Hidden from public sight and mind today are invisible crises that threaten our democracy and existence more than the crises we know aboutor think we know about. These invisible crises include the promotion of practices that drug, hurt, poison, and kill thousands every day; cults of violence that desensitize, terrorize, and brutalize; the growing siege mentality of our cities; widening resource gaps and the most glaring inequalities in the industrial world; the costly neglect of vital institutions such as public education and the arts; and media-assisted make-believe image politics corrupting the electoral process. Deprived of sustained attention but bombarded by eruptions of surface consequences (often presented as unique events stripped of historical context), people ar bewildered, fearful, angry, and cynical. The contributors to this volumeexploring such unattended crises, analyzing why they are hidden, and focusing on the increasing concentration of culture-power that keeps them from viewmaintain that a profound general crisis of social vision, public communication, and representative government underlies all of the invisible crises.

Table of Contents

* Introduction George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana, and Herbert I. Schiller. Total Control * Brave New World Minus 400 Ben H. Bagdikian. * Information Deprivation in an Information-Rich Society H. I. Schiller. * The Hidden Side of Television Violence G. Gerbner. * Speaking Volumes: The Book Publishing Oligopoly and Its Cultural Consequences Leah F. Binder. Technocratic Fantasies * Computer-Assisted Crimes Rick Crawford. * Freedom, Fun, and Fundamentals: Defining Digital Progress in a Democratic Society Nicholas Johnson. Gaps That Divide Us * Writing About Poverty in the Age of Plenty Stanley Meisler. * Race Relations in the Suburbs Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen. * National Amnesia, Cultural Darwinism, and the Pursuit of Power, or What Americans Dont Know About Indians Jerry Mander. Global Fault Lines * Beaches Without Bases: The Gender Order Sue Curry Jansen. * The New World Intellectual Order Johan Galtung. * Whose Whispers Are in the Gallery? Erskine B. Childers. * The Crisis of Political Legitimacy and the Muslim World H. Mowlana. * The Crisis in Mobility Nancy E. Snow. The New Tyrannies * Let Them Eat Pollution John Bellamy Foster. * The Silent War: Debt and Africa Jill Hills. * Global Drug Scourge: The Hidden Story Stephen E. Flynn.