Raymond Williams is one of the key founders of British Cultural Studies. Delving into the myriad processes of culture and society, Williams trawlled through diverse media like literature, the press, television, advertising, cinema, and drama to harness its utopian impulses. Williams was a prolific writer traversing literary and scholarly genres in his desire to map the tripartite vectors of the Long Revolution: democractic, industrial, and cultural. Anyone who considers herself a cultural historian whether it be in cinema, literature, art, drama, or new media needs to familiarize himself with Williams subtle understandings of "culture as ordinary"-- a message that has still not found terra firma in all too many literature departments.

In many ways, the parameters of literary and media studies and sociology are too limited to encompass the scope and originality of Williams work. *Politics and Letters*, a series of interviews conducted by New Left Review conducted during 1977 to 1978, provides a self-reflective overview by Williams upon his own work up until that moment. Williams' brutal honesty in regards to the achievements and limits of his cultural projects exposes an intelligence that transcends its own ego to grapple with the demons that accompany a desire to imagine more egalitarian futures while traversing the craggey cultural landscape of the past.