Popular Culture History

This is the first study to explore fully the myth of America as reflected in the nation's popular music. Beginning with the songs of the Pilgrims and continuing through more than two centuries of history and music, Born in the U.S.A. shows the emerging American myth and gives a close reading of the compositions of songwriters as diverse as William Billings, Henry Clay Work, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.

Since its first issue on October 10, 1896, The New York Times Book Review has brought the world of ideas to the reading public. It is the publication where authors have been made, and where readers first encountered the classics that have enriched their lives. Now the editors have curated the Book Review’s dynamic 125-year history, which is essentially the story of modern American letters. Brimming with remarkable reportage, this book collects interesting reviews, never-before-heard anecdotes about famous writers, and spicy letter exchanges.

In this new and expanded edition of Nelson George's classic cultural study, contemporary Black culture is chronicled through essays on music, film, sports, publishing, politics, and city life, both uptown and down. Buppies enter nearly every arena of the Black urban USA: roisterous rappers and legendary hoopsters, streetwise hustlers and influential filmmakers, unsung musicians and drug dealers at work.

Comic Book Women offers a feminist history of the golden age of comics, revising our understanding of how numerous genres emerged and upending narratives of how male auteurs built their careers. Considering issues of race, gender, and sexuality, the authors examine crime, horror, jungle, romance, science fiction, superhero, and Western comics to unpack the cultural and industrial consequences of how women were represented across a wide range of titles by publishers like DC, Timely, Fiction House, and others.

“Paul is dead.” It was the late 1960's, the Beatles hadn’t toured since 1966, and some truly bizarre indications began appearing, pointing to the unthinkable: Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident and replaced by a look-alike. The Walrus Was Paul unearths every single clue from one of rock ’n’ roll’s most enduring puzzles and takes you on a magical mystery tour of baffling, yet fascinating, hints for solving this mystery.

In 1969, the nearly nine months pregnant celebrity Sharon Tate loses her life and the life of her unborn child, horrifying hundreds of millions of Americans. How do we restore the dignity of Sharon Tate in the American psyche from an ocean of morbidity on a level unseen in the history of the United States? Sharon Tate Campaign Plan MMXX transcends the problem, navigating Sharon Tate’s enigma with a clear defense of her person as someone worthy of admiration.

Are Donald Trump's irrationality, cruelty and bombast symptoms of his personality? Is the chaos surrounding him a sign of his incompetence? Are his populism, illiberalism and nationalism just cynical appeals to existing feelings of abandonment, resentment and rage? Lawrence Grossberg shows that the truth is bigger and more frightening. Locating Trumpism in the long struggle among traditional conservatism, the new right and the reactionary right, he suggests that the chaos is far more significant and strategic...and dangerous. .

A small-town Florida teenager discovers punk rock through a loaned mix tape, and punk music and culture slowly takes over all aspects of his life. His new passion causes him to form a band, track down out-of-print records he loves and reissue them, open a record store, start a record distribution operation as a public service, mentor a host of young musicians, and befriend all manner of punk luminaries along the way. Slowly his life's pursuit pushes him to the point of personal ruination and, ultimately, redemption.

Alternating between personal anecdote, hilarious insight, and smart analysis, Luke Skywalker Can't Read contends that Barbarella is good for you, that monster movies are just romantic comedies with commitment issues, and that Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are total hipsters and, most shockingly, shows how virtually everyone in the Star Wars universe is functionally illiterate.

Here is a scientific look at zombies - and the ultimate guide to how the other half lives (or not). How fast and far would a zombie infection spread? What would a nutritionist say about an all-brain diet? Why are the undead so pissed off? Here are the answers to all of your essential zombie questions (you know you've asked them), with a lively, science-based exploration of every aspect of the undead.

Drawing on new research and enlivened by Touré's unique pop-cultural fluency, I Would Die 4 U relies on surprising and in-depth interviews with Prince's band members, former girlfriends, musicologists, and even Bible scholars to deconstruct the artist's life and work. Prince's baby boomer status allowed him to play a wise older brother to the latchkey kids of Generation X. Defying traditional categories of race, gender, and sexuality, he nonetheless presented a very traditional conception of religion and God in his music.

More Damned Lies and Statistics encourages all of us to think in a more sophisticated and skeptical manner about how statistics are used to promote causes, create fear, and advance particular points of view. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues: missing numbers are relevant but overlooked; confusing numbers bewilder when they should inform; scary numbers play to our fears about the present and the future.

Throughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist - and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and wrote about him passionately, thoughtfully, exhaustively. Here, in real-time, is that coverage: a look back at Prince in the '90s. Walsh's newly unearthed interviews, essays, columns, and reviews make Gold Experience an essential slice of history.

Bella and Edward, and their family and friends, have faced countless dangers and philosophical dilemmas in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels. This book is the first to explore them, drawing on the wisdom of philosophical heavyweights to answer essential questions such as: What do the struggles of "vegetarian" vampires who control their biological urge for human blood say about free will? Are vampires morally absolved if they kill only animals and not people? From a feminist perspective, is Edward a romantic hero or is he just a stalker? Is Jacob "better" for Bella than Edward?

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of “the American way."

Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society including military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, literature, and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil’s game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by different popes, rabbis, and imams. In his wide-ranging and ever fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity.

With every touchdown, home run, and three-pointer, star athletes represent an American dream that only an elite group blessed with natural talent can achieve. However, Kimball concentrates on what happens once these modern warriors meet their untimely demise. As athletes die, legends rise in their place.

In 1979, the self-titled debut album by the B-52s burst onto the Billboard charts, capturing the imagination of fans and music critics worldwide. The fact that the group had formed in the sleepy southern college town of Athens, Georgia, only increased the fascination. Soon, more Athens bands followed the B-52s into the vanguard of the new American music that would come to be known as "alternative", including R.E.M., who catapulted over the course of the 1980s to the top of the musical mainstream.

Más que un libro, este objeto es un carnaval de cincuenta estaciones que desfila tras las bambalinas de la cultura mexicana. En él participan Tin Tan y Pita Amor, María Félix y Monsiváis, Piporro y Tongolele, Nahui Olin y Jorge Ibargüengoitia, los beats y Marilyn Monroe, Vitola y José Revueltas. Entre muchos, muchos otros. Mientras pasan, nos van contando de sus vicios, supersticiones, sus pleitos y apodos, los cuadrángulos amorosos que formaron y los cabarés que visitaron.

Cookbooks are not political in conventional ways. Yet, as repositories of human taste, cookbooks transmit specific blends of flavor, texture, and nutrition across space and time. Cookbooks both form and reflect who we are. Cookbook Politics argues that cookbooks highlight aspects of our lives we rarely recognize as political - taste, production, domesticity, collectivity, and imagination - and considers the ways in which cookbooks have or do politics, from the most overt to the most subtle.