Popular Science

More than a biography, Serena Williams: Tennis Champion, Sports Legend, and Cultural Heroine not only tells the story of her upbringing and remarkable career but also looks at Williams as a sports pioneer. Merlisa Lawrence Corbett explores Williams’ influence on cultural and political issues such as body shaming, gender equality, and racism in sports and society. Corbett also analyzes Williams’ impact on discussions of feminism, the sports celebrity, and the marketing of female athletes.

Before and since its official closure in 1985, historic US 66 became associated with the deserts, Indians, and cowboys of the Southwest; the "Okies" of the Great Depression; and the millions of vacationers who took to the highway in their streamlined automobiles and found adventure on the open road from the late 1940s to the 1970s.

For too long, women have been told that we are terrible at being friends, that we can't help being cruel or competitive, or that we inevitably abandon each other for romantic partners. But we are rejecting those stereotypes and reclaiming the power of female friendship. In Text Me When You Get Home, journalist Kayleen Schaefer interviews more than 100 women about their BFFs, soul mates, girl gangs, and queens while tracing this cultural shift through the lens of pop culture.

The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal - the biggest international corruption case of recent years, spearheaded by US investigators, involving dozens of countries, and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including its biggest event, the World Cup.

From novels and short stories to television and film, popular media has made a cottage industry of predicting that the end of the world will be caused by particle accelerators. Rather than allay such fears, public pronouncements by particle scientists themselves often unwittingly fan the flames of hysteria. This audiobook surveys media depictions of particle accelerator physics and the perceived dangers these experiments pose.

Just as we can write and install apps in our electronic devices, we can construct “mindapps” and install them in our brain-mind complex, and as just as digital apps add capabilities to our devices, mindapps can expand our mental powers and creative abilities, allowing us to intentionally redesign our minds. Using psychedelics as the prime example, Thomas B. Roberts explores the many different kinds of mindapps, including meditation, other psychoactive plants and chemicals, sensory overload and deprivation, biofeedback and neurofeedback, hypnosis and suggestion, and more.

In their third and final screen teaming, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly starred together in the MGM musical Summer Stock. In C'mon, Get Happy, authors David Fantle and Tom Johnson present a comprehensive study of this 1950 motion picture. The production coincided at a critical point in the careers of Kelly and an emotionally spent Garland. Kelly, who starred in An American in Paris just one year later, was at the peak of his abilities.

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of 34. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for, literally, days. If you are reading this copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know.

She's everywhere once you start looking for her: the trainwreck. She's Britney Spears shaving her head, Whitney Houston saying, "crack is whack," and Amy Winehouse dying in front of millions. But the trainwreck is also as old (and as meaningful) as feminism itself.

When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. Instead, he found a homicide, several student deaths, and millions of dollars circulating around the Deep South. He also opened up an elite world hidden to outsiders. Behind the pop culture cliches of “Greek life” lies one of the major breeding grounds of American power: 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but four presidents since 1825 have been fraternity members.

For an actor who’s been in so many mega-hits and equally mega misses, it can be tough to track Keanu Reeves's accomplishments. But true fans know that Keanu is so much more than his Bill and Ted persona, both onscreen and off. During his long career - over 30 years, although you wouldn’t know it from his immortal looks - he has constantly subverted Hollywood stereotypes and expectations. He's the type to start his own publishing company, reread Hamlet, eat lunch alone in the park while looking very sad, and give away his salary to the film crew.

When a group of short construction workers begins building a school playground, Lisa begins to suspect that they are really Christmas elves, but Melody and Howie think Lisa has an overactive imagination.

For all of human history, we have made permanent marks on our skin—for multifarious, fascinating, reasons. The oldest preserved tattooed skin that survives is European: Ötzi, the famous ‘Iceman’ mummy, whose body is covered in small tattoo marks, allows us a brief glimpse into the pre-history of the practice. Since then, people in every corner of the world have decided to tattoo themselves, and countless cultures have performed this ancient artistic practice. But for the most part, these fascinating histories remain stubbornly untold.

Over 50 years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture. Some 20 years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself. Here, 33 writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz’s deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture.

One of the most celebrated and important authors of the 20th century, Doris Lessing was awarded a Nobel Prize for the ‘visionary power’ of her fiction, which spans a variety of genres and explores themes such as racism, feminism and social and political upheaval. This collection includes the radio productions of three of her acclaimed novels and four short stories, as well as a fascinating discussion of her life and work.

Journalist Debbie Nathan reveals the true story behind the famous case of Sybil, the woman with sixteen different personalities.

In his best-selling How to Be Right, James provided an invigorating guide to how to talk to people with bad opinions. And yet the question he always gets asked is: 'if you're so sure about everything, haven't you ever changed your mind?' In an age of us vs them, tribal loyalties and bitter divisions, the ability to change our minds may be the most important power we have. In this intimate, personal new book, James' focus shifts from talking to other people to how you talk to yourself about what you really think.

Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most-beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon. Over the last 50 years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment.

What If This Were Enough? is a mantra and a clarion call. In its chapters--many of them original to the book, others expanded from their initial publication--Havrilesky takes on those cultural forces that shape us. We've convinced ourselves, she says, that salvation can be delivered only in the form of new products, new technologies, new lifestyles.

Генри Дженкинс, один из наиболее уважаемых американских аналитиков в области СМИ, в своей ключевой работе улавливает ту точку невозврата, находящуюся на границе двух миров, и пророчески определяет элементы, находящиеся у истока современной эпохи.