"... a refreshing, thoughtful, critical map of this otherwise difficult battleground." -- Yale Review of Books "The essays... provide a powerful response to current conservative attacks on women's studies, feminist scholarship, and academic inquiry that foregrounds race, gender, and class." -- The Minnesota Review In the Canon's Mouth brings together two decades of writing by Lillian Robinson -- one of the pioneers of the "culture wars." Curriculum reform, changing the canon, multiculturalism, feminism, and political correctness: these issues have multiple labels, bestowed on different sides of a debate that began in the academy but that has become a matter of civic interest. Most of the well known books on these issues -- including bestsellers by Alan Bloom and Dinesh d'Souza -- come from the far right. They claim that feminists and cultural critics such as Lillian Robinson have taken over our universities. Robinson counters that the right is so frightened at losing its strangle-hold on the culture that it misrepresents a foothold as hegemony.

At a time when the American left is foundering, Danny Goldberg stands tall. A maverick champion of First Amendment rights, he has also been pop culture's most vocal defender against assault by anyone who uses entertainment as a scapegoat for social problems, from violence to lousy test scores. In Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Goldberg takes a hard look at what has happened to American cultural politics since the turbulent sixties, particularly in the area of censorship. Goldberg's vantage point is fascinating. As a journalist, publicist, manager, producer, and, ultimately, head of four different major record companies, he has nurtured some of the most signicant musical artists of his time, from Bonnie Raitt and Neil Young to KISS, Madonna, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana. He has made audio recordings of such controversial intellectuals as Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary and has gone head-to-head with every politician from Ronald Reagan to Ralph Nader to Joseph Lieberman and John McCain. A lively, totally original, no-holds-barred commentary on the cultural state of the union from the 1960s to the present, Dispatches from the Culture Wars speaks to those disenfranchised by today's tepid, cautious liberal elite.

As the 20th Century draws to a close, cultural conflict plays an increasingly dominant role in American politics, with religion acting as a catalyst in the often bitter confrontations ranging from abortion to public education. These insightful essays by leading scholars in the field examine the role of religion in these 'culture wars' and present a mixed assessment of the scope and divisiveness of such conflicts.

"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

The title of the book is indicative of the mindset of most Americans on whichever side of the cultural divide they find themselves. The articles posted in culturewarrior.net are dispatches from the front lines of this war for the soul of the American culture and Western civilization on a larger scale. The articles selected for this book were originally posted on culturewarrior.net which began in March 2013.From a thoughtful examination of the daily skirmishes in the culture wars we can understand the larger picture and expose the tactics, strategies, and goals of the opposition. Armed with such knowledge, Christians can and must give a forceful defense of the truth of the Judeo-Christian worldview and its historical preeminence as the central vision of American culture upon which the nation was founded.

"Irene Taviss Thomson gives us a nuanced portrait of American social politics that helps explain both why we are drawn to the idea of a 'culture war' and why that misrepresents what is actually going on." ---Rhys H. Williams, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Loyola University Chicago "An important work showing---beneath surface conflict---a deep consensus on a number of ideals by social elites." ---John H. Evans, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego The idea of a culture war, or wars, has existed in America since the 1960s---an underlying ideological schism in our country that is responsible for the polarizing debates on everything from the separation of church and state, to abortion, to gay marriage, to affirmative action. Irene Taviss Thomson explores this notion by analyzing hundreds of articles addressing hot-button issues over two decades from four magazines: National Review, Time, The New Republic, and The Nation, as well as a wide array of other writings and statements from a substantial number of public intellectuals. What Thomson finds might surprise you: based on her research, there is no single cultural divide or cultural source that can account for the positions that have been adopted. While issues such as religion, homosexuality, sexual conduct, and abortion have figured prominently in public discussion, in fact there is no single thread that unifies responses to each of these cultural dilemmas for any of the writers. Irene Taviss Thomson is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, having taught in the Department of Social Sciences and History at Fairleigh Dickinson University for more than 30 years. Previously, she taught in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.