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From the Northern Rockies to the Southwest deserts, Betsy Gaines Quammen explores how myths shape our identities, heighten polarizations, and fracture our shared understanding of the world around us. As she investigates the origins and effects of myths of the American West, Gaines Quammen travels through small towns and big cities, engaging people and building relationships at every stop. Misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination...
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This expanded and revised edition explores and updates the cultural politics of the Walt Disney Company and how its ever-expanding list of products, services, and media function as teaching machines that shape children's culture into a largely commercial endeavor. The Disney conglomerate remains an important case study for understanding both the widening influence of free-market fundamentalism in the new millennium and the ways in which messages of...
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"The gold standard of our culture is 'fun.' Companies want their offices to feel more playful, schools want learning to be entertaining, programmers want their products to feel as intuitive and addictive as playing Tetris or AngryBirds. Trying to make life like playing a game sounds like a good idea--who doesn't want to have fun while working or commuting, parenting or cleaning?--but what's often overlooked in the rush to make everything 'fun' is...
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"'RISE' is a love letter to and for Asian Americans--a vivid scrapbook of voices, emotions, and memories from an era in which [their] culture was forged and transformed, and a way to preserve both the headlines and the intimate conversations that have shaped [their] community into who [they] are today"--Provided by publisher.
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Energy sources are massively depleted. The government is wasteful and incompetent. The economy is imploding, the environment is toxic, and international terrorism threatens our day-to-day lives. And gum sucks. It just sucks. Who is responsible? Who made our world so dangerous, so unlivable, so stupid?
Matthew Vincent is unafraid to name names. Who’s to blame for the three-ounce rule on airplanes? Who came up with the bright idea of...
Matthew Vincent is unafraid to name names. Who’s to blame for the three-ounce rule on airplanes? Who came up with the bright idea of...
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America's preeminent columnist presents his penetrating and surprising reflections on everything from embryo research to entitlement reform, from Halley's Comet to border collies, from Christopher Columbus to Martin Luther King, from drone warfare to American decline. Features a special, highly autobiographical introduction.
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"The Way I Heard It presents thirty-five mysteries "for the curious mind with a short attention span." Every one is a trueish tale about someone you know, filled with facts that you don't. Movie stars, presidents, bloody do-gooders, and villains--they're all here, waiting to shake your hand, hoping you'll remember them. Delivered with Mike's signature blend of charm, wit, and ingenuity, their stories are part of a larger mosaic--a memoir full of surprising...
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We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups ... but what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry...
13) Hip: the history
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Hip: The History is the story of how American pop culture has evolved throughout the twentieth century to its current position as world cultural touchstone. How did hip become such an obsession? From sex and music to fashion and commerce, John Leland tracks the arc of ideas as they move from subterranean Bohemia to Madison Avenue and back again. Hip: The History examines how hip has helped shape -- and continues to influence -- America's view of itself,...
14) The death of the grown-up: how America's arrested development is bringing down Western civilization
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"Where have all the grown-ups gone?" That is the provocative question Washington Times syndicated columnist Diana West asks as she looks at America today. Sadly, here's what she finds: It's difficult to tell the grown-ups from the children in a landscape littered with Baby Britneys, Moms Who Mosh, and Dads too "young" to call themselves "mister." Surveying this sorry scene, West makes a much larger statement about our place in the world: "No wonder...
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A long-overdue paean to the predominant musical form of the 70s and a thoughtful exploration of the culture that spawned it
Disco may be the most universally derided musical form to come about in the past forty years. Yet, like its pop cultural peers punk and hip hop, it was born of a period of profound social and economic upheaval. In Turn the Beat Around, critic and journalist Peter Shapiro traces the history of disco music and culture. From the...
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From the acclaimed Ojibwe author and professor Anton Treuer comes an essential book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young readers alike. Ranging from "Why is there such a fuss about nonnative people wearing Indian costumes for Halloween?" to "Why is it called a 'traditional Indian fry bread taco'?" to "What's it like for natives who don't look native?" to "Why are Indians so often imagined rather than understood?", and beyond, Everything...
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell
How did we get here?
In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual,...
How did we get here?
In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual,...
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Women today are inundated with conflicting messages from the mass media: they must either be strong leaders in complete command or sex kittens obsessed with finding and pleasing a man. Here, cultural critic Susan J. Douglas takes readers on a spirited journey through the television programs, popular songs, movies, and news coverage of recent years, telling a story that is the cultural biography of a new generation of American women. Revisiting cultural...
20) Bellwether
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Pop culture, chaos theory, and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Doomsday Book.
Sandra Foster studies fads—from Barbie dolls to the grunge look—how they start and what they mean, for the HiTek corporation. Bennett O'Reilly studies monkey-group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and
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