Political theorist Justin Lewis examines how polling data presented in the media do not simply reflect what Americans think, but construct public opinion itself. Exploding the myth that most Americans are moderate or conservative, Constructing Public Opinion demonstrates how political elites help to promote militarism, and how mainstream media sustain an electoral system with a built-in bias against the interests of ordinary people.

Alone at his fantastic estate known as Xanadu, 70-year-old Charles Foster Kane dies, uttering only the single word Rosebud. So ends the odyssey of a life, and begins a fabulous tale of the rise to wealth and power, and ultimate fall, of a complex man.

Late on the night of October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one-year-old gay college student, left a bar in Laramie, Wyoming with two alleged 'strangers,' Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. Eighteen hours later, Matthew was found tied to a log fence on the outskirts of town, unconscious and barely alive. He had been pistol-whipped so severely that the mountain biker who discovered his battered frame mistook him for a Halloween scarecrow. Overnight,...