Suspending the distinction between headline news and high theory, Avital Ronell examines diverse figures of finitude in our modern world: war, guerrilla video, trauma TV, AIDS, music, divorce, sadism, electronic tagging, rumor. Her essays, some previously published and others appearing in print for the first time, address such questions as, How do rumors kill? How has video become the call of conscience of TV? What kind of pathology did the Persian Gulf War reflect? Is peace possible? How have the police come to be everywhere, even where they are not?

Avital Ronell's books include The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (1989) and Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania (1992), both published by the University of Nebraska Press. She is chair of and professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature and a professor of comparative literature at New York University.