Popular Culture History

Who are you? It’s the most fundamental of human questions. Are you the type of person who tilts at windmills, or the one who prefers to view them from the comfort of an air-conditioned motorcoach? Our personalities are endlessly fascinating—not just to ourselves but also to our spouses, our parents, our children, our co-workers, our neighbors. As a highly social species, humans have to navigate among an astonishing variety of personalities.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of All That Remains by Professor Sue Black, read by the author. Sue Black confronts death every day. As Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab; at burial sites; at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment; and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All That Remains, she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed and what her work has taught her.

Florence Maybrick was the first American woman to be sentenced to death in England - for murdering her husband, a crime she almost certainly didn't commit. Her 1889 trial was presided over by an openly misogynist judge who was later declared incompetent and died in an asylum. Hours before she was to be hanged, Queen Victoria reluctantly commuted her sentence to life in prison. In her opinion, a woman who would commit adultery, as Maybrick had admitted, would also kill her husband. Her children were taken from her; she never saw them again. Her mother worked for years to clear her name.

A dispetto delle tante divisioni, storiche e attuali, c'è qualcosa che ci accomuna come italiani. Una serie di tratti che ci rendono immediatamente riconoscibili in qualsiasi luogo del mondo; nel male, ma anche nel bene. Corrado Augias ci accompagna in un viaggio alla scoperta di ciò che definisce il nostro carattere nazionale. Un viaggio particolare, che procede nello spazio e nel tempo, dall'attualità alla ricostruzione storica, passando per il racconto biografico.

What connects Paleolithic bone flutes to the invention of computer software? Or the Murex sea snail to the death of the great American city? How does the bag of crisps you hold in your hand help tell the story of humanity itself? In his brilliant new work on the history of innovation, international best-seller Steven Johnson argues that the pursuit of novelty and wonder has always been a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change.

Why do some leap ahead while others fall behind in today's chaotic, hyperconnected world? In New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront the biggest stories of our age - the rise of megaplatforms like Facebook and Uber; the out-of-nowhere rise of Trump and Corbyn - and reveal what's really behind them: the rise of New Power. For most of human history, the rules of power were clear. To get ahead or get things done, you mastered 'old power', which is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven....

At some point in the 1980s we gave up on the future. Before then, we imagined wonderful days to come, free from disease, work and want, in television series like Star Trek or events such as the 1939 Futurama World Fair. When we look ahead now, we tell dystopian stories of environmental collapse, zombie plagues and the end of civilisation. If it is true that we have to imagine the future before we build it, then this is deeply worrying.

Why is the athlete so important to us? Few public figures can dominate the public imagination with such power and authority. Drawing from art, literature, politics, and history, Something like the Gods explores the powerful grip the athlete has always held on the Western imagination. Amidon examines the archetype of the competitor as it evolved from antiquity to the present day, from athlete-warriors such as Achilles and Ulysses to global media icons like Ali, Jordan, and Tiger Woods.

Más que un libro, este objeto es un carnaval de cincuenta estaciones que desfila tras las bambalinas de la cultura mexicana. En él participan Tin Tan y Pita Amor, María Félix y Monsiváis, Piporro y Tongolele, Nahui Olin y Jorge Ibargüengoitia, los beats y Marilyn Monroe, Vitola y José Revueltas. Entre muchos, muchos otros. Mientras pasan, nos van contando de sus vicios, supersticiones, sus pleitos y apodos, los cuadrángulos amorosos que formaron y los cabarés que visitaron.

Americans, for all our talk of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, obsessively seek advice on matters large and small. Perhaps precisely because we believe in bettering ourselves and our circumstances in life, we ask for guidance constantly. And this has been true since our nation's earliest days: From the colonial era on, there have always been people eager to step up and offer advice, some of it lousy, some of it thoughtful, but all of it read and debated by generations of Americans.

In his 1967 megahit "San Francisco," Scott McKenzie sang of "people in motion" coming from all across the country to San Francisco, the white-hot center of rock music and anti-war protests. At the same time, another large group of young Americans was also in motion, less eagerly, heading for the jungles of Vietnam.

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.

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."

The television industry is changing, and with it, the small screen's potential to engage in debate and present valuable representations of American history. Founded in 1972, HBO has been at the forefront of these changes, leading the way for many network, cable, and streaming services into the "post-network" era. Despite this, most scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing historical feature films and documentary films, leaving TV and the long-form drama hungry for coverage. Rebecca Weeks fills the gap in this area and defends the historiographic power of long-form dramas.

The 1960s were a time of huge transformation, sustained and amplified by the music of that era: Rock and Roll. During the 19th and 20th centuries visionary and esoteric spiritual traditions influenced first literature, then film. In the 1960s they entered the realm of popular music, catalyzing the ecstatic experiences that empowered a generation. Exploring how 1960s rock and roll music became a school of visionary art, Christopher Hill shows how music raised consciousness on both the individual and collective levels to bring about a transformation of the planet.

How is it that comic books - the once-reviled form of lowbrow popular culture - are now the rage for Hollywood blockbusters, the basis for best-selling video games, and the inspiration for literary graphic novels? In Demanding Respect, Paul Lopes immerses himself in the discourse and practices of this art and subculture to provide a social history of the American comic book over the last 75 years.

The ticking bomb scenario is a thought experiment designed to demonstrate that torture can be justified in emergency conditions. If there was a bomb hidden somewhere in a major city, would it be justified to torture a captured informant in order to obtain the critical information that could prevent a devastating terrorist attack? In How to Justify Torture, cultural critic Alex Adams examines this thought experiment in depth by exploring the wide range of cultural productions. By critiquing the argument step-by-step, this audiobook reminds us why torture can never be justified.

La contracultura en México se desplaza entre varios géneros, cubriendo los grandes movimientos y las manifestaciones contraculturales más importantes que ha tenido nuestro país, tales como los pachucos, los existencialistas, las pandillas juveniles o el rockanroll. En esta obra alucinante, el autor también da cuenta de las expresiones juveniles que han incidido en la música, la literatura, el teatro, el cine, la gráfica, la televisión y las publicaciones.

Throughout his career, Johnny Cash was depicted - and depicted himself - as a walking contradiction: social protestor and establishment patriot, drugged wildman and devout Christian crusader, rebel outlaw hillbilly thug and elder statesman. Leigh H. Edwards explores the allure of this paradoxical image and its cultural significance. She argues that Cash embodied irresolvable contradictions of American identity that reflect foundational issues in the American experience.

At once a requisite collector's guide and a pursuit of meaning within storytelling, The Essential Guide to Collecting Calvin and Hobbes also offers a critical appraisal of Bill Watterson, as well as a deep examination of the most obscure Calvin and Hobbes relic, the textbook Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes: "a miraculous artifact unlike any other collectible in the world."