This interdisciplinary look at recording-industry history shows how early commercial recording companies changed musical culture in the 1920s and 1930s. As smaller record labels began to turn out records in the genres that would become jazz, blues and country, radio began broadcasting more recorded music in place of live performances. With the end of silent movies, the film industry also began to replace film accompanists with recorded sound. The relationships among the recording, radio and film industries led to the first major media conglomerates in U.S. history. Record Cultures was a finalist for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Best Historical Research on Record Labels or General Recording Topics. 

 

 

 

 

Focusing on the real-life murder of Jamie Carroll in Old Louisville and the trials of accused killers Joey Banis and Jeffrey Mundt, David Dominé attempts to shed light on the motives behind the crime while painting a colorful picture of those affected and the neighborhood where it occurred. Publishers Weekly awarded Glitter Ball City a starred review, saying, “fans of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil will be captivated,” and the book also received favorable notice in The New York Times Book Review. 

 

 

 

 

Abby Hall Blanco and Christopher J. Coyne detail how military propaganda has targeted Americans since 9/11, inflating the actual threat of terrorism and the necessity of a proactive military response and contributing to a broader culture of fear and militarism that, far from keeping Americans safe, ultimately threatens the foundations of a free society. Applying a political economic approach to the incentives created by a democratic system with a massive national security state, Coyne and Hall delve into case studies from the War on Terror to illuminate how propaganda operates in a democracy.  

 

 

 

 

Given his commitment to ecumenical dialogue, Thomas Merton’s Catholic identity has been questioned since his death in 1968. Some go so far as to label him a rebel whose ideas went against the church. Greg Hillis contends that Merton did not negate his own Catholicism in engaging with non-Catholic traditions. In reviewing Man of Dialogue, James Martin, author of Learning to Pray and Jesus: A Pilgrimage, wrote: “Greg Hillis' beautifully written and expertly researched book restores Merton's Catholicism to where it should be in studies of his remarkable life: at the center.”