The Wire is an example of the way that new technologies and methods of dissemination have made realism possible on television. Where broadcast TV required episodes that could be watched independently and that were structured by the need for commercial interruptions, pay networks such as HBO and the more recent streaming services allow for long-form narratives that develop over many weeks and stretch on for years. The Wire has been widely recognized for its realism, which, however, is usually equated with what is seen as the program’s accuracy. I show how it makes use of conventions of realism inherited from nineteenth century fiction, which are enabled by its structure as a long-form program. The Wire makes use of genres not typically associated with realism, including crime fiction (the police procedural), TV’s police melodramas, and the ancient genre of tragedy as a plot form in Hayden White’s sense. The series incorporates this variety of genres in the service of a vision of ordinary life that continually surprises the viewers. The Wire thus demonstrates the power of new forms of television to represent social complexity to a degree not found in media other than print.

The critique of realism dominant in the 1970s and 1980s should be understood in the context of the longer history of anti-realism that accompanied the rise of literary modernism. Misconceptions about realism deriving from three sources within the larger frame of discourse of French theory: the modernist rejection of realism as an outmoded form; general claims about language, representation, and knowledge, making it harder to see the validity of the realist project; explicit attacks on realism, which need to be read as an argument with Lukács and the version of Marxism he represented. It is my hypothesis that the conception of realism as an epistemological problem is rooted these three tendencies, and once those positions are no longer assumed, then it can be shown that realism entails no special epistemological pleading and does not offer or require any particular philosophy of knowledge. Questions regarding realism’s truth should (and, if fact usually do) turn on what is represented, rather than on the claim that it has been represented truthfully. Realism should be understood as a set of conventions that emerge in nineteenth- century fiction and which have been recognized by critics since at least the second half of the twentieth century.

realism continues to be misunderstood under the influence of 1970s literary and film theory and its continuing import underrecognized in literary and cultural histories. My approach to realism is formalist in the sense that Brian McHale’s Postmodern Fiction is formalist: it is a “descriptive poetics.” My argument is motivated primarily by what I regard as serious persistent errors in academic discourses.These errors are in large measure the result of arguments within the Left. My goal in this book is not to restore realism to the place Georg Lukács once assigned it as the only politically correct kind of literature, but rather to show the continued vitality of realism in late-20th century American culture

With the Depression, the rise of fascism, and ongoing, even more dire civil rights struggles, patriarchal power seemed more than ever a race-work imperative. “Bad girls” offered diversions while Black female civil rights leaders garnered acclaim, but the New Negro hero who led the race forward, was, in the Pittsburgh Courier’s pages, more emphatically and presumptively male.

Musk announced Tesla’s decision to go direct to consumers after looking at the history of the legacy car companies with their increasingly onerous dealer networks and the failure of recent EV startups such as Fisker that had tried to sell through dealers. Chapter 2 examines Tesla’s direct sales decision both in Tesla’s own words and with supporting evidence on why selling EVs through franchised dealers is an unworkable business strategy, as demonstrated by the fact that almost every other EV startup has chosen a direct sales approach as well.

As a new US President took office in 2021, US–Russian relations veered between cooperation and confrontation. In February, Washington and Moscow agreed to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (which had been signed in 2010) for another five years. But in March, Joseph R. Biden called Vladimir Putin “a killer,” souring relations between Russia and the United States and leading to a reduction in the number of staff members in both diplomatic missions. Just a month later, however, Biden proposed holding a bilateral summit, which finally took place in Geneva on June 16, 2021. This event planted the seeds of hope for an improvement in bilateral relations – albeit more among Russian observers than among their American counterparts. Biden’s critics in the United States in fact saw this meeting as “appeasing” Putin, whom many American politicians, experts, and journalists had by that time represented as the epitome of evil.