Showing titles in Popular Culture

Nothing "goes viral". If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's crowded media environment, you're missing the real story. Each blockbuster has a secret history - of power, influence, dark broadcasters, and passionate cults that turn some new products into cultural phenomena. In his groundbreaking investigation, Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson uncovers the hidden psychology of why we like what we like.

Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and cofounder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture—and society—is finally ready to embrace complicated women.

Stephen Fry presents this intriguing programme charting the history of knowledge, how technology changes our relationship with it, and how we know what we knowKnowledge. The Google generation thinks it doesn’t need to carry much of it around in its head any more. Much has already been written about the internet changing the way we think and learn. But is knowledge less valuable than it used to be?

Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

Hairstyles of the Damned is an honest and affectionate depiction of wanting to belong, but never quite belonging. Joe Menos pitch-perfect prose illuminates the tumultuous realities of American adolescence, the disintegration of the modern family, and the way a mix-tape can change a persons life. Following the riotous exploits of Brian, a Catholic school malcontent, and his best friend Gretchen, a punk rock girl fond of brawling, this work pursues what it means to develop your own identity.

For most of us, fond memories of the Christmas season are inseparable from television's holiday presentations. The world loves everything from iconic cartoons like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas to the groundbreaking Julia sitcom segment, "I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas," Christmas in Rockefeller Center, and the 1992 television-remake of Christmas in Connecticut directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen embraces it all, offering a tinsel-decked traipse down memory lane.

Integrating Geek Culture into Therapeutic Practice: The Clinician's Guide to Geek Therapy, the 2nd Edition, is a comprehensive compendium of how Geek Therapy clinicians and scholars currently use a variety of games, media artifacts, and other geek culture items in therapeutic context and intervention. Even more important, the authors within this book are currently at the forefront of their research fields and are accordingly considered experts within the growing field of Geek Therapy clinical practice.

In a world of social media and 24/7 news, screen addiction is a very real problem...but with the right guidance, you can escape its clutches and reclaim your life. Up to 47 percent of US citizens admit to being addicted to their cell phones. Perhaps you’ve even said it of yourself, laughing it off as a light addiction—like saying you’re addicted to Pringles or your favorite song.

In America, in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris, revolutionary ideas fomenting since the late 1950s reached boiling point, culminating in a year in which the transient pop moment burst forth. Exploring the canonical figures, from The Beatles and Boty to Warhol and Reagan, 1966 delves deep into the social and cultural heart of the decade through masterfully compiled archival primary sources.

Welcome to celebrity culture in the early aughts: the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were willing to do anything to get the shot. It was a time when the Internet was still the Wild West, and when slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and revenge porn were all considered perfectly legitimate. Celebrity was seen as a commodity to be consumed, and for the famous women of this era, they were never as popular—or as vulnerable—as when they were in crisis.

An unauthorized look at the philosophical issues raised by popular television show House. House was one of the top three television dramas on the air, pulling in more than 19 million viewers for each episode. This latest book in the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series takes a deeper look at the characters and issues raised in this Emmy Award-winning medical drama, offering entertaining answers to the fascinating ethical questions viewers have about Dr. Gregory House and his medical team.

When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.

Are you happy? Right now? Happy enough? As happy as everyone else? Could you be happier if you tried harder? After she packed up her British worldview (that most things were basically rubbish) and moved to America, journalist and documentary filmmaker Ruth Whippman found herself increasingly perplexed by the American obsession with one topic above all others: happiness. The subject came up everywhere: at the playground swings, at the meat counter in the supermarket, and even at the gynecologist.

Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! In this well-researched and captivating narrative, veteran food writer Nina Teicholz proves how everything we've been told about fat is wrong. For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of "bad" saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat "heart healthy" fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation's health has declined. What is going on?

Furry fandom is a recent phenomenon, but anthropomorphism is an instinct hard-wired into the human mind: the desire to see animals on a more equal footing with people. It’s existed since the beginning of time in prehistoric cave paintings, ancient gods, and tribal rituals. It lives on today - not just in the sports mascots and cartoon characters we see everywhere, but in stage plays, art galleries, serious literature, performance art, and among furry fans who bring their make-believe characters to life.

Since Night of the Living Dead, zombies have been a frightening fixture on the pop-culture landscape, lumbering after hapless humans, slurping up brains and veins and whatever warm, fleshy matter they can clench in their rotting limbs. But what if they were real? What would happen if, tomorrow, corpses across the nation began springing up out of their graves and terrorizing the living? Employing hard science and solid police work - not to mention jaw-dropping (literally!) humor - Zombie CSU is the only guide available to staying alive and avoiding the undead.

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. The Marvel story is a gigantic mountain smack in the middle of contemporary culture. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. Everyone recognizes its protagonists: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men. Eighteen of the hundred highest-grossing movies of all time are based on parts of it. Yet not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing.

Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren't always the saints that we make them out to be. Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups.

Inspired by the groundbreaking A History of the World in 100 Objects, this book draws on the unique collections of The Strong museum in Rochester, New York, to chronicle the evolution of video games, from Pong to first-person shooters, told through the stories of dozens of objects essential to the field’s creation and development. Drawing on the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s unmatched collection of video game artifacts, this fascinating history offers an expansive look at the development of one of the most popular and influential activities of the modern world: video gaming.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home.