Popular Culture

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

In The 50th Law, hip hop and pop culture icon 50 Cent offers a "bible" for success in life and work....

From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of early aughts pop culture.

From the pages of Vanity Fair to the red carpets of Hollywood, editor Graydon Carter’s memoir revives the glamorous heyday of print magazines when they were at the vanguard of American culture.

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

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

Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world....

From linguist Adam Aleksic, known as @etymologynerd on social media, comes a captivating exploration of how internet algorithms are transforming language and communication in unprecedented ways.

From acclaimed Atlantic staff writer and host of BBC’s podcast “The New Gurus” Helen Lewis comes a timely and provocative interrogation of the myth of genius, exploring the surprising inventions, inspirations and distortions by which some lives are elevated to 'greatness'—and others are not.

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

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system–a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded....

America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears.

A fascinating and enlightening deep dive into the infamous Disney adult community from the woman behind the popular website The Disney Food Blog.

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....

Ken Ivy pulls a square's coat on the unwritten rules that took him from the ghetto streets to the executive suites. Ken's lessons will serve any person in any interaction....

From the host of the Normal Gossip podcast, a delightfully insightful exploration of our obsession with gossip that weaves together journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir.

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

A transformative audiobook urging 21st-century women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change....

Cults Like Us explains why the eccentric doomsday beliefs of our Puritan founders are still driving American culture today, contextualizes the current rise in far-right extremism as a natural result of our latent indoctrination, and proposes that the United States is the largest cult of all.

Singer-songwriter. Trailblazer. Mastermind. The Beatles of her generation. From her genre-busting rise in country music as a teenager to the economic juggernaut that is the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has blazed a path that is uniquely hers.

Step back inside the world of President Jed Bartlet’s Oval Office with Fitzgerald and McCormack as they reunite the West Wing cast and crew in a lively and colorful “backstage pass” to the timeless series.

From the authors of Quackery, a visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science.

From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader.

In the bestselling traditions of Seinfeldia and Top of the Rock comes a fascinating deep dive into the longest-running live-action sitcom in television history, from its humble beginnings to its evolution as a critically acclaimed cult classic comedy.

You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. In The Genius Myth, Helen Lewis unearths how this one word has shaped (and distorted) our ideas of success and achievement. Ultimately, argues Lewis, the modern idea of genius—a single preternaturally gifted individual, usually white and male, exempt from social niceties and sometimes even the law—has run its course.

In Lost Boys, James Bloodworth delves into these underground worlds and asks where have they come from? Why are so many men susceptible to the sinister beliefs these groups promote? What does the emergence of these communities say about Western society? And what can we do about it? In the course of his journey, he meets incels, enlists on a bootcamp for so-called "alpha males", and speaks to modern day Hugh Hefners using social media to broadcast their jet set lifestyles to millions of followers.

An explosive new book on the infamous trial Depp v. Heard, Hollywood Vampires paints an intimate picture of what was really going on behind the viral headlines between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, with never-before-told stories from their inner circle.

Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh’s mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste.

Low-rise jeans, butterfly clips, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and Paris Hilton’s nights out. The early 2000s were a time of major moments in fashion, media, celebrity culture, and especially music. The aughts were a particularly fruitful era for female artists—still the only decade in the history of recorded music when women made up more than half the list of highest-grossing performers—and especially pop stars. Artists such as Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Beyoncé were leading the charge—their success not only leading to a new respect for female artists, but for pop stardom itself.

How to be a Man? That question—and all the anxiety, anger, and resentment it stirs up—is the starting point for a crisis in masculinity that today manifests as misogyny, nativism, and corporate greed; gives rise to incels and mass shooters; and leads to panic over the rights of women and minorities. According to Jessa Crispin, it is the most important question of our time, and the answer to it might be found in an unlikely place: the films of Michael Douglas.

Charlie, Dennis, Mac, Sweet Dee, and Frank are deplorable characters. They will never mature, become more self-aware, or less self-involved. That is what the creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are committed to—and that’s why the show’s millions of devoted fans have stuck with the cult comedy hit for over sixteen seasons and counting. As thoughtful, provocative, and engaging as the show itself, this book also explores how the show has pushed the envelope and used absurdist comedy to explore major societal issues, including the #MeToo movement, LGBTQ+ rights, racism, and more.

In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.

We are surrounded by emoji. They appear in politics, movies, drug deals, our sex lives, and more. But emoji's impact has never been explored in full. In this rollicking tech and pop culture history, Keith Houston follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji's ever-expanding lexicon. Named for the world's most popular pictogram, Face with Tears of Joy tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.

Football is the world's most popular sport, and the shirts worn by teams and their supporters are its greatest means of cultural expression. Every year clubs launch new kits with increasingly extravagant marketing campaigns and convoluted explanations of how their designs reflect their history and local community. But football shirts are much more than just a symbol of which club we support.

In this book I examine America's move from relative rationalism to extreme irrationalism, beginning in about 1980, in particular in the development of a social welfare state. The effort to stop what had feebly begun in the 1960's in the Great Society had seemed to become the main mission of the dominant forces in American culture, seeing any mass programs to improve America's lives as being socialism and un-American. It can be argued that this is still the main mission of mass American politics here in 2025.

The News Quiz made its debut on Radio 4 in 1977, and decades later it's still playfully making and breaking the headlines of our daily news. If you enjoy your news humorously grilled, with a side order of biting wit, these 14 gems of vintage episodes will be exactly to your taste.

"The Psychology of Bluey" delves into the vibrant world of the beloved Australian animated series, exploring the intricate layers of emotional intelligence, family dynamics, and societal values woven into its storytelling. With each episode, Bluey and her family embark on adventures that are not just playful escapades but lessons in resilience, empathy, and the complexities of human emotions. This book offers an in-depth analysis of how the series impacts both young minds and adult viewers, making profound observations on parenting, childhood development, and the power of imaginative play.

"This isn't just nostalgia. It's a resurrection." From the kid who made a game out of life itself, this book is a power-up for anyone who ever thought games were just games.

Kurz vor seinem 30. Geburtstag steckt Filmemacher Hubertus Koch in einer weiteren ausgebrannten Episode seines Lebens. Enttäuscht von den Klischees der Medienwelt und den leeren Glücksversprechen einer Leistungsgesellschaft kündigt er von einem Tag auf den anderen seinen Job und steigt in ein Flugzeug Richtung Osteuropa. Weit weg von zu Hause - in Bosnien, Montenegro und Albanien -, wo ihn niemand kennt und niemand etwas von ihm will, versucht er, sich selbst einzuholen.

In RNJesus They Trust: Game Design, Your Time & Your Luck is a witty, sharp-eyed exploration of randomness in modern gaming — and how it blesses, tests, or exploits the players who kneel before it. From the ecstatic thrill of a rare drop to the soul-crushing grind of gacha pulls, game developers have turned RNG (random number generation) into a design pillar that fuels excitement and monetization. But where does randomness stop being fun and start wasting your time — or draining your wallet?

Beyond Belief is one of those rare books that cuts through the noise of modern culture with both intellectual precision and heartfelt urgency. In an era when public discourse is dominated by outrage, virtue signaling, and identity battles, this book steps back to ask a deeper question: What does it truly mean to be good? Drawing on axiological philosophy (the study of value), the author dismantles the illusion that belief, on its own, can make us moral. The book argues that we live in a world where systems have become more important than the people they were designed to serve. Whether ...

¿Por qué no eres rico ni feliz si has leído todos los libros de autoayuda? Este libro es una bofetada directa a la industria que te ha hecho creer que el problema eres tú. La mentira de la autoayuda revela cómo los gurús del desarrollo personal se han enriquecido vendiendo frases vacías, cursos inútiles y promesas mágicas que nunca cumplen. No es otro libro para motivarte, es una invitación a ver la realidad sin anestesia. Con estilo claro y contundente, Daniel Prescott desmonta los mitosmás repetidos de la autoayuda moderna: el culto al pensamiento positivo, la obsesión con la ...

中国文化读本不仅是一本介绍中国文化简单常识的通俗读物不仅是一本中国文化的小百科辞典更不仅是一本文化导游手册而是一本能显示中国文化内在精神和中国人的活生生的心灵世界文化性格生活态度审美情趣的文化读物作者希望这本著作不仅能为国内外读者提供一种对中国文化的生动的通俗的介绍而且能为国内外读者提供一种对中国文化的新鲜的有深度的认识我们认为只有这种有深度的认识才能照亮中国文化的本来面貌

A horror-story history of capitalism and its relationship to the haunted and the gothic, and a manifesto of Gothic Marxism, which finds revolutionary hope in the nightmare of modernity. What does it mean to see horror in capitalism? What can horror tell us about the state and nature of capitalism?