A richly illustrated cultural history of the midcentury pulp paperback "There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes."—a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951) American Pulp tells the story of the midcentury golden age of pulp paperbacks and how they brought modernism to Main Street, democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and helped readers fashion new identities. Drawing on extensive original research, Paula Rabinowitz unearths the far-reaching political, social, and aesthetic impact of the pulps between the late 1930s and early 1960s. Published in vast numbers of titles, available everywhere, and sometimes selling in the millions, pulps were throwaway objects accessible to anyone with a quarter. Conventionally associated with romance, crime, and science fiction, the pulps in fact came in every genre and subject. American Pulp tells how these books ingeniously repackaged highbrow fiction and nonfiction for a mass audience, drawing in readers of every kind with promises of entertainment, enlightenment, and titillation. Focusing on important episodes in pulp history, Rabinowitz looks at the wide-ranging effects of free paperbacks distributed to World War II servicemen and women; how pulps prompted important censorship and First Amendment cases; how some gay women read pulp lesbian novels as how-to-dress manuals; the unlikely appearance in pulp science fiction of early representations of the Holocaust; how writers and artists appropriated pulp as a literary and visual style; and much more. Examining their often-lurid packaging as well as their content, American Pulp is richly illustrated with reproductions of dozens of pulp paperback covers, many in color. A fascinating cultural history, American Pulp will change the way we look at these ephemeral yet enduringly intriguing books.

The intentionally long subtitle to Detectives comes close to saying it all about this unique two-in-one book - but not quite. Detectives is both a book to read for the fun of it and a book to read for self-improvement if you are looking to become a better reader, thinker, and writer. The for-the-fun-of-it part comes from reading and wondering about the mystery-solving skills of the contemporary and classic detectives showcased in these 24 remarkable mystery stories and plays. The self-improvement part comes from the book's four special features: Suspicions?, How Clever?, DetectWrite, and Don't Peek! Multiple Suspicions? "intermissions" in the margins of each mystery are strategically placed to help you to think like a detective -- and like a good reader. Their provocative questions prompt you to note and track clues and to make predictions while you are immersed in the mystery. How Clever? questions and activities, located immediately after each mystery's conclusion, give practice in the skills of detection and reflection so vital to the self-improvement goal of becoming a more observant reader and more mindful thinker. How Clever? sections enable you to review the now-solved mystery, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your own Suspicions? speculations, and evaluate just how capable both you and the story's fictional sleuth were in arriving at a solution. DetectWrite writing prompts following all the How Clever? sections of each mystery help you to establish your own voice as a more effective writer in a variety of writing forms while giving you opportunities to even write like a detective story author. At the very end of the book (but don't jump to any conclusions!), the almost 50 pages of the Don't Peek! section provide "one reader's" explanations of the solutions to the 24 mystery stories and plays.

In an innovative departure from the much-studied field of 'crime in the media', this lively book focuses its attention on the forces of law and order; how they visualize and represent danger and criminality and how they represent themselves as authorities. After two chapters covering basic terms and tools in the study of culture and representation, the book covers such topics as the history of justice - system methods for visualizing criminality, from fingerprinting to DNA; the emergence of a 'forensic gaze' that begins with Edgar Allan Poe and Sherlock Holmes and culminates in the American television show Crime Scene Investigation and the rise of ways of seeing urban space that constantly divide the city into 'good' and 'bad' areas. The final chapter uses some recent conflicts regarding the legal admissibility of 'gruesome pictures' to reflect on the importance of the visual in our everyday experiences, both of safety and of danger. Shortlisted for the Hart SLSA Book Prize 2007

The presence of bodies and sex in detective fiction has been a long-term feature of this internationally popular genre. Titillation is at the centre of narratives reliant upon discovery and revelation: motives and criminals are slowly revealed, along with sexualized and violated bodies – from femmes fatales to the corpses of victims. A satisfying, gratifying genre for its readership, the detective novel promises the disruption and subsequent restoration of order in societies tarnished by disillusionment which hope for a better future. This book takes as its focus examples of detective fiction from Cuba and Mexico during or in the aftermath of huge social upheaval (the Special Period and the War on Drugs), analyzing representations of sexualities, bodies, and the genre itself. Through an investigation of novels by Leonardo Padura and Amir Valle of Cuba, and Bef and Rogelio Guedea of Mexico, this work investigates increasingly fluid sexualities and bodies in challenging examples of metaphysical detective fiction, a particularly anxious subgenre which challenges both the structures and limits of the detective novel and the reader’s understanding of true and false and right and wrong, representative of troubling periods of severe social disruption for Cuba and Mexico.