To what extent have Hollywood feature films shaped the meanings that Americans attach to alcoholics, their families, and the alcoholic condition? To what extent has the mass culture of the movie industry itself been conceptually shaped by a broad, external societal discourse? Norman Denzin brings to his lifelong study of alcoholism a searching interest in how cultural texts signify and lend themselves to interpretation within a social nexus. [A] genuinely interdisciplinary work of the first order.”—Robert L. Carringer, author, The Making of Citizen Kane