Founded by Robert M. Savini in 1933, Astor Pictures Corporation distributed hundreds of films in its 32 years of operation. The company distributed over 150 first run features in addition to the numerous re-releases for which it became famous. Astor had great success in the fields of horror and western movies and was a pioneer in African-American film productions. While under Savini's management, Astor and its subsidiaries were highly successful, but after his death in 1956 the company was sold, leading to eventual bankruptcy and closure. This volume provides the first in-depth look at Astor Pictures Corporation with thorough coverage of its releases, including diverse titles like La Dolce Vita and Frankenstein's Daughter.

Deals with computer mediated communication

Superheroes have been an integral part of popular society for decades and have given rise to a collective mythology familiar in popular culture worldwide. Though scholars and fans have recognized and commented on this mythology, its structure has gone largely unexplored. This book provides a model and lexicon for identifying the superhero mythos. The author examines the myth in several narratives--including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Green Arrow and Beowulf--and discusses such diverse characters as Batman, Wolverine, Invincible and John Constantine.

This book argues that the efforts of international mediators to stop the war in Bosnia were deliberately thwarted by the factions, who chose war over peace. Major powers backed clients among the warring parties, and prolonged the war, instead of helping to bring it to an end. NATO sat on the fence when it could have helped bring peace, leading to two more years of war. When the USA finally engaged in the search for peace it did so for domestic political reasons, trampled on the very moral precepts it had used to kill off earlier peace plans, used the building-blocks of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, without acknowledgement, to draft the Dayton documents, and ended up with a plan that was inferior by far to the earlier Vance-Owen or Stoltenberg-Owen plans. Thoroughly documented, this book will long be discussed by diplomatic historians of the conflict.