This book is a brief, engaging look at the aims and methods of cultural studies, which include ethnic, gender, and area studies. In Part 1, Miller sets out to demonstrate the ironic conflicts encountered in the cultural studies movement, using as a foil the effect technology has had (and is having) on scholarship. He maintains that the potential effect of emerging computer technology on the humanities will be the gradual interaction/merging of different types of media (words, sound, images, etc.) and the creation of an open-ended interparticipatory scholastic product. Such a development will help cultural studies toward its goal of empowering "marginalized" cultures. In the second part of the book, the author examines the interaction between words and images in illustrated books, titles of artworks, and inscribed paintings. Using the texts of Ruskin, Heidegger, Dickens, and Goethe, and the images of Phiz and Turner, Miller masterfully demonstrates how the verbal and the visual coalesce into illuminating signs, which ironically "bring to light what they also hide." At points Miller's arguments are a bit cryptic, but on the whole this work is splendidly written.