nat...

From the origin story of Baba Yaga, to a monster named, Jenny with iron teeth. A woman buried alive in the bog thousands of years ago, lives on, stealing the bones of anything she touches. A mysterious cave imparts on a group of twenty-somethings a curse that leaves the affected with an inescapable chill. A mysterious old woman rewards a kind sister and punishes a callous one, but over time, the gift provided to the kind sister becomes more and more unsettling. A wolf attack upsets the nat...