*Celebrity ‘Outsider’*Politicians in the Digital Realm: Donald Trump’s Online Charismatic Authority considers Trump’s impact on elite level behaviour by analysing how his extremist online political discourses shape communications outputs.Celebrity ‘outsider’ politicians like Donald Trump command credibility by establishing themselves through a conjunction of deinstitutionalisation, personalisation and parasocial familiarity. To provide a systematic analysis of this phenome...

Would you like to jam with other people and always sound great? Are you eager to play lead guitar, hit the right notes, and create captivating solos? Have you ever wondered how some guitarists always sound so expressive and confident? Imagine improvising effortlessly in concerts and jam sessions, developing your own signature sound, and composing original music with confidence. This dream is closer than you think! The key is understanding how music works and navigating the fretboard with c...

What have depictions of the working class in popular culture added to our understanding of the professional lives of Americans? Scenes from the American Working Class: This Hard Land offers twelve unique and profound answers from some of the most impactful and timeless novels (O! Pioneers, Ann Vickers, and Native Son), films (Blue Collar, Wall Street, and Other People’s Money), television shows (The Wire and Mad Me...

William Friedkin’s film Sorcerer (1977) has been subject to a major re-evaluation in the last decade. A dark re-imagining of the French Director H.G. Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear) (1953) (based on George Arnaud’s novel); the film was a major critical and commercial failure on its initial release. Friedkin’s work was castigated as an example of directorial hubris as it was a notoriously difficult production which went wildly over-budget. It was viewed at the time as th...

At the beginning of the 21st century, the US film industry had overtaken aeronautics and car industries to become one of the highest exporters of American products. Mark Wheeler's important new book provides both a political history of Hollywood and a reflection on the relationship between cinema and politics in America, from 1900 to the present day. Wheeler considers the interplay between the movies studios, state and national government and cultural policy and legislation, with case stud...

By creating a therapeutic outlet for self-expression and processing trauma, art therapy can play a powerful role in assisting people with a brain injury or neurological condition to adjust to living with altered abilities and ways of thinking.Bringing together a wealth of expertise from specialists working with a range of conditions including epilepsy, dementia, acquired brain injury, motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis, this book describes both the effects of the conditio...

In this new book, Mark Wheeler offers the first in-depth analysis of the history, nature and global reach of celebrity politics today.Celebrity politicians and politicized celebrities have had a profound impact upon the practice of politics and the way in which it is now communicated. New forms of political participation have emerged as a result and the political classes have increasingly absorbed the values of celebrity into their own PR strategies. Celebrity activists, endorsers,...

Social media is said to radically change the way in which public communication takes place: information diffuses faster and can reach a large number of people, but what makes the process so novel is that online networks can empower people to compete with traditional broadcasters or public figures. This book critically interrogates the contemporary relevance of social networks as a set of economic, cultural and political enterprises and as a public sphere in which a variety of political and...

How do you tell the truth about marijuana from the myths, when almost everything you have heard is either fear or hype?Maybe you are curious about the benefits, or worried about how it is affecting you or someone you love. Either way, the topic still feels taboo, loaded with warnings from one side and hollow reassurances from the other, and none of it tells you what marijuana actually does inside the body.You want the facts, plainly stated, so you can thi...

What if the plant you were taught to fear is one of the most studied natural medicines of the last decade?You live with chronic pain, or you watch someone you love fight an illness that standard prescriptions barely touch. The medications help a little, then hand you a list of side effects that feel as rough as the condition itself. And every time cannabis comes up, the talk collapses into fear and half-truths instead of facts you can act on.You are not l...

Why do some people light up a room the moment they walk in — while you work twice as hard just to be noticed?You lead, or you want to, but the energy in the room never quite bends your way. You give the speech, make the suggestion, offer the help — and it lands flat, while someone with half your competence draws the whole crowd toward them.It's a quietly painful thing to admit: you're not sure why people don't warm to you, and trying harder only seems to ...

What if there were a natural option for your chronic pain that your doctor never mentioned?Living with chronic pain wears you down in ways healthy people never see. You've followed the prescriptions, tolerated the side effects, and still the relief never quite arrives, or it comes with a fog and a dependency you didn't sign up for. You're not looking for a miracle; you just want something that actually helps.Yet when you raise the subject of medical marij...