NPR Best Books of 2017In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR's acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race.
Winner of the 2017 Eisner Award in the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category2017 Prose Awards Honorable Mention, Media & Cultural StudiesOver the last 75 years, superheroes have been portrayed most often as male, heterosexual, white, and able-bodied.
Winner of the 2017 Eisner Award in the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category2017 Prose Awards Honorable Mention, Media & Cultural StudiesOver the last 75 years, superheroes have been portrayed most often as male, heterosexual, white, and able-bodied.
New York Times, Spin, and Vanity Fair contributor Marc Spitz explores the first great cultural movement since Hip Hop: an old-fashioned and yet highly modern aesthetic that's embraced internationally by teens, twenty and thirty-somethings and even some Baby Boomers; creating hybrid generation known as Twee.
Beginning in London and ricocheting across the Atlantic, 1963: The Year of the Revolution is an oral history of twelve months that changed our world-the Youth Quake movement-and laid the foundations for the generation of today.
The inside story on institutional secrets, including the formula for Coca-Cola, how to beat a lie detector, currency conspiracies, and other hidden facts.
Celebrity host of CMT's Cowboy U Rocco Wachman's modern guide to being a cowboyCowboy: The Ultimate Guide to Living Like a Great American Icon is the first book to explore, through a pop-culture lens, the many facets of the cowboy life.
God's Lunatics is an eyebrow-raising encyclopedia of the strange and shocking side of history's religions, cults, and spiritual movements, by Michael Largo, the bestselling author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Final Exits.
Highly unorthodox questions and answers about life after life from America's most delightful mediumConcetta Bertoldi has been communicating with the "e;Other Side"e; since childhood.
A richly illustrated cultural history of the midcentury pulp paperback"e;There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes.
Deflecting the attention from Hollywood, Stars in World Cinema fills an important gap in the study of film by bringing together Star Studies and World Cinema.
How privileged adolescents in China acquire status and why this helps them succeed Study Gods offers a rare look at the ways privileged youth in China prepare themselves to join the ranks of the global elite.
A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of "e;models and bottles"e; to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of menMillion-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on the French Riviera, and $40,000 bottles of champagne.
An in-depth look at how democratic values have widened the American arts scene, even as it remains elite and cosmopolitanTwo centuries ago, wealthy entrepreneurs founded the American cathedrals of culture-museums, theater companies, and symphony orchestras-to mirror European art.
How creative freedom, race, class, and gender shaped the rebellion of two visionary artistsPostwar America experienced an unprecedented flourishing of avant-garde and independent art.
A firsthand look at efforts to improve diversity in software and hackerspace communitiesHacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation.
The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators-from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrenciesBitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory.
A look at the revolution in game live streaming and esports broadcastingEvery day thousands of people broadcast their gaming live to audiences over the internet using popular sites such as Twitch, which reaches more than one hundred million viewers a month.
New York Times Notable Book: An "e;engaging"e; illustrated book full of "e;valuable insights into the contemporary world of graphic storytelling"e; (Los Angeles Review of Books).
After the phenomenal success of Steve Wright's Book of Factoids, Steve returns with Further Factoids, bringing together the weirdest and most extraordinary factoids from BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright in the Afternoon.
Whether drinking Red Bull, relieving chronic pain with oxycodone, or experimenting with Ecstasy, Americans participate in a culture of self-medication, using psychoactive substances to enhance or manage our moods.
Literary scholars face a new and often baffling reality in the classroom: students spend more time looking at glowing screens than reading printed text.
