Popular Science

In The Genius of Judy, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, Blume explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure.

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.

It’s everywhere, from commercials to New York Times best-sellers to college (and even younger) classrooms. In fact, pornography has become such a part of normal life in 21st century America that many teens and twenty-somethings have had no more important influence. They are the porn generation, where life’s expectations come from Mouseketeer pop tarts, Victoria’s Secret, internet titillation, and condom-flogging sex education.

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.

New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and actor Patton Oswalt shares his entertaining memoir about coming of age as a performer and writer in the late '90s while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakeable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol, or sex. It was film.

Thanks to his expert knowledge of the whole alphabet, Dominic Knight is uniquely qualified to write an A to Z of the things that deeply irritate him, and should irritate everybody. Bullfighting, unicorns, homeopathy, fluffy dice chillout music, vapes and multilevel marketing are among the entries in this delightful and definitive list of atrocities, which proves beyond a doubt that alongside the magnificent march of progress, there has been a much funnier race to the bottom.

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all.

Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Love and Let Die is the story of a clash between working class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond, and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end.

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

Before there was Steve Jobs, there was Norman Bel Geddes. A ninth-grade dropout who found himself at the center of the worlds of industry, advertising, theater, and even gaming, Bel Geddes designed everything from the first all-weather stadium to Manhattan's most exclusive nightclub to Futurama, the prescient 1939 exhibit that envisioned how America would look in the not-too-distant 1960s.

Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora in the 20th century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C. L. R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the transformative potential of radical feminism, and of the 400-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.

In The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch, TV and pop culture writer Kimberly Potts will draw upon her deep knowledge of and appreciation for The Brady Bunch and television and pop culture history, as well as her contacts, connections, and experience, to provide an industry insider narrative of The Brady Bunch. With fresh interviews, The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch will examine the show's lasting effects on its audience and take listeners behind the scenes and into the lives of our most beloved characters.

Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”, country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.

Through the stories of kids and parents in the middle school trenches, a New York Times best-selling author reveals why these years are so painful, how parents unwittingly make them worse, and what we all need to do to grow up.

Welcome to the world of women's gymnastics and figure skating. From starvation diets and debilitating injuries to the brutal tactics of tyrannical gymnastics guru Bela Károlyi, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes portrays the horrors endured by girls at the hands of their coaches and sometimes their own families - and is now updated with a new introduction and foreword that address the sexual abuse scandal perpetrated by USA Gymnastics national team doctor, Larry Nassar.

Informative, entertaining, and upbeat, this audiobook continues Grazier and Cass’ exploration of how technology, science, and scientists are portrayed in Hollywood productions. Both big and small-screen productions are featured and their science content illuminated - first by the authors and subsequently by a range of experts from science and the film world. Starring roles in this volume are played by, among other things, computers (human and mechanical), artificial intelligences, robots, and spacecraft.

After 20 years of private obstetrics and gynecological practice, there’s nothing Dr. Jackie Walters hasn’t seen. And now, in her new audiobook, the widely-adored OB-GYN invites you to put your feet in the stirrups and investigate. Whether she’s covering libido, contraceptives, labiaplasty, or fertility, Dr. Jackie educates listeners with her characteristic grace and pragmatism. Both funny and informative, she brings you on a quest through the female reproductive system - answering all the burning (and itching, and smelling...) questions you’ve always been afraid to ask.

In this deep exploration of “occulture” - the liminal space where art and magic meet - Carl Abrahamsson reveals the integral role played by magic and occultism in the development of culture throughout history, as well as their relevance to the continuing survival of art and creativity. Blending magical history and esoteric philosophy with his more than 30 years’ experience in occult movements, Abrahamsson examines the phenomena and people who have been seminal in modern esoteric developments.

The night Brad Warner learns that his childhood friend Marky has died, Warner is about to speak to a group of Zen students in Hamburg, Germany. It’s the last thing he feels like doing. What he wants to do instead is tell his friend everything he never said, to explain Zen and what he does for a living and why he spends his time “Sitting. Sitting. Sitting. Meditating my life away as it all passes by. Lighting candles and incense. Bowing to nothing.” So, as he continues his teaching tour through Europe, he writes to his friend all the things he wishes he had said.