Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do

Author : Andrew Gelman Number of Pages : 248 Publisher : Princeton University Press List Price : $27.95 Amazon Price : $17.47 Used Price : $16.95

Product Description

On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans sat riveted in front of their televisions as polling results divided the nation's map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become a symbol of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes--pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist, latte-sipping blue-state Democrats who are woefully out of touch with heartland values. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State debunks these and other political myths.

With wit and prodigious number crunching, Andrew Gelman gets to the bottom of why Democrats win elections in wealthy states while Republicans get the votes of richer voters, how the two parties have become ideologically polarized, and other issues. Gelman uses eye-opening, easy-to-read graphics to unravel the mystifying patterns of recent voting, and in doing so paints a vivid portrait of the regional differences that drive American politics. He demonstrates in the plainest possible terms how the real culture war is being waged among affluent Democrats and Republicans, not between the haves and have-nots; how religion matters for higher-income voters; how the rich-poor divide is greater in red not blue states--and much more.

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is a must-read for anyone seeking to make sense of today's fractured American political landscape.

Myths and facts about the red and the blue:

Myth: The rich vote based on economics, the poor vote "God, guns, and gays."
Fact: Church attendance predicts Republican voting much more among rich than poor.

Myth: A political divide exists between working-class "red America" and rich "blue America."
Fact: Within any state, more rich people vote Republican. The real divide is between higher-income voters in red and blue states.

Myth: Rich people vote for the Democrats.
Fact: George W. Bush won more than 60 percent of high-income voters.

Myth: Religion is particularly divisive in American politics.
Fact: Religious and secular voters differ no more in America than in France, Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries.

Customer reviews

Fun and easy to read by .. Jack Lechelt (Virginia)
Gelman, et. al., offer the political science version of pop-social science, in the Gladwell-Freakonomics vein. They do a fine job, though not quite reaching the captivating levels of Gladwell, etc.

Since the 2000 election and the near dead even split in the electorate, the "red-blue" divide has captivated politicos. The blue states voted for Gore and Kerry, and the red states put George W. Bush in the White House. What has amazed a few people is the fact that the poor states are the red states, which seemed to fly in the face of the storyline that the poor normally vote Democratic. Why do red-poor states - those states that actually take more money from the federal government than their inhabitants pay towards the federal government - vote Republican? Some, like Thomas Frank in "What's the Matter with Kansas?," suggested that poor folks were suckered into voting Republican because Party leaders hyped social issues (abortion, gay marriage) to get the poor on board, all the while ensuring tax cuts were passed for the benefit of the wealthy. It is intriguing to note that after the better part of 30 years of time in the White House, Republicans really haven't done a great job of passing conservative social legislation, but have done a fine job with tax cuts that have largely benefited the wealthy (the wealthy do, of course, pay most of the taxes). Well, Gelman and the rest rebut Frank by pointing out that the poor do indeed - in all states - vote more for the Democratic Party than do the wealthy. Again, that is the case even in red states. Granted, there is probably a higher proportion of poor folks in red states voting Republican than they do in blue states, but even in red states the poor are more likely to vote Democratic. It's the WEALTHY who are causing the red-blue divide. That is, the wealthy are more likely to defect from their financial interests, and they do so, obviously, in the blue states. Furthermore, it is the wealthy who are arguing over social policy, and the poor are sticking to their economic interests. Most importantly for the Democratic Party, Gelman and friends point out that, contrary to the arguments of the left, Democrats would not improve electoral outcomes by becoming more liberal. Doing so will only cause more moderates to leave the Democratic Party. Still, as any Democrat has should have learned, the winning strategy is not always the chosen strategy.

Regardless, "Red State, Blue State..." is an easy to read book with plenty of citations for any reader who wants to dig deeper into the theory, methodology, and articles of serious public opinion and voting behavior scholarship.

My biggest complaints about the book aren't too big. First, the early chapters were particularly choppy and almost read as cut-and-paste efforts. Thankfully the nuggets were interesting, but the overall themes were elusive. Second, for a short book, the price is a bit steep. Don't get me wrong: I love an easy to read short book, but don't charge me a big book price for it. Otherwise, a fine job on an important issue, which may be a little less relevant now with President-electObama's impressive 2008 victory. A few missteps by him, however, and we're right back to the 49-49 split with the increased likelihood of red state led Republican victories.

Not a light read by .. C. P. Anderson (Charlotte, NC)
This review is really just a warning for those of you out there who, based on this book's catchy title, might think it's another Blink, Nudge, Click, etc. It is most definitely not. There is a LOT of data here, and it's not always discussed in the friendliest fashion possible. Yes, there is tons of interesting stuff, but it's really not very accessible.

The writer's style seems to be one of an academic trying to write a popularization. Lots of stops and starts, lots of digressions, lots of repetition, lots of half-digested material. Flow seemed to be the biggest problem, with the author introducing one chart after another, but with very little feel for identifying an argument and advancing it forward.

Overall, very interesting data, but very poor writing.

In Depth Exploration of Political Paradox by .. Gordon S. Linoff (New York, NY)
"Red State, Blue State" starts with an often under-reported paradox: wealthy states vote Democratic whereas wealthy people vote Republican. It then proceeds to explore this paradox from every angle possible using polling data.

My background is data mining. What impresses me most about "Red State, Blue State" is the way it effectively communicates results in understandable ways, particularly using charts rather than complicated formulas. It is not a book about innuendo, selected examples, or technical bravado. It is a book about effectively communicating the results of innumerable polls and many elections to understand a paradox.

The book is divided into three parts. The first introduces the problem, leading up to a chapter on how pundits -- both on the left and the right -- can be so confused. Chapter 3 introduces the idea of the "ecological fallacy", which is the tendency to take summarized information (say, poor states vote Republican -- which tends to be true) and to apply it to individuals (say poor people vote Republic -- which tends to be false).

The second dives into the issue in more detail, both historically and geographically. It is highly unusual to see authors attempt to apply theories about US politics to other countries. This is a daring approach, since most American readers will not find it relevant.

The final section discusses what it all means, particularly the importance of party stances on economic issues versus social issues.

I do not agree with every conclusion in the book. In particular, I feel that the data provides more support for the Republicans "southern strategy" than the authors do. In addition, there is one area where I believe the book could have gone into more detail, and that is the role of turnout in presidential elections.

Prof. Gelman (who is a renown statistician at Columbia University) and his coauthors do an excellent job exploring the relationships between the outcome of elections and individuals, states, and other geogrphic regions. At just over 200 pages, it is definitely worth reading.

Worth the read, but.... by .. Jon Hunt (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA)
At a time when we are on the precipice of deciding who will become our next president, Andrew Gelman and his associates have delivered a terrific new book about recent voting patterns, demographics of all sorts and how states and their people vote, vis-a-vis the economy and other issues. It's less of a prediction about what happens next but as an analysis it's worth every page. As a narrative it's a slog.

Challenging a mere red state/blue state divide, the authors provide candor as to how and why we vote. As a resident of Connecticut, that pocket of insularity in the northeast, I was happy that Gelman countered the Thomas Frank book, "What's the Matter with Kansas", substituting Connecticut in its place. Decision-making about voting is a complex matter and the authors do a good job at its explanation. I recommend it but only wish it had been more readable.

Gummy bear vitamins for the politically curious by .. John Lien (Kendall Park, NJ USA)
This book is like a bottle of Gummy bear vitamins for the politically curious. The cover and maps look colorful and inviting. The words and charts are made from careful research of election results and polls. They are delightful, but require a bit of time to chew. The insights from the book fortify the mind to better digest the barrage of information and opinions about American voters.

Dr. Gelman introduces many common misconceptions about American voters with funny quotes from famous politicians and pundits. He offers reasons behind these myths and debunks them with clear analyses that are presented in the form of powerful and thought-provoking graphs. I appreciate the large amount of graphs & charts that he includes in the book, because they help the reader to see the logic behind his viewpoints.

To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, "Andrew Gelman knows American voters (and so can we)".

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now

Author : Jan Wong Number of Pages : 416 Release Date : 1997-05-19 Publisher : Anchor List Price : $15.95 Amazon Price : $9.00 Used Price : $1.99

Product Description

Customer reviews

A Great Read, Great Insights by .. Litr8r (Globetrotter--currently in the Windy City)
An enthusiastic young activist, Jan Wong left Canada for Beijing in 1972, in hopes of simultaneously aiding Mao's cause and pursuing her ancestral roots. This well-written, enlightening account of her "journey from Mao to now" takes readers through her six years as a student and subsequent six years as a reporter in Red China's capital city.

Wong was uniquely qualified to write this book, which privileges readers with deep insights into why things were the way they were then, and are now, in China. Having Chinese parents, but being raised in the West, rendered Jan part of both worlds. She experienced the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao China as both an insider and a "foreigner," resulting in a perspective on those periods that only a few can claim, and fewer still have written about.

The first part of the book tells the story of the author's Beijing University days. In 1972, armed with only the vocabulary she had acquired in Mandarin 101, Wong left the comfort and security of her Montreal life to spend a summer in China. Inspired by what she observed in Red China, she found it a natural progression to move from worrying about feminist issues to supporting Maoism. So she petitioned and won permission to stay in the country to study at Beijing University for the next two years. Anti-establishmentarianism was "in," and "China was radical-chic" at the time, she explains. Western youth looked to the East for answers and antidotes to racism, "exploitation" of the masses, and materialism. Becoming a journalist seemed like the perfect job for a young woman seeking to change the world, so she decided to remain in China to learn Mandarin, Chinese history, and Maoism. Her goal was to bring knowledge of all that she thought China was doing well to the West.

As a starry-eyed young Maoist, Wong did not realize how miserable people really were. Instead, when she discovered that she and the other foreign students were being given better rooms and special food privileges, they protested until they were allowed to eat the miserable starvation-level rations given to the rest of the students in their dingy canteen. Then she and her foreign friend petitioned to join their Chinese classmates in undertaking the required physical labor projects they had been exempted from. She was finally allowed to dug ditches, haul bricks, and harvest crops with everyone else.

The author's first clue that Communist China might not be the paradise she had dreamed of came when the school asked her to end her friendship with a young Swedish man or be expelled. The school actually played a distressing mind game with her over this issue. From this experience she learned that in China people were not only unable to do what they wanted, but they were also not free to think what they wanted.

Yet, Wong remains zealous in her attempts to prove that she is a good Maoist. In fact, Part One of the book culminates in her informing on two students who asked for her help to leave China for the US. At the time Wong thought she was doing the right thing by turning them in, but now she regrets her decision and feels great remorse for the terrible fate that probably befell these people after that.

In Part Two, Wong returns to Montreal to complete her McGill University degree. Still supportive of Red China, she lectures locally in an effort to muster public support for the country and its political agenda. After graduating in 1974, Wong won a Canadian government scholarship to study at Beijing University, and off she went for more of the same. In addition to learning more about her school experiences and deepening understanding of what was happening on a personal and political level, the author meets and marries Norman Shulman---an American. After her studies end, she takes a job as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. She finds that her Chinese appearance and fluency with the language give her a unique ability to get the local people to open up to her, when other reporters are unable to get interviews or comments.

Wong reaches a turning point when Madame Mao and the rest of the Gang of Four are arrested. As she watches people rejoice in the streets, it dawns on her that the people hadn't believed in the Cultural Revolution for a long time. She feels betrayed and foolish because of her blind faith.

Wong left China in 1980 to pursue a journalism degree at Columbia University, and then worked at various prestigious publications in the US and Canada for seven years. But in 1988, she was too curious to know what was really happening in China, so she asked her employer, the Toronto Globe, to transfer her. The third section of the book thus covers the late 1980s and early 1990s. The highlight of her career was covering the Tiananmen Square protests, the resulting massacre, and resulting fall out. This event served as the catalyst for shattering the last of Wong's illusions about communism in China. She declares herself no longer naïve and believes that she finally has a clear view of the "real" China.

The last portion of the book presents some of Wong's most interesting interviews and perspectives on life in China, centering on human rights issues and social problems like how to uncover how many people really died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, poverty, the effects of the economic boom, retardation, drugs, prisoners, kidnapping women as brides, and the new robber barons of China.

Wong left China in 1993 with no regrets. She concluded that without having spent 12 years living in and observing Red China, she would not have realized that what she was striving for all along was the socialist life style she enjoyed in Canada.

Filled with interesting stories and well told, this book is a must read addition to your "good books about China" collection. As more and more people with Chinese roots return to this country, hopefully more voices like Wang's will emerge to give us perspective on what's happened between 1993 and the present, picking up where she has left off.

Beautiful memoire! by .. Denise Escamilla Ortiz (Mexico City, Mexico)
This is a beautiful book to read. It's well written and you can hardly put it down. Jan Wong let's us be witnesses of her life choices and their consecuences. It's interesting how and why she decides to go and live in communist China, how she strugles to get adjusted to that kind of political system and way of life. She then turns into a great journalist and let's us see some unknown aspects of modern China. It's a good book to learn more about China's history. I enjoyed it a lot!

A Different Kind of China Book by .. T. Parfitt (Taipei, Taiwan)
If you want to understand China, you will need to read a considerable range of titles in order to see the country, its history, people, culture and so on from numerous and unique angles. Jan Wong's RED CHINA BLUES offers a very unique angle. Jan was born in Montreal. Her father owned a popular restaurant in that city and by the time he was thirty, he had made his first million. Jan herself, apparently suffering from an identity crisis, became disenchanted with Canada/Western culture and decided to head to China to find herself and her roots - during the height of Maoism.

Young and impossibly niave, Wong hurtled herself into the Chinese world. She learned the language, demanded not to be given preferential treatment, shoveled manure on a pig farm/re-education camp, and worked in a machine factory. Ever so slowly, her idealism faded, but, as other critics have noted, this took a very long time. At one point, for example, she mentioned how at the machine factory the workers spent half their time going to political meetings as opposed to producing. One of the primary tenets or aims of Marxism (to which Wong subscribed) is to creat a "superabundance" so as to achieve economic surplus over material necessity. Only then will art, politics, philosophy, etc. be able to reach fruition. When factory workers ask Wong about conditions and money re a similar job in the West, she is reluctant to tell them. But such isolated inconsistencies didn't dampen her idealistic fervor; not for something like six years anyway. Wong returned to China in 1988, and from here the book really gears down. Because she looks and can speak Chinese, she is able to to go places and do things that real outsiders never could. Her visit to a labor camp is interesting and her first hand account of "the Tianmen Incident," (people being shot right outside her window) is, as you might imagine, chilling. This was either the first or second China book I read, and it made a lasting impression. I highly recommend it.

Troy Parfitt, author

Beautiful book. by .. Michiru (New Mexico)
Red China Blues is the story of a woman who, in her youth, idealizes communism. This idealization is partly a lack of understanding about how communism in China really worked, and partly rebellion against her own Canadian culture.

As she goes to China and slowly comes to understand the horror of China under Mao, we too see and understand both the regime itself and the ways in which the people dealt with their lot. She wants so much to believe in the dream-China she's created in her head that it's painful and difficult for her to see reality. This is a sin most humans commit at some point in their lives, and many readers will wince as they're reminded of their own delusional moments.

Ms. Wong does not attempt to censor any of her own sins. From simple arrogance to participation in active thought control, she tells us everything she did and leaves it to us to decide what to think of her. The same is true of the people around her: she honestly talks about the good and bad in all the people she describes to us. This lends a wonderful humanizing touch to the book and turns it from the story of a regime into a story about people *in* the regime, living as best they can. You will not be able to forgive some of them, while others will move you. Mostly, Ms. Wong leaves you to decide for yourself which people fall into which category.

In other words, this is a book that lays out facts and lets you decide your opinion for yourself. She gives you the facts, tells you her opinion, and leaves the rest to you. For a clear, honest look at China's people under Mao and after his death, read this one.

An account of life in one of the world's greatest tyrranies. by .. Gary Selikow (Great Kush)
Jan Wong,a Canadian journalist of Chinese ancestry, in this illuminating volume writes of her experiences as an ardent young Maoist in the early 1970's who actually went to China to work and study.
She hauled pig manure in a Chinese re-education farm, and at Beijing University she turned in a fellow student who had begged her help to escape to the West.
Slowly she realized the evil of the Communist system in China and was repatriated to the West in 1978.
Wong returned years later as an undercover journalist to China where she covered the Tianmen Square Massacre, in which three thousand pro-democracy students were mowed down in cold blood by Red China's army, on the orders of dictator, Jian Zemin.
She also covered China's contradictory development into a capitalist state under a Communist dictatorship, or a Communist dictatorship with a capitalist economy...akin to Fascism!
She covers the Tianmen Square Massacre of 1989, letting the the reader know of some of the lesser known details, and how the Communist army opened fire on the students after they began leaving the square:
"A [...]girl was killed and they just brought her body back...After the third barrage I counted more than twenty bodies. One cyclist was shot in the back right below our balcony. There were two big puddles of blood on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. People carried the body of a little girl towards the back of the hotel. After twenty three more minutes, a few people gathred up enough courage to aproach the wounded. The soldiers let loose another blast, sending the would be rescuers scurrying for cover. The crowd was enraged. I grimly kept track of the time. An hour later, the wounded were still on the ground, bleeding to death.
She speaks of the great poverty of the new Red China, with inequalities far greater than anything in the liberal democracies of the world, and crushing poverty in the rural provinces. Despite economic changes, China remains a brutal dictatorship, with no political liberalization or democratization having been allowed by the iron grip of the Communist Party.
Peeople are still opresed in day-to-day life. People are not allowed to own dogs, and to deal with a fad of people acquiring dogs as pets in the early 1990s, special police squads swept through the neigbourhoods, strangling dogs with steel wire looped at the end of metal poles.
The author recounts some regret at buying into the Communist lie, with the realization that "The Western world, especially Canada, is far more socialistic than China has ever been, with it's free public education, universal medicare, unemployment insurance, and government funding for television ads against domestic violence. China has made me appreciate my own country, with it's tiny ethnically diverse population of unassuming donut-eaters. I had gone all the way to China to find an idealistic revolutionary society, when I already had it right to home."
She ends of on a positive note, predicting, in 1997, a great change in China , and the death of the Communist Party, and real democracy.
Ten years later, this is not close to being realized, with a tightening of political control by the Communist dictatorship having taken place.
Despite being one of the most brutal dictatorships on this planet, China has gained international acceptibility, without improving democracy or human rights!
Nobody bats an eyelid at the Olympic Games for 2008 being set in Beijing.
The worst abuses of the Communist regime has it's apologists in the WEst.
The Stalinist Workers World Party in North America, (which has praised Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and applauded suicide bombings against Jewish women and chidren in Israel) congratulated the Chinese regime after the Tianmen Square Massacre, for having 'won a battle against imperialist and counter-revolutionary forces."
The fact that such sentiments can be uttered makes one wonder how far the world has actually come.

Red, Blue, Yellow Shoe

Number of Pages : 12 Release Date : 1986-09-22 Publisher : HarperFestival List Price : $6.99 Amazon Price : $3.15 Used Price : $0.01

Product Description

Customer reviews

Basic color/object learning book for babies by .. G. Marrs (WV)
This is an excellent book for learning colors and object recognition. The colors are accurate and the objects are basic ones for young toddler to know - shoe, leaf, flower, etc. My 3-month old enjoys looking at the simple pictures, but it will still be useful in a year when he's learning words and colors.

babybookmama by .. babybookmama (Florida)
I love Tana Hoban so when I found she did colored images I was very excited. The photos are nice, crisp and right on target with the colors. Simple color learning book.

Our household's all-time-favorite toddler book by .. ()
We have six children, and this is/was the hands-down favorite of all our children as toddlers. We received it as a gift when our 13 yo was a baby, and now our toddler twins are enjoying it. I believe our children learned their color names from this book. They also like Hoban's "Black on White." I wouldn't hesitate to buy this for any under 2's you might have.

Not as Popular the Black/White Books at Our House by .. Amy Z, Afterschooler (Northern Virginia, USA)
As my son grew older and more interested in colors, I looked for a book that would delight him as much as "Black on White" (also by Tana Hoban) had when he was an infant. I thought this book would fill that description, but it didn't quite fit the bill. It has great photographs, but no text.

Despite the catchy, rhyming title, each page shows only a picture of the item: No rhyming text is involved. Although my son likes the brightly colored pictures, he is more interested when I read books with rhythmic texts, such as "Blue Hat, Green Hat" by Sandra Boynton.

Great baby or toddler book by .. ()
My daughter really enjoys this book. It is simple and gives toddlers a chance to learn their colors. We've read it so many times my daughter who is two can now read it herself!

Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film

Author : Joseph Maddrey Number of Pages : 208 Publisher : McFarland & Company List Price : $35.00 Amazon Price : $31.50 Used Price : $22.75

Product Description

This survey of the pivotal horror films produced in America examines the history of the genre as a reflection of cultural changes in the United States. It begins with an exploration of the origins of the genre, and follows its development until the present, using various films to document the evolution of Hollywood horror flicks and illustrate their cultural significance. The second part focuses on eight pivotal directors whose personal visions helped shape the genre—from early pioneers like Tod Browning and Alfred Hitchcock, to modern masters like John Carpenter and Wes Craven.

Customer reviews

A BRIEF BUT INFORMATIVE HORROR PRIMER by .. Tim Janson (Michigan)
In Nightmare's in Red, White & Blue, Author Joseph Maddrey traces the history of American horror films and how they reflected the culture, attitudes, and the social and political climates of the periods. He starts with an evaluation of the silent era and the German Expressionist films of Paul Wegener (The Golem), Robert Weine (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu). In these cases we have directors who fled the oncoming Nazi regime in their native land but these earlier works were a result of the socially repressive society. The silent section is pretty sparse and Maddrey barely mentions the films of Lon Chaney Sr.

From the silent films, Maddrey moves on to the classic horrors of the 30's and 40's. He links the popularity of these films to the depression and moviegoers enjoyment of seeing people onscreen taking matters into their own hands which was contrary to most American's lives of the day where one had little control over the social and economic conditions in which they lived. I tend to think that analysts over think things and I believe that these films simply offered some escapism to Americans both during the depression and WWII. Maddrey discussed many classics of the era including Frankenstein (although curiously mentions little about the superior sequel Bride of Frankenstein and its anti-religious overtones), Dracula, The Island of Lost Souls, Freaks, and many others. Maddrey often quotes J. David Skal who wrote perhaps the best book on the culture of horror films "The Monster Show". One of Maddrey's best evaluations is on the 1934 classic, "The Black Cat' which paired Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff together for the first time. The social tragedy of WWI is the backdrop of the cat & mouse game between vengeful Lugosi and Satan-worshipping Karloff with the fate of two American newlyweds hinging on the outcome. It's a remarkable film even today. Succeeding chapters explore the anti-war/nuclear ramification films of the 1950's including War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and many others as well as the films of Roger Corman and William Castle. The book carries on into the modern gothic vampire films of today.

The second part focuses on several film auteurs and their contributions to Horror films including Tod Browning, Alfred Hitchcock, Roger Corman, George Romero, John Carpenter, David Lynch and Wes Craven. The examination of these directors is easily the best part of the book and I was especially happy to see Tod Browning covered in such depth.

Nightmares in Red, White & Blue isn't really long enough to be considered a serious evaluation of horror films. There are too many films omitted or covered only in brief. But it does serve as a very good primer to the history of horror films, covering the major films, directors, and actors. The second part of the book is really the meat of the book and this section is worth the price of the book alone. Maddrey writes in a conversational style and he's certainly not as dry as Skal tends to be. The book is well-researched although I would have liked to have heard Maddrey's opinions a bit more rather than relying on quotes from Skal and others.

Reviewed By Tim Janson

Sequel? by .. David Tevendale (Boulder, CO)
I was 100% entertained by Joseph's style, and received an education in the Horror film's impact on America (and vice versa) that I could never have gathered from countless hours on my own. This is a fantastic guidebook through not only American History, but also through the history of American Horror.

When will the sequel - the one that covers the Bush Administration's impact on America - go to press?

"I like the dark. . . . It's friendly." by .. Found Highways (Las Vegas)
Nightmares in Red, White and Blue is not just a history of themes in American horror movies and how those themes relate to the country's idea of itself (in other words, all the subtext-hunting B-movie lovers love). It's the best book on American horror movies and their reasons for existing I've ever read. (One of my fantasies of paradise is to receive in the mail a copy of every book on movies McFarland & Company publishes. Fortunately I live near a university library that orders most of them.)

Joseph Maddrey proves that 200 pages is long enough to do justice to almost any subject if you're organized and know what you want to say.

Part I takes a historical view of the eras of American horror movies - - Universal monsters shuffling through the ruins the Great War; invaders from the depths of communist space; rebellious Roger Corman cheapies; sharks, slashers, and shinings; postmodern monstrosities impersonating European movie stars (Bela Lugosi's not dead, he's Catherine Deneuve).

My favorite chapter title is "What the Fifty Foot Woman Did to the Incredible Shrinking Man." In that chapter the book shows on consecutive pages three iconic images of woman-as-victim from famous seventies horror films.

Part II is a detailed examination of auteurs, including Tod Browning, Roger Corman, George Romero, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, David Lynch, and Wes Craven.

Maddrey deserves an award for accomplishing something few critics do - - he quickly summarizes stories and what those stories are saying about American society without spoiling all the plot surprises. But you still know what the films are about, both on the surface and underneath.

I suspect we're on the verge of a new American nightmare to answer the American dream. I hope we can wake up from this one, too.

Captain America: Red, White & Blue

Author : Paul Dini Edition : Direct Ed Number of Pages : 200 Publisher : Marvel Comics List Price : $19.99 Amazon Price : $1.50 Used Price : $1.05

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Customer reviews

A fun riff on the Captain America mythos by .. Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com (...in Middle America)
This deluxe celebration of Captain America, in all his red-white-&-blue glory, features contributions by dozens of top comicbook artists, including Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Frank Quitely, Max Allan Collins, Bill Sienkiewicz, David Lloyd and others. To a surprising degree, many of these tributes take a light, irreverent tone, poking fun at Cap's "boy scout" image, or (more predictably) probing the contradictary cross-currents of patriotism, tolerance and patriotic dissent, with Cap's dual role as democratic torchbearer and militaristic icon. There are several campy gems, including Evan Dorkin's "Skull And Zemo," a villainous, chaotic romp with two of Cap's oldest and most static baddies, "Capsploitation," a what-if remake that casts CA and Falcon in a B-grade "Shaft" mode, as well as "Red Raid," a hilariously psychosexual fantasy piece... There are also some older, "classic" stories, and it is here that the book falls flat. The Lee/Kirby short, "The Fantastic Origin Of The Red Skull," is a swell gem from the "Tales Of Suspense" days, but other entries are disappointing... A hamfisted, poorly illustrated '80s-era tolerance lesson from Roger Stern and Frank Miller seems like a weak entry -- if you were going to reprint an emblematic story, what about the Watergate-era bombshell ("Captain America" #176) wherein Cap discovers the bad guy who'd been plaguing him for months was none other than the country's commander-in-chief (which led to his political disillusionment, and the subsequent, rather strained "Nomad" plotline...)...? Anyway, the book closes with a teaser from John Ney Rieber's post-9/11 "Enemy" saga, which is a high note to end on, even if it was a cliffhanger... All in all, if you're a Captain America fan, this is a pretty enjoyable book which, probably wisely, doesn't take the character's mythology too seriously. A fun read!

The Re-imaging of Cap for a New Generation by .. Kavon W. Nikrad (St. Louis Park, MN)
This book made me fall in love with comics all over again after about a 15 year absence (the release of the horrible G.I. Joe #50).

If Marvel put out a hardcover book like this 'bout Cap every year I would buy it the day it was released.

I love its "catalogue" feel. Like a Cap sampler. There's probably 2 chapters I could live without. The rest are pure joy.

I also highly recommend Captain America- The New Deal.

Cap by .. Ricardo Ramos (Miami, FL USA)
Artwork is not the best. Cannot be compared to that of The Best of Spiderman Hardcover.

I enjoyed this very much by .. H. Coffill (Grand Rapids, MI United States)
This was a nice collection of stories. I especially enjoyed Evan Dorkin's humorous contribution. The reprints were unecessary. Any Cap collector worth his salt has them already. Why not give us two more original stories? Or if you MUST reprint something, why not reprint Joe Simon/Jack Kirby's original Cap stories? Or some 40's or 50's stories we've rarely seen?

The original stories here, however, are stellar. Worth the asking price for a nice hardcover.