Mass Appeal

Mass Appeal is the cure for Catholics who believe Mass is boring. Using Sacred Scripture, Church documents, and the text of the rite itself, this book shows the deep symbolism in every word and action of the liturgy.

Public policy education is oriented around the development of innovative ideas for how to improve governance and make society better. However, it undervalues a critical tool for translating policy ideas into action: the ability to communicate ideas broadly, strategically, and effectively. Drawing on his past frustration with translating his research from academia to the public sphere, Justin Gest has written a primer for public policy students, researchers, and policy professionals on how to turn analyses and memos into clear and persuasive campaigns. This book outlines the principles, structure, and target audience for different media essential to policy communication. Including advice from practitioners and illustrative examples, Gest explains the indispensability of pithiness to clear communication and how to achieve it.

Mass Appeal describes the changing world of American popular culture from the first sound movies through the age of television. In short vignettes, the book reveals the career patterns of people who became big movie, TV, or radio stars. Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson symbolize the early stars of sound movies. Groucho Marx and Fred Astaire represent the movie stars of the 1930s, and Jack Benny stands in for the 1930s performers who achieved their success on radio. Katharine Hepburn, a stage and film star, illustrates the cultural trends of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Humphrey Bogart and Bob Hope serve as examples of performers who achieved great success during the Second World War. Walt Disney, Woody Allen, and Lucille Ball, among others, become the representative figures of the postwar world. Through these vignettes, the reader comes to understand the development of American mass media in the twentieth century.

This book narrates the integration of consumer culture into transnational human rights advocacy and explores its political impact. By examining tactics that include benefit concerts, graphic imagery of suffering, and branded outreach campaigns, the book details the evolution of human rights into a mainstream moral cause. Drawing inspiration from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the author argues that these strategies are effective in attracting masses of supporters but weaken the viability of human rights by commodifying its practices. Consumer capitalism co-opts the public’s moral awakening and transforms its desire for global engagement into components of a lifestyle expressed through market transactions and commercial relationships, rather than political commitments. Reclaiming human rights as a subversive idea can reconnect the practice of human rights with its principles and generate a movement bound to the radical spirit of human rights.

THE STORY: Father Tim Farley, a lover of the good things in life, is comfortably ensconced as priest of a prosperous Catholic congregation. Without realizing it, he has resorted to flattering his parishioners and entertaining them with sermons that

Public policy education is oriented around the development of innovative ideas for how to improve governance and make society better. However, it undervalues a critical tool for translating policy ideas into action: the ability to communicate ideas broadly, strategically, and effectively. Drawing on his past frustration with translating his research from academia to the public sphere, Justin Gest has written a primer for public policy students, researchers, and policy professionals on how to turn analyses and memos into clear and persuasive campaigns. This book outlines the principles, structure, and target audience for different media essential to policy communication. Including advice from practitioners and illustrative examples, Gest explains the indispensability of pithiness to clear communication and how to achieve it.

Black Theology as Mass Movemen t is a call to current and future theologians to stretch the boundaries of Black Liberation Theology from what has become primarily an academic subfield into a full fledge liberation movement beyond the walls of the academy.