A Rhetoric of Ruins combines conceptual and theoretical frameworks to explore ghost towns, disaster sites, and environmental badlands as remnants of modernity. Methods of analysis include Jeremiadic, hauntological, psychogeographic, and heterotopian ways of reading U.S. and international sites.

Andrew F. Wood is professor of communication studies at San José State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Yesterday's Tomorrows

Chapter Two: Post-human Futures

Chapter Three: American Carnage

Chapter Four: Bodie's Ghostly Gaze

Chapter Five: Detroit's Guilty Pleasures

Chapter Six: Centralia's Graffiti Highway

Chapter Seven: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Chapter Eight: The Doorway to Hell