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Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 92(4)central theme and thereby invites associations with scholars like Barthes, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Marx. In the concluding chapter, the author shares the impetus for his study and the cultural significance of shows like RHONY. Like many TV scholars, he started out as a fan of Bravo TV and remains one while performing intellectual analysis. RHONY began in 2008 and is still popular, but Bjelskou concludes that the "severely branded nature" and "limited version of femaleness" are problematic. He acknowledges some value within this program type-arguably filling a gap of dying public services and presenting creative approaches to weaving advertising and entertainment-but more diversity would increase its usefulness. A short and dense read, Branded Women is a recommended case study for the implications of unabashed consumerism and industry-sanctioned narcissism-critical facets to grasp in today's media landscape. Media and the Rhetoric of BodyPerfection: Cosmetic Surgery, Weight Loss and Beauty in Popular Culture. Deborah Harris-Moore. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2014. 210 pp. $109.95 hbk. $109.95 ebk-pdf. $109.95 ebk-ePUB.

However, the two larger principles of NEO-PR presented in the text, even if they're not groundbreakingly NEO, do indeed provide helpful insights both for thinking philosophically about PR and for doing it in the field, especially during a crisis. One principle is that PR is "not just an organizational function," but helps "co-create meaning in an increasingly diverse world." The other principle is that "public relations does not, nor should it, seek a singular, objective truth." Instead, the author effectively argues that as "singularity of truth does not exist," PR pros should think about delivering "microlevel messages, tailored to specific publics or segments of publics." PR practitioners may react in two ways to that advice. They may say, "that's what we already try to do, especially via social media." On the contrary they may say, "love it, as an ideal, and we'll give it a go, but in the real world that takes more time, staff and budget than we're ever going to get."Overall, though, with his postmodernist analysis and his bold, insightful call for a "neo" approach to PR, Caldiero has provided scholars, students, and practitioners with a valuable liberal arts context in which to consider how one studies and practices the profession of PR.

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cancer which was to take his life, as it did Gene Siskel's a decade-plus earlier. All is treated with unstinting candor.Best offsetting the gloom and doom are the chapters "My Romances" and "Chaz," especially the latter, focusing on Chaz Hammel Smith, the love he found relatively late in life in a biracial marriage, becoming Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert. She pervades the volume in 21 contexts between pages 2 and 405.Displaying love of another kind, canine love, are five pages about Blackie and Ming, Ebert's childhood pets, and the neighbor's four-legged tail-wagers, Pepper and Snookers.Ebert, born into Catholicism, gives the final 10 pages to thoughtful discussion of what he had too much cause, for much too long, to think about: death. And what, if anything, comes next. They are worth perusal, in and of themselves.