Popular History

It should come as no surprise to anyone that it is much easier to overthrow a government than form a new one, and that in turn it is easier to form a government than to govern. The men who founded America knew these facts in theory, but in the last decade of the 18th century, they learned them by experience when, just a few years after the new Constitution had been ratified, a rebellion arose over taxes.

As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed 9,000 protests and 84 acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching 50,000, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society.

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."

¿Qué habría sido de nuestra juventud sin el Walkman, Pokémon, Pac-Man, y el anime? ¿Qué sería de nuestros mensajes de texto sin emojis? ¿Y de las celebraciones con amigos sin karaoke? Todas estas innovaciones y más se las debemos a los japoneses. Matt Alt, especialista en Japón y colaborador para medios como The New Yorker, se dio a la tarea de revelar en este libro la historia detrás de las principales creaciones niponas que han conquistado el planeta.

Popular culture has taught us to picture the Old West as a land of men, whether it's the lone hero on horseback or crowds of card players in a rough-and-tumble saloon. But the taming of the frontier involved plenty of women, too - and this book tells their stories. At first, female pioneers were indeed rare - when the town of Denver was founded in 1859, there were only five women among a population of almost a thousand. But the adventurers arrived, slowly but surely.

Gay bars have been closing by the hundreds. The story goes that increasing mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, plus dating apps, have rendered these spaces obsolete. Beyond that, rampant gentrification in big cities has pushed gay bars out of the neighborhoods they helped make hip. Who Needs Gay Bars? considers these narratives, accepting that the answer for some might be: maybe nobody. Greggor Mattson embarks on a journey across the country to paint a much more complex picture of the cultural significance of these spaces, inside "big four" gay cities, but also beyond them.

Oggi per la Chiesa la situazione è molto difficile. Si tratta di una delle tante crisi che il cristianesimo ha vissuto o di un definitivo declino? È un interrogativo che inquieta anche chi guarda al cristianesimo dall’esterno. Ma crisi non vuol dire necessariamente fine. Può essere un’opportunità per aprirsi al futuro, sapendo che il grande rischio è accontentarsi di sopravvivere, rimpiangendo un passato migliore. La soluzione è vivere nella crisi. La Chiesa oggi è chiamata a una condizione di lotta, questa volta non contro nemici esterni ma contro l’indifferenza e il discredito.

For No Reason at All: The Changing Narrative of the First World War in American Film discusses a variety of Great War-themed films made from 1915 to the present, tracing the changing approaches to the conflict over time.

Nel 1933 viene lanciato nei cinema USA "I tre porcellini" di Walt Disney. Questo piccolo avvenimento segna l'inizio della parabola della cultura mainstream promossa dai film delle majors hollywoodiane, raccolta e amplificata dalla radio e dalla tv. Questo tipo di cultura, basata su un'idea consolatoria dell'intrattenimento, fondata su una visione manichea del bene contro il male e sul must del lieto fine, prende forma allora e mette radici nell'immaginario collettivo dell'Occidente.

Misinformation and myths have attached themselves to the Egyptian pyramids since ancient Greece and Rome. While many Americans believe that the pyramids were built by aliens, archaeologists understand that the Giza pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty around 2450 BCE. So why is there such a disconnect between scholarly opinion and the popular view of Egypt? Jason Colavito takes us back to Late Antique Egypt, where the replacement of polytheism with Christianity gave rise to local efforts to rewrite the stories of Egyptian history in the image of the Bible.

Da sempre misuriamo il mondo. Per conoscerlo ed esplorarlo, per viverci, per interagire con i nostri simili. L'umanità misura per conoscere il passato, comprendere il presente, progettare il futuro. Ci sono voluti però millenni perché due rivoluzioni, quella scientifica iniziata con Galileo e quella francese, avviassero il percorso per rendere il sistema di misura condiviso e non più basato su deperibili artefatti umani, ma su elementi invariabili e universali della natura.

Per gli antichi le Sirene erano mostri orripilanti, per metà uccelli e per metà donne. Eppure, esse avevano qualcosa che le rendeva irresistibili: la voce, suadente e ammaliatrice. Insieme ad altre figure mitologiche a loro affini come Circe, Calipso ed Elena, le Sirene sono in questo libro le protagoniste della prima tappa di un cammino che, partendo da Omero e a Omero ritornando, si concentra sull'Atene del V secolo, la città della democrazia e della parola.

The Beatles: Image and the Media charts the transformation of the Beatles from teen idols to leaders of the youth movement and powerful cultural agents. Drawing upon American mainstream print media, broadcasts, albums, films, and videos, the study covers the band's career in the United States. Michael R. Frontani explores how the Beatles' media image evolved and how this transformation related to cultural and historical events.

Schieber, Spieler und Rebellen: Der Bundesligaskandal erschüttert das Land, die Nationalelf um Beckenbauer und Netzer spielt Zauberfußball im Wembley-Stadion und wird Europameister, Willy Brandt übersteht das Misstrauensvotum, die RAF hält Deutschland in Atem, die Band Ton Steine Scherben liefert den Sound für Aufbruch und Protest. Stan Libuda und Rio Reiser sind die Träumer, die die Leser durch ein aufregendes Jahr begleiten und ein Schlaglicht werfen auf die Anatomie der bundesdeutschen Gesellschaft.

Take a rollicking tour through the sports world of 1996, when debuts, comebacks, movies, and pop culture crossover changed the sports landscape forever. From college to the Olympics to the pros; from the NBA to golf, tennis, and boxing, 1996 was home to athletes and teams who were among the best marketed, most beloved, colorful, and greatest in history. Sportswriter and author Jon Finkel uncovers the stories behind the stories while interviewing a who's who of '96ers to reveal in thrilling detail how their collective influence on sports and pop culture still resonates to this day.

In 1977 a group of scientists, artists and writers gathered in a house in Ithaca, New York to work on the most important mixtape ever conceived. It wasn’t from one person to another - it was from Earth to the cosmos. When NASA sent Voyagers 1 and 2 on a grand tour of the outer planets, they knew the ultimate fate of these plucky probes would be to drift forever in the unimaginable void of interstellar space.

The Lord of the Rings is intended to be applicable to the real world of relationships, religion, pleasure, pain, and politics. Tolkien himself said that his grand tale of wizards, orcs, hobbits, and elves was aimed at truth and good morals in the actual world.

Rocking in the Free World explains how Americans came to believe they had learned the truth about rock 'n' roll, a truth shaped by the Cold War anxieties of the fifties, the countercultural revolutions (and counter-revolutions) of the sixties and seventies, and the end-of-history triumphalism of the eighties.

This book is the first anthology to explore the connection between race and the suburbs in American cinema from the end of World War II to the present. It builds upon the explosion of interest in the suburbs in film, television, and fiction in the last fifteen years, concentrating exclusively on the relationship of race to the built environment. Race and the Suburbs in American Film is a stimulating resource for considering the manner in which race is foundational to architecture and urban geography, which is reflected, promoted, and challenged in cinematic representations.

With remembrances from J. K. Rowling's editors, agents, publicists, fans, and Rowling herself, Melissa Anelli takes us on a personal journey through every aspect of the Harry Potter phenomenon - from his very first spell to his lasting impact on the way we live and dream.