A delectable dossier deftly addressing the global dissemination of James Bond, this collection makes a major argument that the Bond franchise is more than merely a minor global cinema. Tracking Bond through an itinerary teeming with unexpected stops, Global James Bond pays visits to Mexico, South India, Hong Kong and Cuba, amongst other locales, to (re)imagine local receptions and (re)readings of the globetrotting spy over the past half century. It is sure to please cosmopolitan Bond aficionados in its focus on the interplay of the global and local.

Ajay Gehlawat, Sonoma State University

Global James Bond tracks an exchange that knows few borders—a relay between Bond media and various social-political and aesthetic contexts which receive, absorb, mimic, alter, pillage, and subvert Bond, reinforcing 007’s status as a mobile signifier of truly global reach. What’s especially refreshing about this collection is that its authors by turns center and decenter the iconic film series, turning critical attention not just to the world as official Bond texts depict (and warp) it, but to the curious trajectories the figure of Bond has taken in unofficial texts produced in Mexico, India, Hong Kong, and Japan. The message is clear: Bond contains a world of meaning, in the literal sense of the term.

Colin Burnett, Washington University in St. Louis

Lisa Funnell and Klaus Dodds’ collection orients Bond scholarship away from the loci of Britain – and, thus, away from the manifold considerations of Bond’s complex identity matrix as a “British” icon – towards a more trans-global approach to Bond's historical legacy, demonstrating persuasively the need to expand the frontiers of James Bond Studies and to engage with the implications of Bond’s “global-ness” as a new critical framework.

Ian Kinane, University of Roehampton-London