Books about Streitmatter from Amazon.com

In this pathbreaking book, Rodger Streitmatter takes the reader on a sightseeing tour of American history as influenced by the public press, visiting fifteen landmark events in US history, from the American Revolution and the struggle for women’s rights to the civil rights movement and Watergate. These are events that stir the political imagination; but, as Streitmatter shows, they also demonstrate how American journalism, since the 1760s, has not merely recorded this nation’s history but has played a role in shaping it. This book is the first of its kind. Streitmatter avoids the mind-numbing lists of names, dates, and newspaper headlines that bog down the standard journalism history textbook. Instead, he focuses on a limited number of episodes, identifying common characteristics within the news media. The second edition includes an entirely new chapter on the news media’s coverage of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and illustrates how that coverage, or lack of coverage, had a profound effect on the events that followed, including the path to war in Iraq. This new edition also looks beyond traditional journalistic outlets such as newspapers and television news reports and examines the modern-day role that the Internet and its various venues play in reporting the news and shaping history.

In 1978, more than 3,500 letters written over a thirty-year friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok were discovered by archivists Although the most explicit letters had been burned (Lorena told Eleanor's daughter, "Your mother wasn't always so very discreet in her letters to me"), the find was still electrifying enough to create controversy about the nature of the women's relationship. Historian Rodger Streitmatter has transcribed and annotated more than 300 of those letters—published here for the first time—and put them within the context of the lives of these two extraordinary women, allowing us to understand the role of this remarkable friendship in Roosevelt's transformation into a crusading First Lady.

In 1953 when Lucille Ball became pregnant, the censors required the characters on "I Love Lucy" to say only that the wacky redhead was "in the family way"-they feared the word "pregnant" might conjure up, in the minds of viewers, images of a man and woman having sexual intercourse Now, some fifty years later, from giant billboards featuring nearly nude models in Times Square to Bill Clinton's creative definition of sex to Madonna and Britney's prime-time kiss, sex pervades virtually every aspect of public life, including the films and television programs we watch, the music we listen to, and the racy ads that bombard us. What happened?Through lively prose and engaging examples, Sex Sells! illuminates this arc from repression to obsession vis-à-vis changing sexual mores during the last five decades. Not only does the author examine how a broad range of media genres have reflected this libidinous journey, but he also shows how the media have played a leading role in propelling the Sexual Revolution. Whether it was the decision by Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown to run a photo of a nude Burt Reynolds in 1972 or the recent success of Showtime's sexually explicit "Queer as Folk," the media have led the charge in bringing sex into the mainstream. Along the way, what the author terms "sexual literacy" has become vital, especially for young media consumers. For Rodger Streitmatter, unlike many critics, believes that much of the media's sexual content is beneficial, as it gives parents and educators a jumping-off point from which to discuss such matters as AIDS, sexual identity, and sexual mores. In this age of continuing sexual liberation, such a viewpoint seems especially important and timely.