Popular category: 5638 books
America's Disaster Culture
The Production of Natural Disasters in Literature and Pop Culture
Language: English
Release Date: October 19, 2017
Are we inside the era of disasters or are we merely inundated by mediated accounts of events categorized as catastrophic? America's Disaster Culture offers answers to this question and a critical theory surrounding the culture of "natural†? disasters in American consumerism, literature, media,...
One With the Tiger
Sublime and Violent Encounters Between Humans and Animals
Language: English
Release Date: October 17, 2016
On September 21, 2012, twenty-five year old David Villalobos purchased a pass for the Bronx Zoo and a ticket for a ride on the Bengali Express Monorail. Biding his time, he waited until the monorail was just near the enclosure of a four hundred pound Siberian tiger named Bashuta before leaping into it....
The Nazi Card
Nazi Comparisons at the Beginning of the Cold War
Language: English
Release Date: January 25, 2017
The Cold War began almost immediately after the end of World War II and the defeat of the Nazis in Europe. As images of the Nazis’ atrocities became part of American culture’s common store, the evil of their old enemy, beyond the Nazis as a wartime opponent, became increasingly important. As America...
Analyzing Christmas in Film
Santa to the Supernatural
Language: English
Release Date: December 6, 2017
Film plays a vital role in the celebration of Christmas. For decades, it has taught audiences about what the celebration of the season looks like – from the decorations to the costumes and to the expected snowy weather – as well as mirrors our own festivities back to us. Films like It’s a Wonderful...
Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic
Fifty-Four Neglected Authors, Actors, Artists and Others
Language: English
Release Date: October 24, 2016
In recent years horror and gothic themes have penetrated mainstream popular culture in a manner unseen since the horror boom of the 1970s. Primetime television viewers who before might not have shown interest in such late-night fare now happily settle down after dinner to watch zombie or serial killer...
Talking Trash
The Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows
Language: English
Release Date: January 1, 2003
When The Phil Donahue Show topped the ratings in 1979, it ushered in a new era in daytime television. Mixing controversial social issues, light topics, and audience participation, it created a new genre, one that is still flourishing, despite being harshly criticized, over two decades later. Now,...
Genres of Doubt
Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith
Language: English
Release Date: April 26, 2017
Nineteenth-century Britain gave birth to the fantasy novel and the science fiction novel—two of today’s most popular genres. During the same period, the traditional Christian beliefs that had underpinned British society for centuries faced new challenges as geological discoveries, the writings...
by Jonathan Goldman
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2011
The phenomenon of celebrity burst upon the world scene about a century ago, as movies and modern media brought exceptional, larger-than-life personalities before the masses. During the same era, modernist authors were creating works that defined high culture in our society and set aesthetics apart...
by Michael J. Blouin
Language: English
Release Date: May 10, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: May 10, 2018
Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 tracks the transformation of liberal thought in the contemporary United States through the unique lens of the popular paperback. The book focuses on cultural shifts as they appear in works written by some of the most widely-read...
Living with the Living Dead
The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2017
When humankind faces what it perceives as a threat to its very existence, a macabre thing happens in art, literature, and culture: corpses begin to stand up and walk around. The dead walked in the fourteenth century, when the Black Death and other catastrophes roiled Europe. They walked in images...
by Douglas Wolk
Language: English
Release Date: August 10, 2004
Language: English
Release Date: August 10, 2004
In this remarkable book, Douglas Wolk brings to life an October evening in 1962, at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem – an evening at the height of Cold War tensions. In great detail, Wolk pieces together what took place (and what was recorded) that night, and illustrates beautifully the enduring power of one of James Brown's – and popular music's – defining moments: Live at the Apollo.
Gangland: The Revised Edition
Cultural elites and the new generationalism
Language: English
Release Date: July 1, 1999
Panics over the culture wars, political correctness and victim feminism, rap music, ecstasy and body piercings . . . our cultural landscape is currently peppered with examples of a desperately backward-looking stasis and a fearful hanging-on.
In Gangland Mark Davis analyses the dated ideals...
Nerds
How Dorks, Dweebs, Techies, and Trekkies Can Save America and Why They Might Be Our Last Hope
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2011
A lively, thought-provoking book that zeros in on the timely issue of how anti-intellectualism is bad for our children and even worse for America.
Why are our children so terrified to be called "nerds"? And what is the cost of this rising tide of anti-intellectualism to both our children and...
Digital Shift
The Cultural Logic of Punctuation
Language: English
Release Date: March 15, 2015
Emoticons matter. Equal signs do, too. This book takes them seriously and shows how and why they matter. Digital Shift explores the increasingly ubiquitous presence of punctuation and typographical marks in our lives⎯using them as reading lenses to consider a broad range of textual objects and practices...