Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 256
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4422-7322-1 • Hardback • March 2017 • $47.00 • (£36.00)
978-1-4422-7323-8 • eBook • March 2017 • $44.50 • (£34.00)
M. Keith Booker is professor of English in comparative literature and cultural studies at the University of Arkansas. He has written or edited more than forty books on literature and popular culture, including Historical Dictionary of American Cinema (2011). Coeditor of the Cultural History of Television series for Rowman & Littlefield, Booker is also the coauthor of Mad Men: A Cultural History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
Isra Daraiseh holds a doctorate in comparative literature and cultural studies. Her varied research interests include nineteenth-century British and Russian literature, as well as the intersection of American and Middle Eastern popular culture.
The two authors of Tony Soprano’s America, while referring to innumerable quotations, situations and plots of the series, cover an astoundingly wide field of topics. In fifteen subdivisions, we learn about the series’ treatment of postmodernity, its meaning for TV as a genre, popular culture, nostalgia (particularly the 1950s as the golden age of mob activity), capitalism, the value and (mostly) decline of values, cultural roots, ethnicity and religion, the gangster film tradition, the meaning of family ties and family structures, comedy, religion, psychotherapy, the American class system, masculinity, and naturally the history of organized crime in the US. Accordingly, there are many, many things and conclusions that fall into place after reading Tony Soprano’s America, presented in a strictly non-academic style. Just the same, it provides good entertainment and will probably urge readers to watch the entire saga again, this time with attention to detail.— Popcultureshelf.com
This ambitious work, tailored for students of The Sopranos, provides a plethora of interesting notions about the series as a centerpiece of American cultural history, and in so doing could inspire others toward a further and fuller development of its individual topics.
— Italian American Review