I have long heard that Rowman & Littlefield was a third-rate publisher, and the excerpts of this book that are readable at Amazon certainly support this opinion.
For one thing, such a short book (fewer than 200 pages including illustrations) would be even shorter if not for the inclusion of a superfluous 30-page episode guide to the original series, and the author's star rating for each is inappropriate for a "cultural history" supposedly intended, at least in part, for academics. Moreover, whoever edited this left several outright contradictions in place (at least in the viewable pages); for example, in discussing Genesis II, the author writes that "Roddenberry developed story concepts for a number of episodes" but "the only one that was actually produced was the pilot," whereas the endnotes refer to nonviewable pages that obviously discuss Planet Earth. And the original bridge crew is said to include "Hikaru" Sulu and "Nyota" Uhura, with an acknowledgment that Uhura acquired her first name many years later, but no such note for Sulu.
The chapter titles of the nonviewable sections indicate that their contents are predictable, given the (entirely viewable) reference list and index.
See for yourself. I think hundreds of us who frequent this board could have produced a book like this with very little research or effort, and done a better job of it.
