The Tabloid Explosion

“An original American story of a tough, embattled media player with uncanny gifts for giving the public what they want.” —Publishers Weekly In The Godfather of Tabloid, Jack Vitek explores the life and remarkable career of Generoso Pope Jr. and the founding of the most famous tabloid of all—the National Enquirer. Upon graduating from MIT, Pope worked briefly for the CIA until he purchased the New York Enquirer with dubious financial help from mob boss Frank Costello. Working tirelessly and cultivating a mix of American journalists (some of whom, surprisingly, were Pulitzer Prize winners) and buccaneering Brits from Fleet Street who would do anything to get a story, Pope changed the name, format, and content of the modest weekly newspaper until it resembled nothing America had ever seen before. Pope was a man of contradictions: he would fire someone for merely disagreeing with him in a meeting (once firing an editor in the middle of his birthday party), and yet he spent upwards of a million dollars a year to bring the world’s tallest Christmas tree to the Enquirer offices in Lantana, Florida, for the enjoyment of the local citizens. Driven, tyrannical, and ruthless in his pursuit of creating an empire, Pope changed the look and content of supermarket tabloid media, and the industry still bears his stamp. Grounded in interviews with many of Pope’s supporters, detractors, and associates, The Godfather of Tabloid is the first comprehensive biography of the man who created a genre and changed the world of publishing forever. “An engaging saga of one man’s obsessive devotion to creating an entertaining alternative universe.” —The Wall Street Journal

Less than a decade after the advent of democracy in South Africa, tabloid newspapers have taken the country by storm. One of these papers -- the Daily Sun -- is now the largest in the country, but it has generated controversy for its perceived lack of respect for privacy, brazen sexual content, and unrestrained truth-stretching. Herman Wasserman examines the success of tabloid journalism in South Africa at a time when global print media are in decline. He considers the social significance of the tabloids and how they play a role in integrating readers and their daily struggles with the political and social sphere of the new democracy. Wasserman shows how these papers have found an important niche in popular and civic culture largely ignored by the mainstream media and formal political channels.

"The rumble got louder, the walls quaked as if in fear, and the classroom's windows started to pulse and shake before they completely shattered, showering everyone inside with glass." On December 6, 1917, the face of Halifax changed forever when the Imo, a Belgian Relief ship, collided with the French ship, the Mont Blanc. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., the Mont Blanc, which was carrying a large cargo of explosives, blew up. It destroyed much of the city's north end and neighbouring communities like Tuft's Cove and Dartmouth. The effect was catastrophic. Almost immediately, aid was rushed to Halifax as survivors and workers dug through rubble and ruins for friends and family. Over 2,000 people died and 9,000 were injured, while countless others were rendered homeless. As news broke about the explosion, newspapers from Toronto to Hawaii and France to Australia scrambled to provide readers with updated information. These and other stories gave face to a disaster which, at the time, was a mix of ever-changing statistics, details, and questions about blame. Often the reports were exaggerated and erroneous. In Halifax, newspapers carried lists of the injured, dead, and missing alongside a collection of notices and ads. This strange juxtaposition showed just how quickly the explosion had happened as holiday-themed advertisements mixed with notices about relief and stories of survival and death. Together, they present the overarching image of Halifax at the time--survival and confusion--while separately they show just how much impact one event had. In Breaking Disaster, Ingram traces these details and stories as she pieces together the different narratives from the week that followed December 6, 1917, many of which have long faded into the larger story of the Halifax Explosion.

Many believed the twentieth century would be the century of the child: an era in which modern societies would value and protect children, sheltering them from violence and poverty. Yet this hopeful vision was marred by the harsh realities of migration, displacement, and armed conflict. Small Stories of War grapples with the meanings and memories of childhood and wartime by asking new questions about lived experience. Spanning the First World War to the early twenty-first century and featuring chapters about Canada, Australia, Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and northern Uganda, this volume asks how young people encountered and responded to armed conflict. How did children, youth, and their families make sense of war in the violent twentieth century? How have they shared their stories and experiences of violence and trauma? Analyzing a broad range of sources including family letters, oral history, and children’s artwork, contributors offer important insights into the production of historical knowledge with and about young people. Engaging with cutting-edge debates about emotions, temporality, space, and young people as political actors, Small Stories of War offers compelling new research and an interpretive toolkit that will benefit scholars from across the social sciences and humanities.

“A valuable stand-alone text . . . Contains large amounts of data on all of the vessels officially classified as battlecruisers in the Royal Navy.” —International Journal of Maritime History The brainchild of Admiral Sir John Fisher, battlecruisers combined heavy guns and high speed in the largest hulls of their era. Conceived as super-cruisers to hunt down and destroy commerce raiders, their size and gun-power led to their inclusion in the battlefleet as a fast squadron of capital ships. This book traces in detail the development of Fisher’s original idea into first battlecruiser Invincible of 1908, through to the Splendid Cats of the Lion class, and culminating in HMS Hood in 1920, the largest warship in the world for the next twenty years. The origins of the unusual light battlecruisers of the Courageous type are also covered. “The author is still the foremost authority on battleships from Dreadnought and, although now retired, he continues to research the subject. This new edition of the definitive book on battlecruisers has been updated with the latest findings from his research. An outstanding review of the subject.” —Firetrench “It is good to see this book back in print with this improved edition.” —Warship, “Naval Books of the Year”

It doesn’t pay to be an outspoken Jewish girl in a small Southern town, battling drug-dealing cops, a corrupt judge and backstabbing lawyers. Star, a brash young public defender, is charged with murdering the judge presiding over the biggest trial of her career. Randleman County, North Carolina is a frontier mix of homegrown trouble and imported woe on the Cape Fear River. Racial tensions flare when a white deputy sheriff kills an unarmed Lumbee Indian boy. The District Attorney declares the shooting accidental. The deputy's patrol car explodes in front of the courthouse. Jimmy Ray Oxendine, a Lumbee, and explosives expert, is charged. Star is appointed to represent Jimmy Ray, a man some proclaim to be a political prisoner. There’s another explosion. Presiding Judge Owen Otis O'Brien, nicknamed Death Row O for sending so many men to the death chamber, dies in his canary yellow Lincoln Town Car on the second day of Jimmy Ray’s trial. This time Star is charged with murder. Cloak and Gavel: FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, Informers, and the Supreme Court (Univ. of Illinois Press 1992)