introduction to volume of 122 pages related to Chinese immigration into the United States, 1868-1904, cooperation or conflict in the transatlantic relations post Bush, satire and political discourse in Warren Beatty's Bulworth, whiteness in Todd Haynes' Safe, Robert Coover's novel The Public Burning and history as a partisan, the maiden in the tower as a motif in Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49