"Brummett's exciting volume challenges us to acknowledge the necessarily subversive elements implicated in the study of popular culture.... His book is much more than a study of the persuasive elements of nontraditional rhetorical forms, and more than a study of the rhetorical aspects of film, television or the mass media. Brummett's argument represents the theoretical and critical framework for a new perspective on what it means to "be rhetorical" in a media age.... What Brummett has provided is no less than a theoretical rationale for the study of popular culture as well as a beginning framework of how to undertake that study. For students of the rhetoric of popular culture, this volume is necessary. For others, certainly its first three chapters are provocative in the way they challenge accepted issues within the ancient tradition of rhetorical theory and criticism." - Quarterly Journal of Speech "A timely study of rhetoric and popular culture that could be successfully used by various [scholars] interested in ethics, communications, popular culture social influences, and rhetoric." - Popular Culture in Libraries"

Barry Brummett is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor in communication at the University of Texas-Austin.