Best Selling Books by David Craig

Winner, 2020 Outstanding Book Award, given by the International Communication Association Honorable Mention, 2020 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers How the transformation of social media platforms and user-experience have redefined the entertainment industry In a little over a decade, competing social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, have given rise to a new creative industry: social media entertainment. Operating at the intersection of the entertainment and interactivity, communication and content industries, social media entertainment creators have harnessed these platforms to generate new kinds of content separate from the century-long model of intellectual property control in the traditional entertainment industry. Social media entertainment has expanded rapidly and the traditional entertainment industry has been forced to cede significant power and influence to content creators, their fans, and subscribers. Digital platforms have created a natural market for embedded advertising, changing the worlds of marketing and communication in their wake. Combined, these factors have produced new, radically shifting demands on the entertainment industry, posing new challenges for screen regimes, media scholars, industry professionals, content creators, and audiences alike. Stuart Cunningham and David Craig chronicle the rise of social media entertainment and its impact on media consumption and production. A massive, industry-defining study with insight from over 100 industry insiders, Social Media Entertainment explores the latest transformations in the entertainment industry in this time of digital disruption.

Spies! Special Missions! Codes and Ciphers! History comes to life with 19 stories of ingenuity and intrigue from World War II. Discover the secrets behind some of the real-life deceptions that turned the tide of World War II. Meet double-crossing secret agents like Arthur Owens (code-named Snow), who spied for both the Nazis and the British! Witness airborne assaults by daredevils such as Otto “Scarface” Skorzeny, “the most dangerous man in Europe.” Smash through “unbreakable” barriers like the A-3 Scrambler, the American encryption system used to communicate with British allies! Each spellbinding true story is packed with information sidebars, archival photographs, and full-color maps, allowing the reader to go behind the scenes of World War II and learn the secrets that outwitted the enemy.

Though we are all sorry sinners, not worthy to sing God''s praises, we must. The trick is to not let concerns for "Christian stealth" transform us into poets who end up serving a second master. "Platform" has its draw, but we can''t let a wide concern for Catholic culture become no culture at all. We can''t be so concerned with success that our poems lose their distinguishing content. Jesus is Lord of all the earth. Using a conversational style lifted from Collins and Coleridge, these poems seek to bring a world to light where He has always been alive and active, where he reigns in complete power, worthy of all our praise. May He forgive us all our sins and change us in the twinkling of His eye before our journey ends.

Trouble in the Diocese is a petulant, funny book of poetry. Its contrary protagonist/antagonist, the Apprentice, embraces life in both the large and the absurdly small. At the same time, he emphatically rejects the easy rigidity of doily-headed orthodox Catholics as well as the impulse in the Catholic literary Pixar world that seeks to serve two masters. Jesus and his Church are lifted up here, but so is the cross. Discipleship necessarily involves dis-ease, purgation, and if we as readers have any sense, we will--more quietly perhaps--do well to listen (with patience) to his rants.

These poems owe their origin to Robert Bly’s stunning ghazals in Stealing Sugar from the Castle. (Why Minnesota has not erected a fifty-foot statue in honor of him is beyond me.) But since these lyrics are devotional in a Christian way, they are different. Though they enjoy Bly’s wonderful sense of meter, they try to exalt Jesus Christ, the God-man, the Eucharist, in the very ground and summit of our being. They want to praise him in all things, as Christian poetry must do, for what he has done, for what he is doing. Surely the future will see a rise is such poetry. After all, that is why we are here.

Chronicle of a twelve-year battle with cancer and surprising lessons learned about trusting God, how God uses life’s painful events, and treating cancer as a chronic disease rather than a terminal illness.

After Mary, St. Francis is clearly the most popular and influential of all the disciples of Jesus Christ. He embodies the spiritual poverty, humility, and childlikeness which are absolutely essential for anyone who wants to grow. And it is fitting, too, to examine his life in poetry, since Francis is considered by many to be the father of Italian poetry. In these St. Francis Poems, David Craig gives us what literature should: slices of Henry James''s "lived life" as they move past sentimentality to get to the hard-edged, visceral realities in the original texts--though they never lose sight of laughter or of simple joy. These poems invite us to celebrate with Lady Poverty around her meager table, which is fitting, since that is the only place we will ever be fed. This project itself revisits the haunts of David Craig''s first book, The Sandaled Foot (1980). But here St. Francis seems to come even more deeply alive--next to shelves of cool, protected water, in the red meadows of praise.

One of the first medical ethnographies to be written on contemporary Vietnam, Familiar Medicine examines the practical ways in which people of the Red River Delta make sense of their bodies, illness, and medicine. Traditional knowledge and practices have persisted but are now expressed through and alongside global medical knowledge and commodities. Western medicine has been eagerly adopted and incorporated into everyday life in Vietnam, but not entirely on its own terms. Familiar Medicine takes a conjectural, interdisciplinary approach to its subject, weaving together history, ethnography, cultural geography, and survey materials to provide a rich and readable account of local practices in the context of an increasingly globalized world and growing microbial resistance to antibiotics. Theoretically, it draws on current critical and cultural theory (in particular applying Pierre Bourdieu''s work on habitus and practical logics) in innovative but approachable ways. David Craig addresses a range of contemporary fascinations in medical anthropology and the sociology of health and illness: from the trafficking of medical commodities and ideas under globalization to the hybridization of local cultural formations, knowledge, and practices. His book will be required reading for international workers in health and development in Vietnam and a rich resource for courses in cultural geography, anthropology, medical sociology, regional studies, and public and international health.

On November 20, 1983, a three-hour made-for-TV movie The Day After premiered on ABC. Set in the heartland of Lawrence, Kansas, the film depicted the events before, during, and after a Soviet nuclear attack with vivid scenes of the post-apocalyptic hellscape that would follow. The film was viewed by over 100 million Americans and remains the highest rated TV movie in history. After the premiere, ABC News aired an episode of Viewpoint, a live special featuring some of the most prominent public intellectuals of the debating the virtues of the Arms Race and the prospect of a winnable nuclear war. The response to the film proved more powerful than perhaps any film or television program in the history of media. Aside from its record-shattering Nielsen ratings, it enjoyed critical acclaim as well as international box office success in theatrical screenings. The path to primetime for The Day After proved nearly as treacherous as the film’s narrative. Battles ensued behind the scenes at the network, between the network and the filmmakers, with Broadcast Standards and Ad Sales, in the edit room and on the set, including the “nuke-mares” experienced by the cast. After the director was pushed aside, he contemplated suicide while also engineering a comeback through the press. But these skirmishes pale in comparison to the culture wars triggered by the film in the press, alongside a growing Nuclear Freeze movement, and from a united, pro-nuclear Right. Once efforts to alter the script failed, the White House conducted a full-throttled propaganda campaign to hijack the film’s message. Apocalypse Television features a dramatic insider’s account of the making of and backlash against The Day After. No other book has told this story in similar fashion, venturing behind-the-scenes of the programming and news divisions at ABC, Reagan officials in the White House who mounted the propaganda campaign, rogue publicists who hijacked the film to promote a Nuclear Freeze, the backlash from the conservative movement and Religious Right, the challenges encountered by film’s production team from conception to reception, and the experiences of the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, where the film was set and shot, if also, ground zero in America’s nuclear heartland.

(Applause Acting Series). A Performer Prepares is a 13-part master class on how to perform on any stage from bleak rehearsal room to the Palace Theatre. The class covers the basic Broadway song numbers, from show ballad to showstopper. With precise, logical steps and dynamic and entertaining dialogues between himself and his students, David Craig takes anyone with the desire to shine from an audition to final curtain call. These lessons on the pages recreate as closely as possible the unique interpersonal dyamic of Craig''s legendary coaching encounters in New York, Los Angeles and across the country.

Over the past decade some £3 trillion - equivalent to £50,000 for every person in Britain - has been taken from us by the ruling elites. Half was wasted in a splurge of poorly-managed public spending in the ''boom'', while the other half evaporated in the ''bust'' - siphoned off by city bonuses, vaporised by a collapse in pension savings and extorted to bail out the banking sector. In their explosive new book, David Craig and Matthew Elliott trace where the money has gone and who has become richer as a result. They name and shame the ''guilty'': the incompetent bureaucrats that fail to deliver the services the taxpayer deserves; the multitude of ineffective regulators and watchdogs; the politicians that have betrayed our democracy and enriched themselves; and the self-serving and arrogant city bankers. Moreover, they calculate the enormous debt that awaits the British taxpayer as a result of our rulers'' avarice and economic mismanagement. Fleeced! charts the greatest impoverishment and tax swindle of the public in British history.

Fiction. Taxi driver James Bailey flees the ruin and emptiness of his life by heading off to Fargo. Although he never gets there, he does find out that the grace he had imagined in far-out places has been tagging along with him all the time. In Bailey, author Craig enacts, in a rollicking manner, Josef Pieper''s idea of man as Status Viatoris (being-on-the-way) and shows that a ministry can be found driving a taxi. Craig skillfully shows how grace turns up in the strangest places, and, in a manner worthy of Fitzgerald, magically evokes the graced land which is America and her people.

Glasgow 1893. Wilton Hunt, a student, and Tam Foley, a laudanum-addicted pharmacist, are pursuing extra-curricular careers as body snatchers, or ‘resurrection men’, under cover of darkness. They exhume a girl’s corpse, only for it to disappear while their backs are turned. Confused and in need of the money the body would have earnt them, they investigate the corpse’s disappearance. They discover that bodies have started to turn up in the area with ripped-out throats and severe loss of blood, although not the one they lost. The police are being encouraged by powerful people to look the other way, and the deaths are going unreported by the press. As Hunt and Foley delve beneath the veneer of respectable society, they find themselves entangled in a dangerous underworld that is protected from scrutiny by the rich and powerful members of the elite but secretive Sooty Feathers Club. Meanwhile, a mysterious circus arrives in the middle of the night, summoned as allies to help avenge a betrayal two centuries old… Resurrection Men is the first book in David Craig’s Sooty Feathers series, a masterful gothic tale about a supernatural war for control of the Second City of the British Empire, and the struggle of flawed characters of uncertain virtue who try to avert it. It is set in a late 19th century Glasgow ruled by undead – from the private clubs, town houses and country manors of the privileged to the dung-choked wynds and overcrowded slums of the poor. Undead unrest, a fallen angel, and religious zealots intent on driving out the forces of evil, set the stage for a diabolical conflict of biblical proportions.

A smart, fast-paced, and entertaining read about how trust, vision, and partnership built something extraordinary. Whether you''re into leadership, financial markets, or just a gripping business story, Bluebook delivers insight and inspiration in equal measure. At its heart is the Refinitiv deal, one of the most significant carve-outs in recent business history. Valued at $20 billion, Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk division was spun out, transformed, and ultimately sold to the London Stock Exchange Group for $27 billion just three years later. Led by CEO David Craig and backed by private equity giant Blackstone, this was more than a deal; it was a bold reinvention. It''s a story of how data, leadership, and long-term vision created $7 billion in new value. In a world where information moves faster than certainty, Bluebook demonstrates what happens when clarity cuts through the noise. From corporate brinkmanship to cultural transformation, from brand rebirth to operational overhaul, this is the behind-the-scenes story of navigating complexity and driving impact. Part memoir, part masterclass, Bluebook is essential reading for anyone who''s ever led change, survived a spinout, or wondered how great businesses are built.