"What is this strange book" asks Fedwa Malti-Douglas, "that can bring the American presidency to its knees?" In this probing study of Kenneth W. Starr's influential and historic work, she reveals how The Starr Report exposed the cultural tendencies, desires, and taboos of Americans while it disrobed the most powerful man in the world.
Unveiling the political and ideological implications of the report's relentless pursuit of corporeal and prurient detail, Malti-Douglas underscores the document's ground-breaking nature--both for its legal and cultural content. What does the report imply about American values when it repeatedly points to the dates on which trysts occurred? Why does gender seem so unstable in the report? And how do such varied objects as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass or Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon or a Hugo Boss tie or Vox, a novel about phone sex, fit into the legal discourse of the report? Fraught with assumptions about gender and sexuality, the report reflects a strategy to use Clinton's "body natural" to undermine his "body politic."It's always fun to see how good books get adapted for the screen. But sometimes, this happens before we've had the chance to read the source material. Or maybe we're just trying to reread before we watch. Here are fifteen of the books behind the newest book-to-screen adaptations.
If you are the kind of reader who gets excited about seeing the story come to life on screen, this year has been such a treat, with so many great adaptations already out and more on the way. Here are all of the recent and upcoming book to screen adaptations you'll want to have on your radar so you can read it first.