Popular Culture

From the New York Times best-selling author of Those Guys Have All the Fun comes Tinderbox, the unvarnished, comprehensive, and astonishing history of HBO, told for the first time through the disruptors who led its epic rise to prestige....

A timely investigation into the new "safety culture" on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy.... 

A deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity from Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time....

Comedian, activist, and hugely popular culture blogger at AwesomelyLuvvie.com Luvvie Ajayi serves up necessary advice for the masses in this hilarious book of essays....

For the first time ever - a comprehensive biography of one of the 20th century’s most innovative creative artists: the incomparable, irreplaceable Jim Henson....

"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat....

Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing....

Leaders can motivate and inspire through communications. The following is a collection of the best motivational speeches, inspirational words, sure to motivate you when you need it most by the greatest leaders of our time....

In this exceptional cultural history, Ronald Brownstein tells the kaleidoscopic story of one monumental year that marked the city of Los Angeles’ creative peak, a glittering moment when popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become....

Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making....

Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Listen to find out more....

From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film....

From the best-selling author of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels comes the next definitive, behind-the-scenes account of the video game industry: how some of the past decade's most renowned studios fell apart - and the stories, both triumphant and tragic, of what happened next....

Called "America's wisest and most respected authority on psychedelics and their use", James Fadiman has been involved with psychedelic research since the 1960s....

For over 40 years, Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan has inspired audiences to expand their world view beyond traditional Western forms....

First published in 1966, Hell’s Angels is Thompson’s up-close and personal look at the infamous motorcycle gang during the time when its moniker was most feared....

The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, as Douglas Wolk notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages to date, and still growing.... 

Tom Wolfe's classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an unflinching portrait of Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, LSD, and the 1960s, ushered in an era of New Journalism and defined a generation....

By the end of on average day in the early 21st century, human beings searching the Internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data....

In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years....

Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet....

After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes....

In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society....

Levitt and Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first....

An irreverent and charming essay collection about the joys of low pop culture and bad taste, exploring coming of age in the 2000s in the age of Hot Topic, Creed, and frosted lip gloss - from the James Beard Award-nominated writer of the Catapult column "Store-Bought Is Fine”....

We’ve pursued and achieved the modern dream of defining ourselves - but at what cost? The New York Post op-ed editor makes a compelling case for seeking the inherited traditions and ideals that give our lives meaning....

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: This is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt....

One of the most admired nonfiction writers of our time retells the story of one truly fabulous year in the life of his native country....

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness....

In "elegant, finely honed prose" ( The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life....

The exclusive story of HBO’s key creators, executives, actors, and directors gives listeners an unprecedented peek behind the curtain at the founding and triumph of the first “pay-channel” that brought America The Sopranos, Sex and the City, The Wire, Succession, and countless groundbreaking, culture-shifting shows. James Andrew Miller collects insider accounts of the humble beginnings, devastating missteps, controversial business decisions, and, of course, backstage drama and celebrity gossip from the set. 

Bloody Crossroads 2020 takes a deep dive into the role that mass-appeal movies, television, videos, and music played in America's political culture in the year of Donald Trump's failed reelection campaign. The book also explores the impact of entertainment celebrities in communications, fundraising, and campaigning to support the election of Joe Biden.

Culture will keep you fit and healthy. Culture will bring communities together. Culture will improve your education. This is the message from governments and arts organisations across the country; however, this book explains why we need to be cautious about culture. Offering a powerful call to transform the cultural and creative industries, Culture Is Bad for You examines the intersections between race, class, and gender in the mechanisms of exclusion in cultural occupations.

Traditional media is over. The internet reigns. And in the attention economy, influencers are royalty. But who are they...and how do you become one? Break the Internet takes a deep dive into the influencer industry, tracing its evolution from blogging and legacy social media such as Tumblr to today’s world in which YouTube, Instagram and TikTok dominate. Surveying the new media landscape that the rise of online celebrity has created, it is an insider account of a trend which is set to dominate our future

Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age 21, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.

Neoliberalism took shape in the 1930s and 1940s as a transnational political philosophy and system of economic, political, and cultural relations. As neoliberal ideas gained political currency in the 1960s and 1970s, reactionary cultural turn catalyzed their ascension. The cinema, music, magazine culture, and current events discourse of the 1970s provided the space of negotiation permitting these ideas to take hold and be challenged.

No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and vilified than the 1960s. For some it was a time when music, fashion and drugs enabled young people to express their individuality and freedom, their hopes and dreams of a different, perhaps better, world. For others, the decade marked the advent of the permissive society, with its undermining of authority, family values and common decency. At the heart of this continuing controversy is sex.

Tacky is about the power of pop culture - like any art - to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These 14 essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love - snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu - into kinder and sharper perspective.