Herbert Schiller

Herbert I. Schiller (1919-2000) has been called America's most original and influential media analyst of the left in the twentieth century. Maxwell's timely book fuses biography and history in a digest of Schiller's major works to reveal their continuing relevance for critical communication studies. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This title was first published in 1976. The attainment of political independence by more than ninety countries since the Second World War has directed attention to the conditions of economic helplessness and dependency that continue to frustrate the development of at least two-thirds of the world's nations. Two and sometimes three decades of disappointing efforts to extricate themselves from dependency have begun to provoke serious reappraisals in many lands about the entire concept of development. Accordingly, the time ahead will surely be a period of growing cultural-communications struggle ・ intra- and inter - nationally ・ between those seeking the end of domination and those striving to maintain it. The intention of this work is to assist, in a very modest way, in the outcome of this struggle.

The first extended critical biography of Brooks, perhaps one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century. Royden draws on interviews and extensive research to recreate the New Criticism milieu which included John Crowe Ransom and I.A. Richards, and which Brooks advocated as a method of scholarship that became the standard for several generations. The biography does not separate the life from the work, and constitutes an important survey of criticism since the 1930s in addition to being a hallmark biographical study. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Most Americans take for granted that they live in an open society with a free market of ideas. But as Herbert Schiller reveals in Culture, Inc., the corporate arm has reached into every corner of daily life, and from the shopping mall to the art gallery, big-business influence has brought about some frightening changes in American culture. Examining the effects of fifty years worth of corporate growth on American culture, Schiller argues that corporate control over such arenas of culture as museums, theaters, performing arts centers, and public broadcasting stations has resulted in a broad manipulation of consciousness as well as an insidious form of censorship. A disturbing but enlightening picture of corporate America, Culture, Inc. exposes the agenda and methods of the corporate cultural takeover, reveals the growing threat to free access to information at home and abroad, shows how independent channels of expression have been greatly restricted, and explains how the few keep managing to benefit from the many.

In the first edition of Theories of the Information Society Frank Webster set out to make sense of the information explosion, taking a sceptical look at what thinkers mean when they refer to the information society, and critically examining all the major post-war theories and approaches to informational development.

The US security state is everywhere in cultural products: in army-supported news stories, TV shows, and video games; in CIA-influenced blockbusters and comics; and in State Department ads, broadcasts, and websites. Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire’s culture industry – a nexus between the US’s security state and media firms and the source of cultural products that promote American strategic interests around the world. Building on Herbert I. Schiller’s classic study of US Empire and communications, Tanner Mirrlees interrogates the symbiotic geopolitical and economic relationships between the US state and media firms that drive the production of imperial culture.

This book is a startling expose of the increasing threat to free speech a democratic government. Mazzocco describes the ways that an ever-expanding U.S.-based multinational media cartel velis the machinations of the corporate state by dominating worldwide markets for TV, radio, newspapers, books, movies, cable, recordings, and videos.