George Stevens Jr. grew up on movie sets. His grandmother, aunts, uncles, and other family members were all entertainers, but it was his father, director George Stevens Sr. , who cast the longest shadow. The elder Stevens won best director Oscars for A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956) and was nominated for directing The More the Merrier (1943), Shane (1953), and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). George Jr. worked by his father's side while also establishing himself as a successful television director. He learned a variety of skills from the master, including cinematography, storytelling, managing difficult actors, and maintaining artistic control over one's work. As a result of Stevens Sr.'s position in the Screen Directors' Guild during the height of McCarthyism, Stevens Jr. also learned firsthand about freedom of artistic expression and protection of civil rights - and the navigation of treacherous political waters. In 1961, Edward R. Murrow recruited Stevens Jr. to head up the film and television department for the United States Information Agency, pushing him out of his father's shadow and into the work that would become his greatest legacy. Travelling to film festivals around the world as USIA delegate, he became aware of the urgent need to promote and preserve America's film legacy and founded the American Film Institute. AFI saved thousands of movies, scouring the country for copies of forgotten or lost films that were then catalogued and deposited at the Library of Congress. Under Stevens Jr.'s direction, AFI also issued grants to support the work of young, independent filmmakers and established the AFI Conservancy, a school for film arts. Shortly after that, Stevens Jr. created the Kennedy Center Honors, a uniquely American tradition honoring the lifetime contributions made by those in performing arts. In My Place in the Sun,

More than 2.7 million post-9/11 veterans served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their homecomings didn't include parades or national celebrations, but civilians regard them with reverence and pride. Veterans' benefits are comprehensive. The phrase "thank you for your service" is ubiquitous. Yet, one in ten post-9/11 veterans struggle with substance abuse. Fifteen to twenty veterans die by suicide every day, with 18-34-year-olds dying at the highest rates. These veterans carry intractable mental and physical wounds, leading advocates to focus on concepts like moral injury and collective belonging. In War and Homecoming: Veteran Identity and the Post-9/11 Generation, Travis Martin, a scholar, teacher, and former veteran himself, argues that post-9/11 veterans struggle with homecoming because of decades of stereotyping and a lack of healthy models of veteran identity. In the American unconscious, veterans are the superficially praised ‘hero’, the victimised ‘wounded warrior’, forever defined by past accomplishments. They are appropriated as symbols in competing narratives of national identity. War and Homecoming explores past and current stereotypes often found in patriotic rhetoric, popular media, literature, and veterans' lives. Luckily, a third type of post-9/11 veteran has emerged, the veteran ‘storyteller’ who recognises stereotypes, claims their symbolic authority, and defines who they are through literature, art, and service. This identity allows for continued growth, and these ‘storytellers’ provide examples of identity rooted in agency, individuality, and resilience for other veterans to model. New creative communities, service organisations, and the growing academic field of Veterans Studies suggest post-9/11 veterans are redefining what it means to be a veteran.

Best known for her appearances in the six Technicolour 'Neverland' movies, Maria Montez is a film icon. Growing up as one of ten children in the Dominican Republic, her rise as a film star in the United States seemed unlikely. In 1939, Montez set off on her own to New York City to fulfill her aspirations of movie stardom. Despite having no substantial acting experience, Montez managed to sign with major agent Louis Schurr who helped her secure a contract with Universal Studios before she moved out to Hollywood. Following her arrival in Los Angeles, Montez began cultivating the larger-than-life persona for which she is known. Her beauty, personality, and series of publicity antics, including dramatic restaurant entrances, endeared her to the press. She even created her own fan club – The Montez for Stardom Club. Her ambitious self-promotion bolstered the success she found with her first big lead in Arabian Nights, released in 1943. From then on, the studio referred to her as 'The Queen of Technicolour'. Author Tom Zimmerman puts Montez's life in historical context, including her role as a cultural icon and a living representation of the United States’ Good Neighbor Policy with Latin American countries. With her thick Dominican accent, Montez struggled to make herself intelligible to an American audience. However, unlike some of her Latin contemporaries, she did not present a caricature of her culture or use her accent for comedic purposes, giving her credibility with a Latin American audience. Zimmerman skillfully recounts the story of Montez’s fiery ambition and her ascent to Hollywood fame, giving her the opportunity to live on in public memory.

From the wonderfully varied and witty mind of Marlene Dietrich comes an alphabetised collection of her most zany, honest, and heartfelt thoughts. Offering her take on a range of ideas, people, and items, Marlene Dietrich's ABC is an unprecedented glimpse into one of history’s brightest and most enigmatic stars. Nothing is too small or grand for Dietrich’s unique eye. From her entry for hardware store – "I'd rather go to a hardware store than to the opera" – to her entry for egocentric – "If he is a creative artist, forgive him" – she transforms both the mundane and the mysterious into snapshots of her own spirit. Complete with photos from her vast career, Marlene Dietrich’s ABC is an unexpected and addicting treat. In this edition Marlene offers her unique blend of wit, a sometimes mordant humour, sensitivity and acute observations of the world as she has known it and, to some extent, been shaped it. By blending the absolutely practical with her whimsical, witty, poetic and sometimes moving observations, Dietrich creates in yet another field that special magic with which she has held the world enthralled for decades.

Film star. Cabaret sensation. Recording artist. Writer. Marlene Dietrich was nothing short of enchanting – and remains so even today. In this book she chronicles her fabulous rise to stardom. From her early career in Germany as a chorus girl to her breakout role as Lola in The Blue Angel to her courageous wartime tours, Dietrich recounts a life that captivates on the page just as she smouldered on the screen. She writes passionately of her friends – including Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Edith Piaf, among many others – and she shares memories of what she calls her greatest accomplishment: entertaining the Allied troops during World War II. A sustained expression of her bold, sophisticated style, Marlene reminds us why Dietrich remains an international icon and a true Hollywood legend.

#NiUnaMenos#Aufschrei#LoSHA Before #MeToo became the massive global movement we know today, these were the hashtags that represented mobilisations from Ukraine to Latin America that demanded accountability for the intersecting experiences of sexual violence and racism, xenophobia, and misogyny inflicted on women, transgender people, and girls. Lead by activists such as Tarana Burke, who coined the phrase "me too," the movement provided a call to action for survivors across the world to speak out about their experiences. In #MeToo and Beyond, M. Cristina Alcalde and Paula-Irene Villa bring together scholars and activists from various backgrounds to approach #MeToo from multiple spaces, positionalities, and areas of expertise, many from regions and contexts often overlooked and understudied in the mediascapes of the Global North. This volume includes perspectives from around the world and covers research spanning masculinity, to trans issues, to Jewish communities. The editors and contributors heed Tarana Burke's call to center marginalised voices and experiences so that instead of becoming a footnote, these experiences guide activists to frame polyphony as central to understanding past, current, and future forms of gendered violence and resistance. The goal of #MeToo and Beyond is to examine both the profoundly universal and familiar experiences of sexual violence, and the specificity of these forms of violence and mobilisation against them across place, space, and experiences of participants. Activists and scholars will find this an important and necessary contribution to current and future discussions on sexual violence and global movements.

James Still left eastern Kentucky for Europe in 1941 after enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II, leaving behind a recently published, semiautobiographical work of fiction, On Troublesome Creek. Even as he developed a broader worldview, his work continued to draw from the agrarian and regional sources of life in the Cumberland Plateau that supported the American war effort. Like the riverbeds and creeks he so often evoked, Still reminds readers of the local and regional founts that they were fighting for in the century's second great war. The "Dean of Appalachian Literature," James Still grew up in Alabama before settling down in Knott County, Kentucky in the early 1930s. In On Troublesome Creek, he describes the ebbs and flows of Appalachian living while celebrating the culture defined by family, self-sufficiency, and hard work. The colloquial dialogue brings to life a community attached to the land on which they had lived for generations and the victuals and rituals that kept their world in motion amidst uncertainty.

The television industry is changing, and with it, the small screen's potential to engage in debate and present valuable representations of American history. Founded in 1972, HBO has been at the forefront of these changes, leading the way for many network, cable, and streaming services into the "post-network" era. Despite this, most scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing historical feature films and documentary films, leaving TV and the long-form drama hungry for coverage. In History by HBO: Televising the American Past, Rebecca Weeks fills the gap in this area of media studies and defends the historiographic power of long-form dramas. By focusing on this change and its effects, History by HBO outlines how history is crafted on television and the diverse forms it can take. Weeks examines the capabilities of the long-form serial for engaging with historical stories, insisting that the shift away from the network model and toward narrowcasting has enabled challenging histories to thrive in home settings. As an examination of HBO's unique structure for producing "quality" historical dramas, Weeks provides four case studies of HBO series set during different periods of U.S. history: Band of Brothers (2001), Deadwood (2004-2007), Boardwalk Empire (2012-2014), and Treme (2010-2013). In each case, HBO's lack of advertiser influence, commitment to creative freedom, and generous budgets, continues to draw and retain talent who want to tell historical stories. Balancing historical and film theory in her assessment of the roles of mise-en–scène, characterization, narrative complexity, and sound in the production of effective historical dramas, Weeks' evaluation acts as an ode to the most recent "Golden Age" of TV, as well as a critical look at the relationship between entertainment media and collective memory.

First published in 1937, Hounds on the Mountain evokes Still's personal experiences of Eastern Kentucky through reflective folk poems describing Appalachian mountain life from birth through death. Written during the Great Depression, the collection emphasizes a collective reliance on the earth and the primacy of nature that Still observed from the seclusion of his thirty-one acre home in Knott County, Kentucky. The "Dean of Appalachian Literature" describes the changing landscape of his adopted community as a tale of personal and environmental erosion. In many ways the author asks his readers to better protect this fragile ecosphere and set the stage for his rise to eminence in the literary field. Still's regional focus on the self-made authenticity of community artisans also reminded American readers during the Great Depression that local economies needed to be supported just as much as those at the national and global level. Both in prose and product, Hounds on the Mountain allows today's audiences to appreciate the book as both literature and cultural symbolism of Appalachian life as it exists then and now.

For a few months in 1982, Landaluce was a national celebrity. In her second start, just one week after claiming her maiden, the two-year-old filly won the Hollywood Lassie Stakes by 21 lengths – a margin of victory that remains the largest ever in any race by a two-year-old at Hollywood Park. Landaluce was poised to become the next American super-horse. But those dreams ended when the two-year-old died in her stall at Santa Anita four months later, the victim of a swift and mysterious illness. Today, with the 'I Love Luce' bumper stickers long-gone, the filly has been largely forgotten. In Landaluce: Forever a Champion, Mary Perdue tells the story of a filly whose short but meteoric racing career could have changed racing history forever. In doing so, Perdue also explores the lives and careers of the breeders, owners and trainer, as well as her famous sire, Seattle Slew. From breeder Leslie Combs, who grew Spendthrift farm into a 4,000 acre powerhouse while standing over 40 of the most prized stallions in the country, to trainer D. Wayne Lukas whose stable of racehorses have been winning races for nearly forty years, Landaluce’s brief stint at the top of the sport provides a window into racing history. More than a mere recitation of Landaluce's accomplishments or a piece of investigative journalism probing the mystery of her death, Perdue explores how one filly captured the imagination of racing fans across the country and set the stage for another filly turned super-horse, Zenyatta, in the decades to come. "Mary Perdue takes readers on a riveting journey not just through Landaluce's two years on earth, but across decades of horse racing history, from the Great Depression to the 1980s, from Kentucky to California, from breeding shed to euthanasia ...Perdue's work centers on one horse, but taps racing's every vein — essential reading for fans of the sport." — Tim Layden, writer-at-large at NBC Sports

James Still (1906-2001) remains one of the most beloved and important writers in Appalachian literature. Best known for his acclaimed novel River of Earth (1940), the Alabama native and adopted Kentuckian left an enduring legacy of novels, stories, and poems during his nearly 70-year career. The Hills Remember: The Complete Short Stories of James Still honors the late writer by collecting all of Still's short stories, including those from On Troublesome Creek (1941), Pattern of a Man and Other Stories (1976), and The Run for the Elbertas (1980), as well as twelve prose pieces originally published as short stories and later incorporated into River of Earth. Also included are several lesser-known stories and ten that were previously unpublished. Recognized as a significant writer of short fiction in his day - many such pieces initially appeared in The Atlantic and The Saturday Evening Post and were included in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories and The Best American Short Stories collections - Still's short stories, while often overshadowed in recent years by his novels and poetry, are among his most enduring literary works. Editor Ted Olson in his introductory essay offers a reassessment of Still's short fiction within the contexts of the author's body of work and within Appalachian and American literature. Compiling all of James Still's compelling and varied short stories into one volume, The Hills Remember is a testament to a master writer.

Southern Voices: Biet Dong and the National Liberation Front presents oral histories from former members of an elite squad of Viet Cong operatives, focusing on their experiences during what is known, in Vietnam, as the American War. Author Michael Robert Dedrick conducted interviews with eight former Biet Dong (the equivalent of Ranger or Special Forces divisions in the US military) and sheds new light on this clandestine group. Best known for their role in the 1968 Tet Offensive, the Biet Dong in the south were organized units hiding in plain sight. Members included farmers, tradespeople, agents, spies, monks, students, intellectuals, and journalists - both young and old, men and women. They were highly patriotic, politically motivated, and very secretive, operating in three-person cells under aliases. Their voices and experiences emerge in this bilingual volume. In recent years, historians have made greater use of Vietnamese primary sources and transformed the study of one of the twentieth century's most controversial conflicts. Ably curated by Dedrick - who also offers his own perspectives as a veteran and peace activist - the firsthand accounts in Southern Voices add a new layer to the history of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

The American World War II film depicted a united America, a mythic America in which the average guy, the girl next door, the 4-F patriot, and the grieving mother were suddenly transformed into heroes and heroines, warriors and goddesses. The Star-Spangled Screen examines the historical accuracy - or lack thereof - of films about the Third Reich, the Resistance, and major military campaigns. Concerned primarily with the films of the war years, it also includes discussions of such postwar movies as Battleground (1949), Attack! (1956), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Patton (1970). This revised edition includes new material covering recent films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), JoJo Rabbit (2019), Pearl Harbor (2001), and Dunkirk (2017), and their place in the war movie tradition. The Star-Spangled Screen makes a major contribution to popular culture by recreating an era that, for all its tragedy, was one of the most creative in the history of American film.

Myanmar was struck by three major human rights disasters during their period of democratization from 2003-2012: the 2007 Saffron Revolution, Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and the 2012 Rakhine State Riots. These events saw Myanmar categorically labeled as an offender of human rights, and major Southeast Asia member states (such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia) responded to these large-scale violations in very different ways. The context-specific policies regarding foreign relations and the protection of human rights are shaped by norm conflicts - situations in which the prescriptions associated with two norms clash, making it seemingly impossible for a state to conform to both norms at the same time - and the domestic priorities of countries attempting to intervene. In Norms in Conflict: An Analysis of State Responses to Norm Conflict in Southeast Asia, Anchalee Rüland makes sense of state action when a governing body is faced with a circumstance that is at once in line with and contrary to its own governing policies. She defines five different types of response strategies to situations of norm conflict and examines how they affect international interference regarding human rights violations. Previous domestic norms are believed to be replaceable as new norms form, yet Rüland argues old and new norms can coexist in ever-changing political context. This illuminating work challenges these conventional beliefs, advancing constructivist theory and establishing a new conversation in international relations literature.

Despite his numerous hits and Grammy nominations - and his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - John Mellencamp remains one of America’s most underrated songwriters. In Mellencamp, David Masciotra explores the life and career of this important talent, persuasively arguing that he deserves to be celebrated alongside artists like Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan. Starting with his modest beginnings in Seymour, Indiana, Masciotra details Mellencamp’s road to fame, examining his struggles with the music industry and his persistent dedication to his midwestern roots as he found success by remaining true to where he came from. Masciotra addresses the numerous themes Mellencamp introduces into his songs, which range from small town life, race, and Christianity to poverty and the struggles of adulthood, placing them within the social and historical context of contemporary America. From a cultural critic who has contributed to the Washington Post, Atlantic, and Los Angeles Review of Books, this thoughtful analysis highlights four decades of the artist’s music, which has consistently elevated the dignity of everyday people and honored the quiet heroism of raising families and working hard.

The harvesting of wild American ginseng (panax quinquefolium), the gnarled, aromatic herb known for its therapeutic and healing properties, is deeply rooted in North America, but nowhere has it played a more important role than in the southern and central Appalachian Mountains. Made possible by a trans-Pacific trade network that connected the region to East Asian markets, ginseng was but one of several medicinal Appalachian plants that entered international webs of exchange. As the production of patent medicines and botanical pharmaceutical products escalated in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, southern Appalachia emerged as the United States' most prolific supplier of many species of medicinal plants. The region achieved this distinction due to both its biodiversity and the persistence of certain common rights that guaranteed widespread access to the forested mountainsides, regardless of who owned the land. Following the Civil War, root digging and herb gathering became one of the most important ways landless and smallholding families earned income from the forest commons. This boom influenced class relations, gender roles, forest use, and outside perceptions of Appalachia, and it began a widespread renegotiation of common rights that eventually curtailed access to some plants such as ginseng.Based on extensive research into the business records of mountain entrepreneurs, country stores, and pharmaceutical companies, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia is the first book to unearth the unique relationship between the Appalachian region and the global trade in medicinal plants. Historian Luke Manget expands our understanding of the gathering commons by exploring how and why Appalachia became the nation's premier purveyor of botanical drugs in the late nineteenth century and how the trade influenced the way human residents of the region interacted with each other and with the forests around them.