There is no other instrument that so profoundly influenced contemporary popular music, than the guitar. In its electrified version it has coined modern pop, and naturally rock music from the 1950s onward. Authors Gibson and Warren – who are neither music historians, luthiers nor professional musicians, but geographers and economic geographers from the University of […]
Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films by Sean M. Maloney (2020)
The Cold War, with all of its threats and visions of mass destruction and apocalyptic scenarios appears far away these days. However, when the menace of nuclear weapons that possibly would be launched if wrong decisions were made by a few incompetent men in the military back in the 1960s, stories, novels and mostly movies […]
The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination by Philip Ball (2021)
The days when (ancient) myths – be they Greek, Nordic or from whatever region – were rather important to man as they served as guidelines and offered counsel are long gone; or so it seems. Because popular culture has created books, tales and stories that are inhabited by artificial men, werewolves, vampires, ghost hunters or […]
Exploring The Orville: Essays on … by David Kyle Johnson and Michael R. Berry (eds.) (2021)
In 2017, the first episode of the science-fiction series The Orville premiered on Fox. So far, two seasons of the space adventure show that never denied its relatedness to 1990’s Star Trek, exist. The TV series immediately was described by critics as something between a parody, homage, fan fiction, Star Trek rip-off, and bad copy, […]
Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism by Paul S. Hirsch (2021)
Comic books as media today would not raise much attention if they featured heavy use of violence or representations of vigilantes who take the law into their own hands. On the contrary, the media now is deeply absorbed into the popular canon of the US. “The comic book, whether in the form of a collectible […]
Projections of Passing: Postwar Anxieties and Hollywood Films, 1947-1960 by N. Megan Kelley (2021)
The debatable term of “passing,” initially used to describe a basically 19th and 20th century strategy of African-Americans to pass for white (and avoid Jim Crow laws, absurd segregationist rules and social exclusion), in the mid- 1950s took on other forms and meanings. Actually, then it depicted new ways of passing/acting out or incorporating somebody […]
Exploring Star Trek: Voyager. Critical Essays by Robert L. Lively (ed.) (2020)
In 1999, Star Trek: Voyager (STV) for a while would be the sole Gene Roddenberry series to come up with fresh episodes on the relatively new UPN network. That same year Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had its last episode, as had Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1994. Accordingly in 1999, the future of […]
A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk by Peter Stanfield (2021)
The story of The Who, a band that started out as The Detours and the High Numbers, is probably the best example of a group that combined an innovative stage show that incorporated ideas borrowed from art theory with a strong dialogue directed at a style-minded fan base and consumer culture. “Across The Who’s first […]
The Final Frontier: International Relations and Politics through … by Joel R. Campbell & Gigi Gokcek
Man’s curious nature that powered the exploration of the seas, jungles, and deserts of the planet finally also led him into extraterrestrial territories. However, long before the first satellite or test probe even got close to the moon, other ways of purely fictional exploration were at work. Prominent in the approach to understand and categorize […]