David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality: Hideousness, Neoliberalism, Spermatics is the first full-length study of perhaps the most controversial aspect of Wallace's work – male sexuality. Departing from biographical accounts of Wallace's troubled relationship to sex, the book offers new and engaging close readings of this vexed topic in both his fiction and non-fiction. Wallace consistently returns to images of sexual toxicity across his career to argue that, when it comes to sex, men are immutably hideous. He makes this argument by drawing on a variety of neoliberal logics and spermatic metaphors, which in their appeal to apparently neutral economic processes and natural bodily facts, forestall the possibility that men can change. The book therefore provides a revisionist account of Wallace's attitudes towards capitalism, as well as a critical dissection of his approach to masculinity and sexuality. In doing so, David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality shows how Wallace can be considered a neoliberal writer, whose commitment to furthering male sexual toxicity is a disturbing but undeniable part of his literary project.

The 2008 presidential contest was, quite simply, the most dramatic election race ever held. To Be President is a gripping account of the twelve months leading up to 4 November 2008. It starts with the titanic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the unlikely comeback staged by war hero and serial rebel John McCain to capture the Republican nomination. It describes the ensuing contest between two singular men of very different ages and temperaments, the introduction of a wild card named Sarah Palin, and what happened in the last weeks of the race when the candidates faced the ultimate political test: how to respond to the greatest economic crisis of the age. It ends in Grant Park, Chicago, on the night that America greeted its first black president and the world was once again inspired by its example. Packed with breathtaking plot twists and peopled with a cast of larger-than-life characters, To Be President is a must-read for those hooked on US politics and for anyone wishing to understand or relive the earthshaking events of this historic election.

Abstracts of dissertations available on microfilm or as xerographic reproductions.