Filling a major gap in the critical canon, Gabriella Oldham’s study of Buster Keaton’s nineteen silent short films shot between 1920 and 1923 chronicles the rapid growth in the filmmaker’s understanding of what makes both comedy and film successful.

Examines the barbershop as a rhetorical site in African American culture across genres, including fiction, film, poetry, and theater.

How is it that some prisoners of the Soviet gulag -- many of them falsely convicted -- emerged from the camps maintaining their loyalty to the party that was responsible for their internment? In camp, they had struggled to survive. Afterward they struggled to reintegrate with society, reunite with their loved ones, and sometimes renew Party ties. Based on oral histories, archives, and unpublished memoirs, Keeping Faith with the Party chronicles the stories of returnees who professed enduring belief in the CPSU and the Communist project. Nanci Adler's probing investigation brings a deeper understanding of the dynamics of Soviet Communism and of how individuals survive within repressive regimes while the repressive regimes also survive within them.

In Keeping the Faith, Jennifer Jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, in both in the spiritual and political realms, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had to the Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre-1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Why and how it managed to persevere despite the enormous hostility against it is a topic that continues to fascinate both the general public and historians. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries’ adaptation to the Bolshevik regime and she challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. Keeping the Faith offers a wealth of new information and a new perspective that will be of interest not only to students of Russian history and communism, but also to scholars interested in church-state relations.

These seven gentle tales set in Minnesota and North Dakota and all written during the 1970s treat fans of novelist Hassler (A Green Journey; Jemmy) to the earliest fruits of his talent. Some are folksy portraits of small-town characters, while others are drier and more plot driven. Both the title story and "Resident Priest" feature crusty, 74-year-old Father Fogarty, a pastor who's leaving his parish after 23 years. In "Chief Larson," a seven-year-old Indian boy, known (rather improbably) only as "chief" on the reservation, rebels in a small but telling way against his white adoptive family.""Good News in Culver Bend" tracks two city reporters who travel to a small town and discover "the heart of Christmas." "Chase" and "Christopher, Moony, and the Birds" show how frustrated residents of small towns seek solace. The former, so brief it's nearly a prose poem, hints at Hassler's own adolescent discovery of his talent for fiction; the latter follows a lonely 50-year-old college professor as he goes on a consolatory walk with a student's awkward wife and child, watching "birds on family outings, hopping and halting on the grass." The cleverest story, ""Yesterday's Garbage," follows a "garbologist" who finds the truth about a murder in a trash bin, and is then led to commit one himself. The publisher plans to issue Hassler's later short fiction in three more volumes, starting in the year 2000.""--Publishers Weekly

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ) offers a scholarly forum for diverse views on major issues in bioethics, including analysis and critique of bioethics theories such as principlism and feminist perspectives in bioethics; the work of federal bodies such as the President's Council on Bioethics; and a wide range of topics such as enhancement technologies, health care reform, stem cell research, and organ transplantation. Select issues include "Bioethics Inside the Beltway," an inside look at bioethics activities on the federal level. The KIEJ is the official journal of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE).

Kennedy v. Nixon is a book for everyone who thinks they know what happened in the pivotal election year of 1960. For fifty years we've accepted Theodore White's premise (from The Making of the President, 1960) that Kennedy ran a brilliant campaign while Nixon committed blunder after blunder.

But White the journalist was a Kennedy partisan and helped establish the myth of Camelot. Now, five decades later, Edmund Kallina offers a fresh overview of the election's most critical and controversial events.

Based upon research conducted at four presidential libraries--those of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon--Kallina is able to make observations and share insights unavailable in the immediate aftermath of one of the closest races in American presidential history. He describes the strengths and mistakes of both camps, and examines the impact of civil rights, Cold War tensions, and the televised presidential debates on an election that still looms large in both the political history and the popular imagination of the United States.