Bruce Stronach

Richard Gid Powers

ヒデトシ・カトウ

Born out of the editor's inability to find a suitable book for teaching the subject, this is a welcome title. . . . a fine contribution in a field where works in English are seriously lacking. Choice The Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture provides a convenient and efficient guide to the prevalent ways of life, recreations, and artistic creations of contemporary Japan. Designed for the general reader as well as the specialist in Japanese culture. The areas explored are those that have proven to be of durable interest to the Japanese, such as sports, science fiction, and popular music, as well as passing fads and fancies. The extremely readable essays, contributed by specialists in the field, provide a wealth of interesting information, including a survey of the historical development of the topic under discussion, with special attention paid to the most useful published works in the field, followed by a guide to the research collections and reference works that should be consulted by those wishing to deepen their knowledge of the subject. Exploring the most salient aspects of Japanese popular culture, the chapters include such topics as popular architecture, new religions, popular performing arts, film, television, comics, and mystery literature. The editor's introduction suggests that the study of popular culture as a discipline with its own unique subject matter and methodology represents a form of protest against the concept of culture as a selective tradition consisting of the best that has been thought and said. This comprehensive survey of Japanese popular culture will be an essential additon to all libraries and a useful resource in the study of popular culture, sociology, Japanese history and culture, humanities, communications, and journalism.

Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture

“Calling the Police! Calling the G-Men! Calling all Americans to War on the Underworld” was the sign-on of the first radio pro­gram to portray the agents of the FBI as action heroes. Thus began the remarkable collaboration between the government agency and the merchants of popular culture that was to continue for over forty years. In G-Men Richard Gid Powers explores the cultural forces that permitted the rise and fostered the fall of the nation’s secret police as national heroes. He examines popular attitudes toward crime from the standpoint of functionalist (Durkheimian) theory and surveys the FBI’s image in popular entertainment from the thirties to the recent “Today’s FBI” as a vicarious ritual of national soli­darity to explain the popularity of the action detective formula. Soundly based on extensive research and interviews, the book pro­vides an account of how the FBI and the mass entertainment indus­try were able to transform the bureau and its biggest cases into popular mythology. Hoover and his FBI became national heroes through identifi­cation with the action detective hero of crime entertainment. Hoover’s popular culture role made him and his bureau sacrosanct symbols of national pride and unity, but in turn made it very diffi­cult for them to do anything that would not conform to the public’s preconceptions about action heroes. Powers shows that the dy­namics of popular culture are integral to an explanation of the collapse of the bureau’s reputation following Hoover’s death. Had Hoover and the popularizers of the FBI not attempted to turn the popular culture G-Man into an embodiment of traditional Ameri­can virtues, the illegal activities that came to light following Hoover’s death would have been excused as inconsequential in the larger context of a hard-boiled “War on the Underworld.” G-Men examines a classic case of the manipulation of popular culture for political power. Seldom in American culture has such manipulation been so successful. As Powers states: “At the same time Hoover was casting his shadow over American public life his G-Men were the stars of movies, radio adventures, comics, pulp magazines, television series, even bubble gum cards.” But he finds that Hoover—far from controlling his own destiny and the power of the agency he had built—was created, shaped, and then destroyed by the dynamics of popular culture and the public expectations it generated.

G-men, Hoover's FBI in American Popular Culture

A well-researched biography about the public and private life of J. Edgar Hoover—former FBI director and America’s most controversial law enforcer—that draws on previously unknown personal documents, a study of FBI files, and the presidential papers of nine administrations. Secrecy and Power is a full biography of former FBI director, covering all aspects of Hoover’s controversial career from the Red Scare following World War I to the 1960s and his personal vendettas against Martin Luther King and the civil rights and antiwar movements.

Secrecy and Power

A history of failures within the FBI describes the scandals that have marked the bureau since its inception in 1908, drawing on years of research and interviews to explain why the September 11 attacks were unforeseen. 35,000 first printing.

The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI

Broken

Jane Frank

Richard M. Powers

“More than any individual author, Richard Powers showed the public that science fiction could be written by intelligent adults, for intelligent adults. His superior aesthetics...still overshadow most rivals....I am delighted his talent is again on splendid display!”—Michael Moorcock. “I am happy to see this collection of outstanding work.”—Sir Arthur C. Clarke. “Enlightening....Valuable.... Capable of evoking that fabled sense of wonder.”—SFRA Review.

Richard Gid Powers

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