<DIV><DIV>&ldquo;Popular culture stories&mdash;found in comic strips, TV programs, magazines, and movies&mdash;gain their popularity by evoking our desires and anxieties. Aden offers a well-constructed argument that creating a sense of place (and with it a sense of personal identity and community) serves as an important enticement for many popular cultures works. . . . Aden handles contemporary theory deftly [and] does an excellent job of identifying many of the tensions present in 20th-century America.&rdquo; <DIV>&mdash;<I>Quarterly Journal of Speech </I> <DIV>&nbsp; <DIV>&nbsp;&ldquo;Stories encountered at the movies, on television, and in popular magazines are treated as reflections of the popular culture. . . . Believing that the American experience has been guided by a &lsquo;normative narrative&rsquo; or &lsquo;grand narrative&rsquo; that constitutes the &lsquo;American dream,&rsquo; Aden holds that stories can be used to extract the &lsquo;rules&rsquo; of a narrative, determine the direction, and identify conceptions of the &lsquo;promised lands&rsquo; for a culture.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; <DIV>&mdash;<I>Critical Studies in Mass Communication</I> <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>