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SuperFreakonomics
Levitt, Steven D.
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.99 Our Price: $8.49
What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? What's the best way to catch a terrorist? Can a sex change boost your salary? The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the "freakquel" is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department store Santa? Who adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Did TV cause a rise in crime? Can eating kangaroo meat save the planet? Whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically, Levitt and Dubner show the world for what it really is-good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, superfreaky.
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger
Chemaly, Soraya
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Our Price: $6.09
As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society.In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power - one we can no longer abide.
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride
Elwes, Cary
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $7.89
From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes the New York Times bestselling account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film filled with never-before-told stories, exclusive photographs, and interviews with costars Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Mandy Patinkin, as well as author and screenwriter William Goldman, producer Norman Lear, and director Rob Reiner.
Happy Little Accidents: The Wit & Wisdom of Bob Ross
Ross, Bob
(Hardcover)
List Price: $15.00 Our Price: $6.59
A tribute to Bob Ross-the soft-spoken artist known for painting happy clouds, mountains, and trees-Happy Little Accidents culls his most wise and witty words into one delightful package. Ross has captivated us for years with the magic that takes place on his canvas in twenty-six television minutes-all while dispensing little branches of wisdom. His style and encouraging words are a form of therapy for the weary, but with Bob it is always about more than painting. There is a hidden depth within his easy chatter, another layer to everything he says. When he talks about painting, he's using it as a metaphor for life!Happy Little Accidents: The Wit and Wisdom of Bob Ross opens with an introduction and brief biography of Ross, followed by a collection of Ross's greatest quotes and most majestic works of art.Relax. Unwind. Be inspired.
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Our Price: $11.19
Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our world - provided we ask the right questions.By the end of an average day in the early twenty-first century, human beings searching the internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information - unprecedented in history - can tell us a great deal about who we are - the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential - revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health - both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.
Movies (And Other Things)
Serrano, Shea
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Our Price: $9.19
Movies (And Other Things) is a book about, quite frankly, movies (and other things).One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day?Another of the chapters, for a second example, answers what other high school movie characters would be in Regina George's circle of friends if we opened up the Mean Girls universe to include other movies (Johnny Lawrence is temporarily in, Claire from The Breakfast Club is in, Ferris Bueller is out, Isis from Bring It On is out...). Another of the chapters, for a third example, creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all. And another of the chapters, for a final example, is actually a triple chapter that serves as an NBA-style draft of the very best and most memorable moments in gangster movies.Many, many things happen in Movies (And Other Things), some of which funny, others of which are sad, a few of which are insightful, and all of which are handled with the type of care and dedication to the smallest details and pockets of pop culture that only a book by Shea Serrano can provide.
Humongous Book of Cartooning
Hart, Christopher
(Softcover)
List Price: $21.99 Our Price: $10.39
This latest cartoon title from Chris Hart, the world's bestselling author of drawing and cartooning books, packs a wallop. It's the cartooning book that has it all: cartoon people, animals, retro-style "toons'", funny robots (no one has ever done cartoon robots in a how-to book before, and movies like "Wall-E" and "Robots" were smash hits and prove their appeal), fantasy characters and even sections on cartoon costumes, character design, and cartoon backgrounds and composition. The Humongous Book of Cartooning is humongous, not only because it's so big, but also because it includes a huge amount of original eye-catching characters and copious visual "side hints" that Chris is famous for. There is more actual instruction in this book than in any other of Chris' cartooning titles. In short, if you want to know how to draw cartoons, Chris Hart's Humongous Book of Cartooning is for you.
Esther the Wonder Pig: Changing the World One Heart at a Time
Crane, Caprice
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $3.83
In the summer of 2012, Steve Jenkins was contacted by an old friend about adopting a micro piglet. Though he knew his partner Derek wouldn't be enthusiastic, he agreed to take the adorable little pig anyway, thinking he could care for her himself. Little did he know, that decision would change his and Derek's lives forever. It turned out there was nothing "micro" about Esther, and Steve and Derek had actually signed on to raise a full-sized commercial pig. Within three years, Tiny Esther grew to a whopping 600 pounds. After some real growing pains and a lot of pig-sized messes, it became clear that Esther needed much more space, so Steve and Derek made another life-changing decision: they bought a farm and opened the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary, where they could care for Esther and other animals in need. Funny, heartwarming, and utterly charming, ESTHER THE WONDER PIG follows Steve and Derek's adventure--from reluctant pig parents to farm-owning advocates for animals.
The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations
Hachette
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Our Price: $14.19
This mysterious illustrated tie-in to Netflix's award-winning A Series of Unfortunate Events--featuring an introduction by Count Olaf's legal representative, Neil Patrick Harris--shares insider secrets about the Baudelaire family and the making of the show.In this collector's companion you will discover never-before-seen photographs, never-before-told stories, and never-before, revealed secrets spanning all three seasons of the hilariously twisted, critically acclaimed hit series. You will encounter original concept art, annotated script excerpts, and interviews with the creative team and all-star cast, as well as glossaries, recipes, lyric sheets, hidden Easter eggs, shocking backstories, and suspicious pages from the titular tome, unredacted, and revealed here for the first time.
Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life
Gino, Francesca
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Our Price: $5.59
Do you want to follow a script — or write your own story? Award-winning Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino shows us why the most successful among us break the rules, and how rebellion brings joy and meaning into our lives.Rebels have a bad reputation. We think of them as troublemakers, outcasts, contrarians: those colleagues, friends, and family members who complicate seemingly straightforward decisions, create chaos, and disagree when everyone else is in agreement. But in truth, rebels are also those among us who change the world for the better with their unconventional outlooks. Instead of clinging to what is safe and familiar, and falling back on routines and tradition, rebels defy the status quo. They are masters of innovation and reinvention, and they have a lot to teach us.Francesca Gino, a behavioral scientist and professor at Harvard Business School, has spent more than a decade studying rebels at organizations around the world, from high-end boutiques in Italy’s fashion capital, to the World’s Best Restaurant, to a thriving fast food chain, to an award-winning computer animation studio. In her work, she has identified leaders and employees who exemplify “rebel talent,” and whose examples we can all learn to embrace.Gino argues that the future belongs to the rebel — and that there’s a rebel in each of us. We live in turbulent times, when competition is fierce, reputations are easily tarnished on social media, and the world is more divided than ever before. In this cutthroat environment, cultivating rebel talent is what allows businesses to evolve and to prosper. And rebellion has an added benefit beyond the workplace: it leads to a more vital, engaged, and fulfilling life.Whether you want to inspire others to action, build a business, or build more meaningful relationships, Rebel Talent will show you how to succeed — by breaking all the rules.
The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll
Port, Ian S.
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Our Price: $6.59
“A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history” (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound - Leo Fender and Les Paul - and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock ’n’ roll - and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul - whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought - to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s - including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton - adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History
Klastorin, Michael
(Hardcover)
List Price: $50.00 Our Price: $3.49
Celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind with this fully authorized behind-the-scenes book exploring the creation, production, and legacy of this iconic film.
Little Book Of Lost Words
Gillard, Joe
(Hardcover)
List Price: $14.99 Our Price: $6.59
The founder of History Hustle presents a handy guide for expressing yourself with history's best words.This collection features scores of unique words from history that deal with surprisingly modern issues like sleeping in and procrastination--proving that some things never change! The Little Book of Lost Words presents each term that's ready to be brought back into modern-day use, complete with definition, hilarious sample sentence, and cheeky historical art. You'll learn new words for the cozy room where you like to Netflix and chill (snuggery), for a dishonest politician (snollygoster), and for a young person who sleeps through the day and doesn't work (dewdropper). Want to know what a fizgig or groke is? Read this book!
The World According to Star Wars (Revised and Updated)
Sunstein, Cass R.
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $7.69
In this fun, erudite, and moving book, Cass R. Sunstein explores the lessons of Star Wars as they relate to childhood, fathers, the Dark Side, rebellion, and redemption, along with constitutional law, economics, and political uprisings. Sunstein tells the story of the films' wildly unanticipated success and what it has to say about why some things succeed while others fail. The World According to Star Wars shines a bright new light on the most beloved story of our time.
Point of View
Goodman, Tonne
(Hardcover)
List Price: $75.00 Our Price: $29.19
Throughout her illustrious career, Tonne Goodman has made the famous stylish and the stylish famous. The Vogue fashion director has not only shaped the way women dress and see themselves, but she has also created a nexus in which the worlds of celebrity and style continually collide. Now, in Point of View, Goodman’s life and career are explored for the first time. Organized chronologically, this book charts Goodman’s career from her modeling days, to her freelance fashion reportage, to her editorial and advertising work, through to her reign at Vogue. The editor’s recollections of some of the world’s greatest photographers, models, celebrities, and designers of our time are illustrated throughout, with behind-the-scenes fashion photos and shots of Goodman’s personal life.
90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality
Yarrow, Allison
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.99 Our Price: $6.09
To understand how we got here, we have to rewind the VHS tape. 90s Bitch tells the real story of women and girls in the 1990s, exploring how they were maligned by the media, vilified by popular culture, and objectified in the marketplace. Trailblazing women like Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, Marcia Clark, and Roseanne Barr were undermined. Newsmakers like Monica Lewinsky, Tonya Harding, and Lorena Bobbitt were shamed and misunderstood. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle reinforced society's deeply entrenched sexism. Meanwhile, marketers hijacked feminism and poisoned girlhood for a generation of young women.Today, there are echoes of 90s “bitchification” nearly everywhere we look. To understand why, we must revisit and interrogate the 1990s—a decade in which female empowerment was twisted into objectification, exploitation, and subjugation.Yarrow’s thoughtful, juicy, and timely examination is a must-read for anyone trying to understand 21st century sexism and end it for the next generation.
The Big Redhead Book: Inside the Secret Society of Red Hair
La Rosa, Erin
(Hardcover)
List Price: $22.99 Our Price: $9.89
The Big Redhead Book is an inside look into one of the most elite societies in the world - the real two percent. Well, you know, the two percent of the world's population who are natural redheads, at least. This book has equal parts pop culture, ginger facts, and humorous stories. It's loaded with everything you'd ever want to know about us reds - how we're scientifically different from the norms (non-redheads), how we've been stereotyped in pop culture, and the dos and don'ts of having a red in your life, among other things!Whether you are a redhead, know a redhead, or are just an enthusiast, this book explores the realities, the myths, and where red hair actually originated (It's not Ireland). Author Erin LaRosa also weaves in her own personal and hilarious stories about being red. Being a redhead is not just a hair color, it's a lifestyle - and this book tells you everything you need to know.
The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech
Deresiewicz, William
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Our Price: $10.39
A deeply researched warning about how the digital economy threatens artists' lives and work - the music, writing, and visual art that sustain our souls and societies - from an award-winning essayist and criticThere are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age. One comes from Silicon Valley. There's never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you've got a laptop, you've got a recording studio. If you've got an iPhone, you've got a movie camera. And if production is cheap, distribution is free: it's called the Internet. Everyone's an artist; just tap your creativity and put your stuff out there.The other comes from artists themselves. Sure, it goes, you can put your stuff out there, but who's going to pay you for it? Everyone is not an artist. Making art takes years of dedication, and that requires a means of support. If things don't change, a lot of art will cease to be sustainable.So which account is true? Since people are still making a living as artists today, how are they managing to do it? William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the nineteenth century, and professionals in the twentieth, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.
Classic Style: Hand It Down, Dress It Up, Wear It Out
Schelter, Kate
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Our Price: $3.39
A gorgeously illustrated guide to "the classics": the essential clothes, accessories, beauty products, and timeless everyday objects that define your personal style.In CLASSIC STYLE, fashion expert and illustrator Kate Schelter curates a collection of more than 150 iconic, essential classics -- clothes, accessories, beauty products, objects, and travel items that exemplify great design, simplicity, and timeless style. Balancing the trend toward minimalism with a dose of charm and personality, Kate shows you how to develop (and celebrate!) your own style by following an easy mantra: buy less, buy better, reinvent what you already have, and own your look. Now in her first book, she guides readers through these principles in a mix of stunning watercolor illustrations, stories, memories, quotes, and advice from a collection of friends and mentors in the fashion world. A visual gem, CLASSIC STYLE will inspire you to pare down those stuffed closets and storage units, find joy in simplicity and usefulness, and rediscover the one thing that is truly essential to personal style--you!
Planet Funny: How Comedy Ruined Everything
Jennings, Ken
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Our Price: $6.09
Where once society’s most coveted trait might have been strength or intelligence or honor, today, in a clear sign of evolution sliding off the trails, it is being funny. Yes, funniness.Consider: Super Bowl commercials don’t try to sell you anymore; they try to make you laugh. Airline safety tutorials—those terrifying laminated cards about the possibilities of fire, explosion, depressurization, and drowning—have been replaced by joke-filled videos with multimillion-dollar budgets and dance routines. Thanks to social media, we now have a whole Twitterverse of amateur comedians riffing around the world at all hours of the day—and many of them even get popular enough online to go pro and take over TV.In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.
When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down
Morgan, Joan
(Paperback)
List Price: $13.00 Our Price: $5.59
A new voice of the hip-hop generation speaks out about the reality of being a black woman in America today. In this fresh, funky, and ferociously honest book, award-winning journalist Joan Morgan bravely probes the complex issues facing African-American women in today's world: a world where feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men; where women who treasure their independence often prefer men who pick up the tab; and where the deluge of baby-mothers and baby-fathers reminds black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40 percent of the African-American population.
The Making of The Umbrella Academy
Dark Horse Books
(Hardcover)
List Price: $39.99 Our Price: $11.99
Go behind the scenes of The Umbrella Academy, one of Netflix's most watched showsDive into the development and production of the first season of the Netflix original series, The Umbrella Academy, with a collection that features hundreds of behind-the-scenes images and exclusive commentary from the creative team. Discover how Netflix's live-action adaption successfully translated Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's original vision for their comic to the small screen.Whether you're a diehard alumni of the comics or a freshman to the Netflix series, this fantastic tome is one that will not want to miss this vividly designed hardcover volume exposing the idiosyncratic wit and dysfunctional dynamism of Netflix's family of superheroic savants.
In Praise of Slowness
Honoré, Carl
(Softcover)
List Price: $14.95 Our Price: $7.45
In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honoré details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream - in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. Defining a movement that is here to stay, this spirited manifesto will make you completely rethink your relationship with time.
The Disaster Artist
Sestero, Greg
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $3.21
In 2003, an independent film called The Room - starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau - made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as "like getting stabbed in the head," the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Ten years later, it's an international cult phenomenon, whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons. Hailed by The Huffington Post as "possibly the most important piece of literature ever printed," The Disaster Artist is the hilarious, behind-the-scenes story of a deliciously awful cinematic phenomenon as well as the story of an odd and inspiring Hollywood friendship. Greg Sestero, Tommy's costar, recounts the film's bizarre journey to infamy, explaining how the movie's many nonsensical scenes and bits of dialogue came to be and unraveling the mystery of Tommy Wiseau himself.
Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
Anolik, Lili
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Our Price: $3.39
Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s was the pop culture capital of the world - a movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz was the ultimate factory girl, a pure product of LA.The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Babitz posed in 1963, at age twenty, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph, cheesecake with a Dadaist twist, made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.Then, at nearly thirty, her It girl days numbered, Babitz was discovered - as a writer - by Joan Didion. She would go on to produce seven books, usually billed as novels or short story collections, always autobiographies and confessionals. Under-known and under-read during her career, she’s since experienced a breakthrough. Now in her mid-seventies, she’s on the cusp of literary stardom and recognition as an essential - as the essential - LA writer. Her prose achieves that American ideal: art that stays loose, maintains its cool, and is so sheerly enjoyable as to be mistaken for simple entertainment.For Babitz, life was slow days, fast company until a freak fire in the 90s turned her into a recluse, living in a condo in West Hollywood, where Lili Anolik tracked her down in 2012. Anolik’s elegant and provocative new book is equal parts biography and detective story. It is also on dangerously intimate terms with its subject: artist, writer, muse, and one-woman zeitgeist, Eve Babitz.
Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Lander, Christian
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.00 Our Price: $6.59
They love nothing better than sipping free-trade gourmet coffee, leafing through the Sunday New York Times, and listening to David Sedaris on NPR (ideally all at the same time). Apple products, indie music, food co-ops, and vintage T-shirts make them weak in the knees. They believe they’re unique, yet somehow they’re all exactly the same, talking about how they “get” Sarah Silverman’s “subversive” comedy and Wes Anderson’s “droll” films. They’re also down with diversity and up on all the best microbrews, breakfast spots, foreign cinema, and authentic sushi. They’re organic, ironic, and do not own TVs. You know who they are: They’re white people. And they’re here, and you’re gonna have to deal. Fortunately, here’s a book that investigates, explains, and offers advice for finding social success with the Caucasian persuasion. So kick back on your IKEA couch and lose yourself in the ultimate guide to the unbearable whiteness of being.
Esther the Wonder Pig: Changing the World One Heart at a Time
Jenkins, Steve
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $7.19
Unlikely pig owners Steve and Derek got a whole lot more than they bargained for when the designer micro piglet they adopted turned out to be a full-sized 600-pound sow! This funny, inspirational story shows how families really do come in all shapes and sizes.
Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
Raftery, Brian
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Our Price: $5.59
From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999—arguably the most groundbreaking year in American cinematic history.In 1999, Hollywood as we know it exploded: Fight Club. The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Don’t Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology (or even taste), they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Apple’s Airport; Wi-Fi; and Netflix’s unlimited DVD rentals.Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they re-made our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. It’s the definitive account of a culture-conquering movie year none of us saw coming…and that we may never see again.
Nashville: Scenes from the New American South
Patchett, Ann
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Our Price: $13.09
A dynamic, experiential, and intimate portrait that explores the many sides of the legendary Southern city and country music capital, from award-winning writers Ann Patchett, Jon Meacham, and acclaimed photographer Heidi Ross.Nashville is a creative collaboration that awakens the senses, providing a virtual immersion in this unique American city hailed as the Athens of the South. Patchett, Ross, and Meacham in his introduction, at once capture both the city’s iconic historical side—its deep, rich Southern roots, from its food and festivals to its famous venues, recording studios, and style—and its edgier, highly vibrant creative side, which has made it a modern cultural mecca increasingly populated by established and upcoming artists in art, film, and music.Nashville celebrates Nashvillians’ beloved locales and events, both established and new, that are the heart of the city’s character. Here, too, are engaging vignettes spotlighting the diverse talent that makes the Tennessee city a significant cultural incubator and influencer, including singer-songwriters Marty Stuart, Gillian Welch, and Dave Rawlings; film director Harmony Korine, textile designer Andra Eggleston, country music fashion designer to the stars Manuel, chef Margot McCormack, acclaimed pastry chef Lisa Donovan, and model and musician Karen Elson.Blending exceptional narrative, evocative photography—including 175 black-and-white and color photographs—and a bold graphic design, Nashville is an intimate, textured panorama that brilliantly illuminates one of America’s most remarkable treasures.
Playing to the Gallery
Perry, Grayson
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Our Price: $6.35
Grayson Perry’s book will overturn everything you thought you knew about “art” Now that Grayson Perry is a fully paid-up member of the art establishment, he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he’s called this book Playing to the Gallery and not Sucking Up to the Academic Elite). This funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but that we’re too embarrassed to ask. Questions such as: What is “good” or “bad” art - and does it even matter? Is art still capable of shocking us or have we seen it all before? And what happens if you place a piece of art in a rubbish dump?
Kirby: King of Comics (Anniversary Edition)
Evanier, Mark
(Softcover)
List Price: $24.99 Our Price: $10.65
Jack Kirby created or co-created some of comic books’ most popular super heroes, including Captain America, The X-Men, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, Darkseid, and The New Gods. More significantly, he created much of the visual language for fantasy and adventure comics. There were comics before Kirby, but for the most part their page layout, graphics, and visual dynamic aped what was being done in syndicated newspaper strips. Almost everything that was different about comic books began in the 1940s on the drawing table of Jack Kirby. This is his story by one who knew him well—Mark Evanier. First issued in 2008, Kirby: King of Comics was the first overview of the legendary comic book creator’s career. It is now available in a smaller, more affordable package, revised and expanded for Kirby’s centennial.
The Greatest Brick Builds: Amazing Creations in LEGO
Sawaya, Nathan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $19.99 Our Price: $8.79
LEGO bricks have been used for decades by children and adults to create dazzling and playful buildings, vehicles, and unique works of art. In The Greatest Brick Builds: Amazing Creations in LEGO, these jaw-dropping creations are presented in full color, with close-up photos, scale representations, historical commentary on the structures, and details on how each model was constructed using LEGO bricks. Included in this collection are the Golden Gate, the USS Missouri, and the Great Sphinx of Giza, as well as other iconic structures created by LEGO crafters from around the world.
Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind
Edwards, Gavin
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $5.59
At the dawn of the 1990s, a new crew of leading men--Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and Brad Pitt--was rocketing toward stardom. River Phoenix, however, stood in front of the pack. But behind Phoenix's talent and beautiful public face was a young man who had been raised in a cult by nonconformist parents, who was burdened with supporting his family from a young age, and who eventually succumbed to addiction, dying of an overdose in front of the Viper Room, West Hollywood's storied club, at twenty-three. Last Night at the Viper Room is part biography, part cultural history of the 1990s, and part celebration of a Hollywood icon gone too soon. Full of interviews from his fellow actors, directors, friends, and family, Last Night at the Viper Room shows the role River Phoenix played in creating the place of the actor in our modern culture and the impact his work still makes today.
The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pionering Rivalry That Shaped Rock "N' Roll
Port, Ian S.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Our Price: $10.65
This one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.
Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Second Edition)
Valenti, Jessica
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Our Price: $4.49
Newly revised and updated, the #1 must-read book for a new generation of feminists who refuse to accept anything less than equality and justice for all women.Now in its updated second edition, Full Frontal Feminism embodies the forward-looking messages that bestselling author Jessica Valenti propagated as founder of the popular website, Feministing.com. Smart and relatable, the book serves as a complete guide to the issues that matter to today's young women, including health, equal pay, reproductive rights, violence, education, relationships, sexual independence and safety, the influence of pop culture, and more.
Inside Black Mirror
Brooker, Charlie
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Our Price: $11.19
The first official companion to the Emmy-winning Netflix cult-hit sci-fi television series that's fascinated millions of fans worldwide, with stunning visuals and never before seen behind-the-scenes content.What becomes of humanity when it's fed into the jaws of a hungry new digital machine? Discover the world of Black Mirror in this immersive, illustrated, oral history.This first official book logs the entire Black Mirror journey, from its origins in creator Charlie Brooker's mind to its current status as one of the biggest cult TV shows to emerge from the UK. Alongside a collection of astonishing behind-the-scenes imagery and ephemera, Brooker and producer Annabel Jones will detail the creative genesis, inspiration, and thought process behind each film for the first time, while key actors, directors and other creative talents relive their own involvement.
All the Words Are Yours: Haiku on Love
Gregson, Tyler Knott
(Hardcover)
List Price: $18.00 Our Price: $3.99
This vibrant collection reveals the intimate reflections of one of poetry's most popular new voices - honest, vulnerable, generous, and truly present in the gift that is each moment.
Sequential Drawings: The New Yorker Series (Pantheon Graphic Novels)
Mcguire, Richard
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Our Price: $4.99
Sequential Drawings gathers together more than a decade of McGuire's witty and endlessly inventive spots—a veritable short-story collection—each drawing given its own spread, which, in turn, assures for the reader the experience of surprise and delight that the drawings unfailingly deliver. Richard McGuire's first series of "spot" drawings debuted in The New Yorker in February 2005 for the magazine's 80th anniversary issue. Spot drawings, scattered among the magazine's text, had been a long-running feature of The New Yorker, and over the years, many artists had contributed them. But McGuire was the first to conceive them as a sequence, and his drawings were something altogether new: deceptively simple images that imbued the series with movement and narrative, telling their own unexpected stories.
Where the Girls Are
Douglas, Susan J.
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $6.89
"Provocative...rollicking....peppy and indignant....The most original and engaging parts of Where the Girls Are are Ms. Douglas's irreverent and sometimes very funny readings of specific television shows and pop songs." --The New York Times. SC, 348 pages.
Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
Schaefer, Kayleen
(Hardcover)
List Price: $24.00 Our Price: $8.19
A personal and sociological examination--and ultimately a celebration--of the evolution of female friendship in pop culture and modern society"Text me when you get home." After joyful nights out together, female friends say this to one another as a way of cementing their love. It's about safety; but more than that, it's about solidarity.From Broad City to Big Little Lies to what women say about their own best friends, the stories we're telling about female friendship have changed. What used to be written off as infighting between mean girls or disposable relationships that would be tossed as soon as a guy came along are no longer described like that. Now, we're lifting up our female friendships to the same level as our other important relationships, saying they matter just as much as the bonds we have with our romantic partners, children, parents, or siblings.Journalist Kayleen Schaefer relays her journey of modern female friendship: from being a competitive teenager to trying to be one of the guys in the workplace to ultimately awakening to the power of female friendship and the soulmates, girl squads, and chosen families that come with it.Schaefer has put together a completely new sociological perspective on the way we see our friends today, one that includes interviews with dozens of other women across the country: historians, creators of the most iconic films and television shows about female friendship (and Galentine's Day!), celebrities, authors, and other experts. The end result is a validation of female friendship that's never existed before.
Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them
Venters, Jillian
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.99 Our Price: $6.59
An essential, fully illustrated guidebook to day-to-day Goth living. There's more to being a Goth than throwing on some black velvet, dyeing your hair, and calling it a day (or a night). How do you dress with morbid flair when going to a job interview? Is there such a thing as growing too old to be a Goth? How do you explain to your grandma that it's not just a phase? Jillian Venters, a.k.a. "the Lady of the Manners," knows how to be strange and unusual without sacrificing politeness and etiquette. In Gothic Charm School, she offers the quintessential guide to dark decorum for all those who have ever searched for beauty in dark, unexpected places, embraced their individuality, and reveled in decadence . . . and for families and friends who just don't understand.
Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality
Macdonald, Hector
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $2.56
True or false? It's rarely that simple.There is more than one truth about most things. The Internet disseminates knowledge but it also spreads hatred. Eating meat is nutritious but it's also damaging to the environment. When we communicate we naturally select the truths that are most helpful to our agenda.We can select truths constructively to inspire organizations, encourage children, and drive progressive change. Or we can select truths that give a false impression of reality, misleading people without actually lying. Others can do the same, motivating or deceiving us with the truth. Truths are neutral but highly versatile tools that we can use for good or ill.In Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality, Hector Macdonald explores how truth is used and abused in politics, business, the media and everyday life. He shows how a clearer understanding of truth's many faces renders us better able to navigate our world and more influential within it. Combining great storytelling with practical takeaways and a litany of fascinating, funny, and insightful case studies, Truth is a sobering and engaging read about how profoundly our mindsets and actions are influenced by the truths that those around us choose to tell.
The Information Trade: How Big Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges Our Rights, and Transforms Our World
Wichowski, Alexis
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Our Price: $8.79
In this provocative book about our new tech-based reality, political insider and tech expert Alexis Wichowski considers the unchecked rise of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla—what she calls “net states”— and their unavoidable influence in our lives. Rivaling nation states in power and capital, today’s net states are reaching into our physical world, inserting digital services into our lived environments in ways both unseen and, at times, unknown to us. They are transforming the way the world works, putting our rights up for grabs, from personal privacy to national security.Combining original reporting and insights drawn from more than 100 interviews with technology and government insiders, including Microsoft president Brad Smith, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the former Federal Trade Commission chair under President Obama, and the managing director of Jigsaw—Google’s Department of Counter-terrorism against extremism and cyber-attacks—The Information Trade explores what happens we give up our personal freedom and individual autonomy in exchange for an easy, plugged-in existence, and shows what we can do to control our relationship with net states before they irreversibly change our future.
Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore
Newman, Terry
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Our Price: $9.19
Presents men and women of letters whose writing bears an idiosyncratic stamp and whose style of dress does the same. With anecdotes about each author's work and style, clothing-related excerpts from celebrated publications, archival photographs, quotations, and little-known facts, this unique volume is a must-have for lovers of distinctive books and looks.
Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, Darth - And Other Pop Culture Correspondences
Moe, John
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.00 Our Price: $6.09
We all know how Darth Vader shared his big secret with Luke Skywalker, but what if he had delivered the news in a handwritten note instead? And what if someone found that letter, as well as all of the drafts that landed in the Dark Lord's trash can? In the riotously funny collection Dear Luke, We Need to Talk. Darth, John Moe finally reveals these lost notes alongside all the imagined letters, e-mails, text messages, and other correspondences your favorite pop culture icons never meant for you to see.
Downtown Pop Underground
McLeod, Kembrew
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Our Price: $11.99
The 1960s to early 1970s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. 'The Downtown Pop Underground' takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the basement theaters, dive bars, concert halls, and dingy tenements within one square mile of each other. Author Kembrew McLeod links the artists, writers, and performers who created change, and while some of them didn't become everyday names, others, like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry, did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is fueled by the actual voices of many of the key characters who broke down the entrenched divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce--and changed the cultural landscape of not just the city but the world.
Woodstock: The 1969 Rock & Roll Revolution
Assante, Ernesto
(Hardcover)
List Price: $34.99 Our Price: $10.49
Woodstock: The 1969 Rock and Roll Revolution celebrates the fascinating story of how the music event came to be and the people that made it part of history.How can you explain the Woodstock Festival, 50 years after the event, to those who were not fortunate enough to take part? The concert that changed the history of rock music and an entire generation cannot be reduced to the photos. Half a million young people come to Bethel, New York, from every corner of the world to experience three days of music together.This event, now legendary, resounds with the psychedelic notes of Santana and the sublime guitar of Pete Townshend of The Who, the rich voices of Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, and the many other artists who appeared one after another on the stage. Yet, it was perhaps the guitar of Jimi Hendrix as he played his version of the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as Woodstock screamed its impetuous, revolutionary protest against the war in Vietnam, that became the symbol of an epochal dissent.In Woodstock, journalist and music critic Ernesto Assante presents those unforgettable days through exclusive interviews and photos he has recorded throughout his entire career. Michael Lang, Carlos Santana, Joe Cocker, Grace Slick, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Bob Weir, Roger Daltrey, Graham Nash, will all take us to Bethel to re-live and give thanks to the extraordinary figures that made Woodstock a legend that still echoes today.
Awards for Good Boys: Tales of Dating, Double Standards, and Doom
Lorman, Shelby
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $7.69
A wickedly funny illustrated look at living and dating in a patriarchal culture that celebrates men for displaying the bare minimum of human decencySurely you’re familiar with good boys. They’re the ones who put “feminist” in their Tinder bio but talk over you the entire date. They ghost you, but they feel momentarily guilty. They once read a book by a woman author. (It was required, but they thought it was “okay.”) And of course, they bravely condemn sexual harassment (except when the perpetrator is their buddy Chad).This book explores why so-called and self-proclaimed good boys are actually not so great, breaking down our obsession with celebrating male mediocrity and rewarding those who clear the very low bar of not being outwardly awful. Through clever illustrations and written vignettes, Awards for Good Boys makes literal the tendency to applaud men for doing the absolute least and offers hilarious and cathartic cultural commentary through which we may begin to unravel our own assumptions about gender roles and how we treat each other, both on and offline.
Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World
Sheffield, Rob
(Hardcover)
List Price: $24.99 Our Price: $10.89
Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn’t another exposé about how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents’ stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up?
Death Punch'd: Surviving Five Finger Death Punch's Metal Mayhem
Spencer, Jeremy
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $5.59
From the cofounder of Five Finger Death Punch, a fascinating inside account of one of the most successful heavy-metal bands of the past decade, and a revealing personal journey through the wild highs and terrifying lows of the rock and roll lifestyle - a wry and rollicking tale of music, addiction, and recovery.Hailed by the New York Times as one of the most unexpectedly consistently popular bands on the rock charts, Five Finger Death Punch has become the new heavyweight champ of the metal scene. In this high-energy memoir, Jeremy Spencer, the band’s cofounder and drummer, takes us onstage and behind the scenes, on tour and into the studio to tell the band’s story and his own.Death Punch’d is a detailed in-depth account of the group’s origins and influences, as well as the infighting and tensions that, when channeled properly, result in the music fans love. It is also the hard-charging, laugh-out-loud tale of how a mischievous boy rose from small-town Indiana to rock royalty - and how he nearly destroyed it all for a good time.Told in his unique, self-deprecating voice, filled with his twisted and humorous take on living the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll dream turned nightmare, and including dozens of photos, Death Punch’d is a lively, no-holds-barred ride and an inspiring cautionary tale that offers lessons for us all.
The Andy Warhol Diaries
Hackett, Pat (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $34.00 Our Price: $14.69
In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the bestselling classic is introduced to a new generation - with an added preface by Warhol's diarist and long-time friend, Pat Hackett, contemplating Warhol's lasting cultural impact.This international literary sensation turns the spotlight on one of the most influential and controversial figures in American culture. Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous, Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating.
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories
Gordon-Levitt, Joseph
(Hardcover)
List Price: $14.99 Our Price: $7.45
From hitRECord, the immensely popular open collaborative production company, and its founder, Golden Globe-nominated actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, comes The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1. The universe is not made of atoms; it's made of tiny stories. To create The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, known within the hitRECord community as RegularJOE, directed thousands of collaborators to tell tiny stories through words and art. With the help of the entire creative collective, Gordon-Levitt culled, edited and curated over 8,500 contributions into this finely tuned collection of original art from 67 contributors. Reminiscent of the 6-Word Memoir series, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 brings together art and voices from around the world to unite and tell stories that defy size.
Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food
Price, Catherine
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Our Price: $7.45
Most of us know nothing about vitamins. What's more, what we think we know is harming both our personal nutrition and our national health. By focusing on vitamins at the expense of everything else, we've become blind to the bigger picture: despite our belief that vitamins are an absolute good--and the more of them, the better--vitamins are actually small and surprisingly mysterious pieces of a much larger nutritional puzzle. In Vitamania, award-winning journalist Catherine Price offers a lucid and lively journey through our cherished yet misguided beliefs about vitamins, and reveals a straightforward, blessedly anxiety-free path to enjoyable eating and good health. When vitamins were discovered a mere century ago, they changed the destiny of the human species by preventing and curing many terrifying diseases. Yet it wasn't long before vitamins spread from labs of scientists into the realm of food marketers and began to take on a life of their own. The era of "vitamania," as one 1940s journalist called it, had begun. Though we've gained much from our embrace of vitamins, what we've lost is a crucial sense of perspective. By buying into a century of hype and advertising, we have accepted the false idea that particular dietary chemicals can be used as shortcuts to health--whether they be antioxidants or omega-3s or, yes, vitamins. And it's our vitamin-inspired desire for effortless shortcuts that created today's dietary supplement industry, a veritable Wild West of overpromising "miracle" substances that can be legally sold without any proof that they are effective or safe. Price's travels to vitamin manufacturers and food laboratories and military testing kitchens--along with her deep dive into the history of nutritional science-- provide a witty and dynamic narrative arc that binds Vitamania together. The result is a page-turning exploration of the history, science, hype, and future of nutrition. And her ultimate message is both inspiring and straightforward: given all that we don't know about vitamins and nutrition, the best way to decide what to eat is to stop obsessing and simply embrace this uncertainty head-on.
The Boho Manifesto: An Insider's Guide to Postconventional Living
Chaplin, Julia
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $8.79
The Bohemian Disruption has arrived. Microdosing psychedelics has become the new business learning tool, spiritual ceremonies and ideas festivals are now coveted pastimes, and Burning Man is already a bigger cultural touchstone than Woodstock. Written by boho-from-birth Julia Chaplin, The Boho Manifesto is here to illuminate the revolution.This finely detailed and richly illustrated handbook is the essential guide to what lies beyond the experience of everyday conformity. You'll learn how to quit the gym and go dancing instead and how to become a sex-positive tantric unicorn. And, should you be ready, there's advice on how to leave your cubicle behind and embrace the life of a nomadic entrepreneur - or at least a nomad.
Lurking: How a Person Became a User
McNeil, Joanne
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Our Price: $8.79
A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from - for the first time - the point of view of the userIn a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of - even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate - but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been.In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life - what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet - have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn’t yet been told.Long one of the most incisive, ferociously intelligent, and widely respected cultural critics online, McNeil here establishes a singular vision of who we are now, tells the stories of how we became us, and helps us start to figure out what we do now.
Pop Science: Serious Answers to Deep Questions Posed in Songs
Ball, James
(Hardcover)
List Price: $16.99 Our Price: $3.39
A book of hilarious and fascinating answers to the most famous questions posed in pop songs, using data, facts, and science.What is love? How soon is now? How do you solve a problem like Maria? They're some of the most famous questions ever asked. But do you know the answers? In this fun and witty book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Ball examines the economic status of doggies in windows, what war is good for, and what becomes of the brokenhearted to find out the definitive and entertaining answers. In doing so, he uncovers what we have always known--pop music is the key to life itself. With lyrics from Bob Dylan, Queen, Rihanna, the Ting Tings, Billy Joel, and a variety of other genre- and decade-spanning artists, this little hardcover's colorful graphs and Venn diagrams reveal the exact points where lowbrow pop culture and the highest science and philosophy meet.
Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture
Aiden, Erez
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $4.49
Our society has gone from writing snippets of information by hand to generating a vast flood of 1s and 0s that record almost every aspect of our lives: who we know, what we do, where we go, what we buy, and who we love. This year, the world will generate 5 zettabytes of data. (That’s a five with twenty-one zeros after it.) Big data is revolutionizing the sciences, transforming the humanities, and renegotiating the boundary between industry and the ivory tower.What is emerging is a new way of understanding our world, our past, and possibly, our future. In Uncharted, Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel tell the story of how they tapped into this sea of information to create a new kind of telescope: a tool that, instead of uncovering the motions of distant stars, charts trends in human history across the centuries. By teaming up with Google, they were able to analyze the text of millions of books. The result was a new field of research and a scientific tool, the Google Ngram Viewer, so groundbreaking that its public release made the front page of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe, and so addictive that Mother Jones called it "the greatest timewaster in the history of the internet."Using this scope, Aiden and Michel - and millions of users worldwide - are beginning to see answers to a dizzying array of once intractable questions. How quickly does technology spread? Do we talk less about God today? When did people start "having sex" instead of "making love"? At what age do the most famous people become famous? How fast does grammar change? Which writers had their works most effectively censored by the Nazis? When did the spelling "donut" start replacing the venerable "doughnut"? Can we predict the future of human history? Who is better known - Bill Clinton or the rutabaga?All over the world, new scopes are popping up, using big data to quantify the human experience at the grandest scales possible. Yet dangers lurk in this ocean of 1s and 0s - threats to privacy and the specter of ubiquitous government surveillance. Aiden and Michel take readers on a voyage through these uncharted waters.
The Art of Smurfs: The Lost Village
Miller-Zarneke, Tracey
(Hardcover)
List Price: $45.00 Our Price: $19.19
Based on the classic Smurfs comic books by Belgian artist Peyo, the beloved blue creatures come to life in Sony Pictures Animation's action-packed animated story of a young Smurf's search for the legendary Smurf Village, and her true purpose. Smurfette (Demi Lovato), sets out on her grand adventure accompanied by her brothers, Brainy (Danny Pudi), Hefty (Joe Manganiello), and Clumsy (Jack McBrayer), undertaking a wild journey full of danger and discovery. The Art of Smurfs presents hundreds of storyboards, character design, and location concept pieces. With a foreword by Veronique Culliford, daughter of Pierrot "Peyo" Culliford, this insider's guide celebrates her father's cherished Smurfs and provides a glimpse into the creative process that turned his popular comics into a feature-length, animated film.
Brave New Weed: Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis
Dolce, Joe
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $6.09
The former editor-in-chief of Details and Star adventures into the fascinating "brave new world" of cannabis, tracing its history and possible future as he investigates the social, medical, legal, and cultural ramifications of this surprisingly versatile plant.
David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium
Jenkins, Jeffrey (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $50.00 Our Price: $14.19
A remarkable illustrated volume of artwork and images selected from the diaries David Sedaris has been creating for four decadesIn this richly illustrated book, readers will for the first time experience the diaries David Sedaris has kept for nearly 40 years in the elaborate, three-dimensional, collaged style of the originals. A celebration of the unexpected in the everyday, the beautiful and the grotesque, this visual compendium offers unique insight into the author's view of the world and stands as a striking and collectible volume in itself.Compiled and edited by Sedaris's longtime friend Jeffrey Jenkins, and including interactive components, postcards, and never-before-seen photos and artwork, this is a necessary addition to any Sedaris collection, and will enthrall the author's fans for many years to come.
Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century
Klosterman, Chuck
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $7.69
New York Times-bestselling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman sorts through the past decade and how we got to now.Chuck Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, newspapers, and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine Ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and The Guardian.Chuck Klosterman's tenth book (aka Chuck Klosterman X) collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. Klosterman presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese Democracy, The Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena. This is a tour of the past decade from one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.
Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries
Ronson, Jon
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $6.09
Jon Ronson investigates the strange things we're willing to believe in, from robots programmed with our loved ones' personalities to indigo children to the Insane Clown Posse's juggalo fans. He looks at ordinary lives that take on extraordinary perspectives. Among them: a pop singer whose greatest passion is the coming alien invasion, assisted-suicide practitioners, and an Alaskan town's Christmas-induced high school mass-murder plot. He explores all these tales with a sense of higher purpose and universality, yet they are stories not about the fringe of society. They are about all of us. Incisive and hilarious, poignant and maddening, revealing and disturbing - Ronson writes about our modern world, and reveals how deep our collective craziness lies, and the chaos stirring at the edge of our daily lives.
Eating the Dinosaur
Klosterman, Chuck
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $6.89
Chuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming. In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.
The World of Anna Sui
Blanks, Tim
(Hardcover)
List Price: $50.00 Our Price: $18.19
Anna Sui is one of New York’s most beloved and accomplished fashion designers, known for creating contemporary original clothing inspired by spectacular amounts of research into vintage styles and cultural arcana. She is especially famous for her textile prints. Sui joined New York’s intensely creative cultural underground in the 1970s, forging important relationships in the worlds of fashion, photography, art, music, and design.The World of Anna Sui looks at Sui’s eclectic career as a designer and artist, both through her clothing and studio. Through interviews with fashion journalist Tim Blanks, the book explores Sui’s lifelong engagement with fashion archetypes—the rocker, the schoolgirl, the punk, the goth, the bohemian—and reveals their inspiration and influence. Complete with detailed photographs of garments, sketches, moodboards, runway shots, and cultural ephemera, The World of Anna Sui is an inside look at this iconic New York designer with a worldwide cult following.
Everything Bad is Good for You
Johnson, Steven
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $7.45
Forget everything you've ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day - from The Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons - has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are making our minds measurably sharper. You will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.
The Art of Being Bill: Bill Murray and the Many Faces of Awesome
Croft, Ezra
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Our Price: $10.39
The Art of Being Bill is the first illustrated collection of Bill Murray, highlighting the star like you’ve never seen him before: Bill Murray at The Last Supper, Bill Murray as an Indian god, Bill Murray as a knight, Bill Murray as Superman, and numerous other artistic tributes that will amuse and inspire you.
Magic Is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
Frisch, Ian
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.99 Our Price: $6.59
Magic Is Dead is Ian Frisch’s head-first dive into a hidden world full of extraordinary characters and highly guarded secrets. It is a story of imagination, deception, and art that spotlights today’s most brilliant young magicians-a mysterious club known as the52, who are revolutionizing an ancient artform under the mantra Magic Is Dead.Ian brings us with him as he not only gets to know this fascinating world, but also becomes an integral part of it. We meet the52’s founding members-Laura London, Daniel Madison, and Chris Ramsay-and explore their personal demons, professional aspirations, and what drew them to their craft. We join them at private gatherings of the most extraordinary magicians working today, follow them to magic conventions in Las Vegas and England, and discover some of the best tricks of the trade. We also encounter David Blaine; hang out with Penn Jillette; meet Dynamo, the U.K.’s most famous magician; and go behind the scenes of a Netflix magic show. Magic Is Dead is also a chronicle of magic’s rich history and how it has changed in the internet age, as the young guns embrace social media and move away from the old-school take on the craft.As he tells the story of the52, and his role as its most unlikely member, Ian reveals his own connection with trickery and deceit and how he first learned the elements that make magic work from his poker-playing mother. He recalls their adventures in card rooms and casinos after his father’s sudden death, and shares a touching moment that he had, as a working journalist, with his childhood idol Shaquille O’Neal.“Magic-the romanticism of the inexplicable, the awe and admiration of the unexpected-is an underlying force in how we view the world and its myriad possibilities,” Ian writes. As his journey continues, Ian not only becomes a performer and creator of magic-even fooling the late Anthony Bourdain during a chance encounter-he also cements a new brotherhood, and begins to understand his relationship with his father, fifteen years after his death. Written with psychological acuity and a keen eye for detail, Magic Is Dead is an engrossing tale full of wonder and surprise.
Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
Petersen, Anne Helen
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Our Price: $6.89
From celebrity gossip expert and BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen comes an accessible, analytical look at how female celebrities are pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an “acceptable” woman. You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of powerhouses like Serena Williams, Hillary Clinton, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud is a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
Nevala-Lee, Alec
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Our Price: $6.09
Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers—John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard—who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world. This remarkable cultural narrative centers on the figure of John W. Campbell, Jr., whom Asimov called “the most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Campbell, who has never been the subject of a biography until now, was both a visionary author—he wrote the story that was later filmed as The Thing—and the editor of the groundbreaking magazine best known as Astounding Science Fiction, in which he discovered countless legendary writers and published classic works ranging from the I, Robot series to Dune. Over a period of more than thirty years, from the rise of the pulps to the debut of Star Trek, he dominated the genre, and his three closest collaborators reached unimaginable heights. Asimov became the most prolific author in American history; Heinlein emerged as the leading science fiction writer of his generation with the novels Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land; and Hubbard achieved lasting fame—and infamy—as the founder of the Church of Scientology. Drawing on unexplored archives, thousands of unpublished letters, and dozens of interviews, Alec Nevala-Lee offers a riveting portrait of this circle of authors, their work, and their tumultuous private lives. With unprecedented scope, drama, and detail, Astounding describes how fan culture was born in the depths of the Great Depression; follows these four friends and rivals through World War II and the dawn of the atomic era; and honors such exceptional women as Doña Campbell and Leslyn Heinlein, whose pivotal roles in the history of the genre have gone largely unacknowledged. For the first time, it reveals the startling extent of Campbell’s influence on the ideas that evolved into Scientology, which prompted Asimov to observe: “I knew Campbell and I knew Hubbard, and no movement can have two Messiahs.” It looks unsparingly at the tragic final act that estranged the others from Campbell, bringing the golden age of science fiction to a close, and it illuminates how their complicated legacy continues to shape the imaginations of millions and our vision of the future itself.
Ghostbuster's Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis
Stiel, Violet Ramis
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Our Price: $6.59
From the daughter of comedy legend Harold Ramis (and featuring a Foreword by Seth Rogen) comes a hilarious and heartwarming account of his life, work, and legacy.Most of us know Harold Ramis as the writer, director, and actor who brought warmth and humor to the big screen in classics like Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, National Lampoon's Vacation, and Groundhog Day. To his daughter, Violet, he was best known as an amazing father, confidant, and friend. In Ghostbuster's Daughter, Violet reflects on the life and legacy of her father, providing readers with an extraordinarily candid and insightful look into the man who helped shape modern American comedy. Funny, endearing, and vulnerable, Ghostbuster's Daughter takes readers into the private life of the American comedy icon, from his humble roots in Chicago and ascension into Hollywood stardom to his personal philosophies on life, love, and filmmaking. While the book offers a comprehensive history of her father's career, Ghostbuster's Daughter also provides a profound homage to their special father-daughter relationship. Violet weaves anecdotes about her father's unique and devoted parenting style among stories of her own unconventional upbringing, creating a vivid and dynamic portrait of the man behind the movies. A distinctly offbeat memoir as well as a charming family story for the ages, Ghostbuster's Daughter is an intimate look at one of America's preeminent comedy filmmakers.
Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality
Gabler, Neal
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.95 Our Price: $7.89
From one of America's most original cultural critics, the story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, glamour, and melodrama has turned everything of importance - from news and politics to religion and high culture - into one vast public entertainment. Neal Gabler calls them "lifies", those blockbusters written in the medium of life that preoccupy the traditional media and dominate the national conversation for weeks, months, even years: the death of Princess Diana, the trial of O. J. Simpson, Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton, the Ayatollah's bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie. Real Life as Entertainment is hardly new - as Gabler shows, it is older even than the penny press - but the movies, and then the new information technologies, have so accelerated the phenomenon that it is now the reigning popular art form. How this came to pass, and just what it means for our culture and our personal lives, is the subject of this witty, concerned, and sometimes frightening book.
Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
Raftery, Brian
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Our Price: $9.19
From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999—arguably the most groundbreaking year in American cinematic history.In 1999, Hollywood as we know it exploded: Fight Club. The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Don’t Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology (or even taste), they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Apple’s Airport; Wi-Fi; and Netflix’s unlimited DVD rentals.Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they re-made our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. It’s the definitive account of a culture-conquering movie year none of us saw coming…and that we may never see again.
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