Bringing together the most popular genres of the 21st century, this book argues that Americans have entered a new era of narrative dominated by the fear—and wish fulfillment—of the breakdown of authority and terror itself. Bringing together disparate and popular genres of the 21st century, American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures argues that popular culture has been preoccupied by fantasies and narratives dominated by the anxiety —and, strangely, the wish fulfillment—that comes from the breakdowns of morality, family, law and order, and storytelling itself. From aging superheroes to young adult dystopias, heroic killers to lustrous vampires, the figures of our fiction, film, and television again and again reveal and revel in the imagery of terror. Kavadlo's single-author, thesis-driven book makes the case that many of the novels and films about September 11, 2001, have been about much more than terrorism alone, while popular stories that may not seem related to September 11 are deeply connected to it. The book examines New York novels written in response to September 11 along with the anti-heroes of television and the resurgence of zombies and vampires in film and fiction to draw a correlation between Kavadlo's "Era of Terror" and the events of September 11, 2001. Geared toward college students, graduate students, and academics interested in popular culture, the book connects multiple topics to appeal to a wide audience.

As an integral part of the modern West, terrorism features prominently in the news, in film and television, even in video games and books. Packaged for public consumption, representations of terrorism and terrorists offer attempts to make sense of the contemporary experience. While terrorism is often treated as a topic of concern for mature audiences, this book focuses on media that are aimed at children and young adults. The contributors investigate the way terrorism is portrayed in movies, television shows, literature, games, and other popular culture formats aimed at these younger audiences, focusing particularly on the impact these portrayals have on these audiences as future decision-makers.

In light of the ongoing war against terrorism, can the United States maintain its dedication to protecting civil liberties without compromising security? At stake is nothing less than the survival of ideas associated with the modern period of political philosophy: the freedom of conscience, the inviolable rights of the individual to privacy, the constitutionally limited state, as well as the more recent refinement of late modern liberalism, multiculturalism. Contributors evaluate the need to reassess the nation's public policies, institutions, as well as its very identity. The struggle to persist as an open society in the age of terrorism will be the defining test of democracy in the Twenty-first-century.

A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 "An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued." —The New York Times "One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era." —New York Magazine An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.

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This third comprehensive chronology of international terrorist attacks covers 2016, during which the Islamic State suffered several battlefield reversals yet continued its operations as the most active, well-financed and well-armed terrorist group worldwide. Domestic and international incidents around the world are covered and several trends are observed. A new format and organization allows readers to quickly access the most up-to-date information and make regional comparisons.

This book deals with legends and images of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse in film and graphic arts, literature and lore from early to modern times and from peoples and cultures around the world. It reflects an increasingly popular leitmotif in literature and visual arts of the 21st century: humanity’s fear of extinction and its quest for survival -- in revenant, supernatural, or living human form. It is the logical continuation of a series of collected essays examining the origins and evolution of myths and legends of the supernatural in Western and non-Western tradition and popular culture. The first two volumes of the series, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic. (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) focused on the vampire legend. The third, The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic (2016), focused on a range of supernatural beings in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture.