"This book provides essential documentation of all known Edison films made between 1890 and 1900. Thomas Edison and his associates at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, invented the first system of commercial motion pictures." "Making the historical framework predominant while retaining traditional cataloging features, Edison Motion Pictures, 18901900 is of value to a wide range of scholars interested in American life at the turn of the century - those working in performance studies, film and media studies, cultural history, ethnic studies, and social and political history. Documentary filmmakers, film programmers, archivists, and librarians can also benefit from using this catalog." "Edison films from the end of the nineteenth century offer a unique visual record of American entertainment and popular culture - moving images that become much more interesting and useful when they can be examined in conjunction with pertinent documentation." "Scholars concerned with portrayals of war, depictions of the American presidency, and many other topics in the nation's political history will find much useful information."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"This book explores the origins of Political Action Committees (PACs) in the mid-20th Century and their impact on the American party system. It argues that PACs were envisaged, from the outset, as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties, thus helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today. It shows how the very first PAC, created by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1943, explicitly set out to liberalize the Democratic Party, by channeling campaign resources to liberal Democrats while trying to defeat conservative Southern Democrats. This organizational model and strategy of "dynamic partisanship" subsequently diffused through the interest group world - imitated first by other labor and liberal allies in the 1940s and '50s, only to be adopted and inverted by business and conservative groups in the late 1950s and early '60s. Previously committed to the "conservative coalition" of Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans, they came to embrace a more partisan approach, and created new PACs to help refashion the Republican Party into a conservative counterweight. The Rise of Political Action locates this PAC mobilization in the larger story of interest group electioneering, which went from a rare and highly controversial practice at the beginning of the 20th Century to a ubiquitous phenomenon today. It also offers a fuller picture of PACs as far more than financial vehicles, but electoral innovators who pioneered strategies and tactics that have come to pervade modern US campaigns, as well as transform the American party system"--