History & Criticism

It is no coincidence that presidential candidates have been making it a point to add the late-night comedy circuit to the campaign trail in recent years. In 2004, when John Kerry decided it was time to do his first national television interview, he did...

From mindfulness in schools to meditation apps, mental health is bursting out of the psychiatrist's chair and into our everyday conversations. As awareness of mental health increases, so does its predominance in popular culture, which makes for a...

Historian Sara Eskridge examines television's rural comedy boom in the 1960s and the political, social, and economic factors that made these shows a perfect fit for CBS. The network, nicknamed the Communist Broadcasting System during the Red Scare of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781978813823Author Jim CullenFormat HardbackPage Count 254Imprint Rutgers University PressPublisher Rutgers University PressWeight(grams) 152g

How the baby boomers learned about the world in their most formative yearsBook InformationISBN 9781439902882Author Eric BurnsFormat HardbackPage Count 352Imprint Temple University Press,U.S.Publisher Temple University Press,U.S.

A comprehensive and compelling examination of one of cable television's most innovative and popular networks, The Essential HBO Reader looks at every aspect of HBO's development as a corporation, a creative voice, and a brand. The authors explore the...

Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows is the first comprehensive look at Chicago's horror movie programs, from their inception in 1957 to the present.Book InformationISBN 9780809335381Author Ted OkudaFormat PaperbackPage Count 277Imprint Southern Illinois...

Now if I just remembered where I put that original TV play device--the universal remote control . . .Television is a global industry, a medium of representation, an architectural component of space, and a nearly universal frame of reference for viewers...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780814255599Author Frederick Luis AldamaFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint Ohio State University PressPublisher Ohio State University PressWeight(grams)...

For ten years, Herbert J. Gans spent considerable time in four major television and magazine newsrooms, observing and talking to the journalists who choose the national news stories that inform America about itself. Writing during the golden age of...

For decades after its invention, television was considered by many to be culturally deficient when compared to cinema, as analyses rooted in communication studies and the social sciences tended to focus primarily on television's negative impact on...

The radical expansion of television broadcasting in the post-war years and beyond both reflected and promoted a cultural revolution sweeping across British society. Reaching out to a mass audience for the first time, the new television industry made...

Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vision of the teeming drug trade and the vitality of life in...

First demonstrated in 1928, color television remained little more than a novelty for decades as the industry struggled with the considerable technical, regulatory, commercial, and cultural complications posed by the medium. Only fully adopted by all...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer gave contemporary TV viewers an exhilarating alternative to the tired cultural trope of a hapless, attractive blonde woman victimized by a murderous male villain. With its strong, capable heroine, witty dialogue, and a creator...

Current affairs television in the UK, in more than half a century of programmes, has set out to tell us something we didn't know, treating its audience as citizens with the right to demand that 'something must be done'. Over their 36 year history, the...

From the opening credits that feature a silhouette falling among skyscrapers, Mad Men transcended its role as a series about the Madison Avenue advertising industry to become a modern classic. For seven seasons, Mad Men asked viewers to contemplate the...

Few trends have had as much impact on television as formats have in recent years. Long confined to the fringes of the TV industry, they have risen to prominence since the late 1990s. Today, they are a global business with hundreds of programmes adapted...

A social, cultural, historical, and institutional analysis of the classic original series, The Fugitive.Book InformationISBN 9780814334294Author David P. PiersonFormat PaperbackPage Count 136Imprint Wayne State University PressPublisher Wayne State...

Television Drama offers an account of British television drama from its origins in live studio drama in the prewar and immediate postwar years, through the Golden Age of the single play in the 1960s and 1970s, to its convergence with an emerging British...

In November 2007, Channel 4 will be twenty-five years old. Today, such TV events as the 'Big Brother/Jade Goody Affair' have put the channel itself at the centre of public debate. Yet during its foundation years on British screens, Channel 4 was seen as...

Julie Grossman and Will Scheibel's enthusiastic book on the television series Twin Peaks takes fans through the world that Mark Frost and David Lynch created and examines its impact on society, genre, and the television industry. Grossman and Scheibel...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780981650623Author Joseph VogelFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Cardinal BooksPublisher Cardinal BooksWeight(grams) 336gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm *...

A rich, fact-filled collectible, packed with vibrant history, amazing trivia, and rare photographs, The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia, assembled with the full cooperation of the Rod Serling estate, includes biographies of every principal actor involved in...

If the made-for-television movie has long been regarded as a poor stepchild of the film industry, then telefilm horror has been the most uncelebrated offspring of all. Considered unworthy of critical attention, scary movies made for television have...

A lively introduction to a subject which has attracted increasing interest in the last few years.. A wide-ranging and carefully constructed account. Likely to be adopted on many courses (both foundational level and advanced) which include the study of...

This book explores the collaborative sitcoms of two of British television's most well-known comedy writers. Written over a period of twenty-five years, the four series 'Dad's Army', 'It Ain't Half Hot, Mum', 'Hi-de-Hi!' and 'You Rang M'Lord?' have...

The early twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a new style of television drama in Britain that adopts the professional practices and production values of high-end American television while remaining emphatically 'British' in content and outlook...

Before Saturday March 26th 2005, "Doctor Who" had been off the air as a regular, new TV series for more than fifteen years; until a production team led by Russell T. Davies re-imagined the programme so successfully, so triumphantly, that it's become an...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143125693Author Brett MartinFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 276gDimensions(mm) 213mm * 140mm *...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781350179493Author James ChapmanFormat PaperbackPage Count 384Imprint Bloomsbury AcademicPublisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLCWeight(grams) 499gDimensions(mm)...

Before Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files, there was Carl Kolchak, a world-weary Chicago newspaper reporter with a cheap, seersucker suit and a penchant for uncovering monsters lurking in every corner. Kolchak first appeared on American screens in...

In the fall of 2000, Gilmore Girls premiered on the WB and viewers were introduced to the quirky world of Stars Hollow and the Gilmores who had made it their home, mother-daughter best friends Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. With the show in its seventh season...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780981650616Author Joseph VogelFormat HardbackPage Count 226Imprint Cardinal BooksPublisher Cardinal Books

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781937112325Author Brandan KearneyFormat HardbackPage Count 284Imprint Drag CityPublisher Drag City

A fascinating and hilarious deep dive into 30 Rock, Tina Fey's beloved modern classic comedy In the fall of 2006, NBC somehow unveiled two new shows set in the world of late-night sketch comedy: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and 30 Rock. It was Aaron...

Mockumentary is now an established part of the spectrum of television styles, with both deep roots in television history and a key part of innovations in the sitcom genre since the 1990s. Tracing the development of mockumentary series within the broader...

Alfred Hitchcock: cultural icon, master film director, storyteller, television host, foodie. And as Jan Olsson argues in Hitchcock a la Carte, he was also an expert marketer who built his personal brand around his rotund figure and well-documented table...

Bada bing! What drama. "The most important work of American popular culture in fifty years" is how the "New York Times" describes "The Sopranos". Critically-acclaimed, award-winning, and the most watched show on HBO, the mobster drama swirls around the...

Scholar and Who fan Miles Booy has written the first historical account of the public interpretation of Doctor Who. Love and Monsters begins in 1979 with the publication of 'Doctor Who Weekly', the magazine that would start a chain of events that would...