On December 28, 1959, 16 year old Maryann Mitchell from the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia went missing. Three days later he body was found in the Montgomery County suburb of Lafayette Hill, PA. On September 1,1960 Elmo Smith was found guilty of her murder. On April 2, 1962 Smith became the last man to be executed by electrocution in the State of Pennsylvania. Did Smith commit the heinous crime? Or, was Elmo Smith made to fit the crime?

In the early 1960s, the quiet borough of Queens was rocked by the violent and brutal murders of Barbara Kralik, Annie Mae Johnson, and Kitty Genovese. These murders shocked not only Queens and New York, but the entire nation, especially when newspapers disclosed Kitty's neighbors heard her screams and looked on without calling the police. Two suspects were apprehended and indicted, Winston Moseley for the Genovese murder and Alvin Mitchell for the Kralik murder. Before the trials, Moseley claimed to have committed the Kralik and Johnson murders as well, not taken seriously by the police and DA until Moseley disclosed details only the actual killer could have known. Charles Skoller, the young prosecutor assigned to these trials was now faced with a prosecutor's nightmare. In Twisted Confessions, he details the murders and relives his investigations and trials that followed in the almost impossible task of revealing and convicting the actual killer.

Evil. Women. The Feminine. The relationships that bring together these three ideas form the basis for the papers gathered together in this volume. By asking how, why, when, and to what purpose these three terms are often linked serves as the starting point of interrogation for each of the authors here considered.

It seemed at times during the 1960s that America was caught in an unending cycle of violence and disorder. Successive summers from 1964-1968 brought waves of urban unrest, street fighting, looting, and arson to black communities in cities from Florida to Wisconsin, Maryland to California. In some infamous cases like Watts (1965), Newark (1967), and Detroit (1967), the turmoil lasted for days on end and left devastation in its wake: entire city blocks were reduced to burnt-out ruins and scores of people were killed or injured mainly by police officers and National Guardsmen as they battled to regain control. This book takes the pivotal year of 1967 as its focus and sets it in the context of the long, hot summers to provide new insights into the meaning of the riots and their legacy. It offers important new findings based on extensive original archival research, including never-before-seen, formerly embargoed and classified government documents and newly released official audio recordings.

A volume of enlightening essays on how TV shows, movies, and music can change hearts and minds. Amid all its frenetic humor, the long-running animated hit The Simpsons has often questioned what is culturally acceptable, wading into controversial subjects like gay rights, the war on terror, religion, and animal rights. This subtle form of political analysis is effective in changing opinions and attitudes on a large scale. Homer Simpson Marches on Washington explores the transformative power that enables popular culture to influence political agendas, frame the consciousness of audiences, and create profound shifts in values and ideals. To investigate the full spectrum of popular culture in a democratic society, editors Timothy M. Dale and Joseph J. Foy gather a top-notch team of scholars who use television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, All in the Family, The View, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, as well as movies and popular music, to investigate contemporary issues in American popular culture.

By breaking down classic films from the nineteen-nineties such as Forest Gump and Titanic, this book offers a reel-to-reel cultural analysis, chronicling the concept of 'spin' as a major sociopolitical persuasion strategy.