Entertainment Science

Sampling - incorporating found sound and manipulating it into another form entirely - has done more than any musical movement in the 20th century to maintain a continuum of popular music as a living document and, in the process, has become one of the most successful (and commercial) strains of postmodern art. Bring That Beat Back traces the development of this transformative pop-cultural practice from its origins in the turntable-manning, record-spinning hip-hop DJs of 1970s New York through 40 years of musical innovation and reinvention.

“I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and best-selling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space

Hiro and the gang get dragged into rescuing the daughters of an elf patriarch and receive a warm welcome from the elven home planet. The elves here are nothing like Hiro imagined--they know nothing of modern science and rely on magic rather than technology. As Hiro and the girls sample local delicacies, enjoy the sights, and get a crash course in elven fashion, they find that Hiro seems to wield a power much like the elves' magic...

The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat, the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace. In this wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie, Nick de Semlyen charts Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War.

Movies do more than tell a good story. They are expressions of raw emotion, naked vulnerability, and unbridled rage. They often function in the same way as prayers, communicating our deepest longings and joys to a God who hears each and every one. In this captivating book, Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen brings a critic's unique perspective to how movies function as expressions to God of lament, praise, joy, confession, and more.

In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. But becoming the Queen Crowned isn't solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it's not just a game of win or lose...it's life or death. The night the sisters turn 16, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.

Long before the beginning of recorded time, there stood the world of Azeroth. Every kind of magical being strode the countryside among the tribes of man, and all was at peace - until the arrival of the demons and horrors of the Burning Legion and their baneful Lord Sargeras, dark god of chaotic magic. Now Dragons, Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Humans, and Orcs all vie for supremacy across the scattered kingdoms - part of a grand, malevolent scheme that will determine the fate of the world of The Guardians of Tirisfal: a line of champions imbued with godlike powers.

Are you a big fan of Harry Potter? You’ve probably read the books and seen the films many times over. But how much of the detail behind the series do you really know? This special audiobook collection contains three individual audiobooks: 101 Amazing Facts About Harry Potter, 101 More Amazing Books About Harry Potter and 101 Amazing Facts About J.K. Rowling. Separated into sections for easy listening, there is a huge amount of information that will surprise and amaze you in equal measure!

Women have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman, as was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone, and the first person to be credited with the title film editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared. This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. Backwards and in Heels tells the history of women in film in a different way.

At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the US State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism.

Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military.

Labels, Labels Labels! They can be helpful when shopping for clothes and food, but on people can be a little restrictive. Given to us by society, given to us by family, or even social media - what do any of them actually mean? And how far do they go in defining who we really are? Two black British millennials, Lady T and Tobi Rachel, explore labels and identity in conversation with someone they’ve admired from afar for years. Adjoa Andoh is a star of stage and screen.

In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism in which a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages”. But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges.

The Indignities of Being a Woman candidly traces the history of womanhood and investigates how much things have really changed for womankind. By carefully x-raying areas such as body image, marriage, mental illness, fashion, and politics, this audiobook examines what it was like to be a woman in the past versus what it’s like now, when women are constantly told equality between the sexes exists but reality proves otherwise.

Wherever Christopher Rowe goes, adventure - and murder - follows. Even a chance to meet King Charles ends in a brush with an assassin. All that's recovered from the killer is a coded message with an ominous sign-off: more attempts are coming. So when Christopher's code-breaking discovers the attack's true target, he and his friends are ordered to Paris to investigate a centuries-old curse on the French throne. And when they learn an ancient treasure is promised to any assassin who succeeds, they realize the entire royal family is at stake - as well as their own lives.

Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art as few critics have.

For the first time, Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor speaks directly to his fans and shares his worldview about life as a sinner. And Taylor knows how to sin. As a small-town hero in the early '90s, he threw himself into a fierce-drinking, drug-abusing, hard-loving, live-for-the-moment life. Soon Taylor's music exploded, and he found himself rich, wanted, and on the road. His new and ever-more-extreme lifestyle had an unexpected effect, however; for the first time, he began to actively think about what it meant to sin.

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity. Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others' ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Hiro blew them all away—literally—on his mercenary job clearing out a space pirate stronghold. Now, the military and a ton of smaller groups are all desperate to recruit him. Not only that, but a major biotech firm is salivating over his otherworldly DNA! All Hiro wants is to keep flying free with his beautiful companions, but how long can he dodge all the people who want to tie him down?

Rumors of unrest lead Fran and Teacher to the port of Seedrun, where the intrepid duo uncovers yet another large-scale slaving operation. In their quest to liberate the kidnapped children, they find themselves unexpectedly playing guardian to a pair of twins from a very special lineage--one that might just have yanked Fran and Teacher into the middle of a civil war!