Book excerpt: This introductory textbook unites the study of rhetoric with the persuasive potential of today's 'texts' in popular culture. By providing students with a means by which to understand why popular texts are important to study-as well as how to examine these texts' underlying messages from a variety of rhetorical perspectives-Deanna Sellnow helps readers become critical consumers of the many popular culture texts that influence them in their daily lives.Features &BAD:amp; Benefits:This textbook unites rhetorical criticism with mediated popular cultural texts (e.g., film, television, rap music) in ways that relate directly to the experiences of people in society today. Each chapter is devoted to one theoretical perspective (e.g., narrative, dramatistic, Marxist, feminist, illusion of life, visual pleasure, media effects) Each chapter provides (a) an explana¡tion of a particular rhetorical theory, (b) examples of messages the theory reveals when applied to vari¡ous contemporary popular culture texts, (c) embedded ôapplying what youÆve learnedö opportuni¡ties for students to practice examining a specific film, television program, song, or adver¡tisement using the theory, (d) one or two scholarly articles that use the theory to examine a popular culture text, (e) one or two sample student papers that use the theory to examine a popu¡lar culture text, and (f) an end-of-chapter challenge posed to students to examine in depth a contempo¡rary artifact using the concepts described in the chapter Each chapter opens with reflective questions to guide students to about specific examples as read the chapter.