Popular culture Books

Trade Review"A smart, funny and revealing book that's pretty much a must read for kids in the scene." -- Chris Carrabba, Dashboard Confessional "If someone was to ask me, 'What is emo?,' I would hand them a copy of EVERYBODY HURTS." -- Matt Rubano, Taking Back Sunday "[D]estined to become a staple in any emo music lover's book collection ." -- Myspace.com "[T]his book is not only hilarious, but absolutely genius." -- Jason Tate, Absolutepunk.net "[T]he essential book for anyone who fancies themselves emo." -- Sarah "Ultragrrrl" Lewitinn, author of The iPod DJ

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Trade ReviewA lively, insightful read about a transformative year. -- Dan Rather A vivid and exhilarating guide to the year that revolutionized pop culture and shook the world, told by the movers and the shakers, themselves. -- Mick Brown, author of Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector An extraordinary year, a great cast of characters, a terrific book. -- Sir Alan Parker ...a must read for anyone interested in how pop culture, and particularly pop music, was both representative of the age and a catalyst for change. -- Victoria Broackes, Head of Performance Exhibitions, V&A Museum London

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Trade Review"A 'City of Nets' is what Mr. Friedrich calls Hollywood in the title of his new social history... Mr. Friedrich's intelligent prose makes for fascinating reading." -- New York Times Book Review "What happened in these 10 years is as rich and colorful a story as can be imagined and Friedrich has more than done it justice ... in a narrative that is often funny and remarkably even-handed--a must for movie buffs and a rewarding read for everyone else." -- Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisContributers from image and sound studies explore the history and the future of moving-image media across a range of formats including blockbuster films, video games, music videos, social media, experimental film, documentaries, video art, pornography, theater, and electronic music.Trade Review"This is an assemblage of monumentally impressive scholarly thought on timely issues and will undoubtedly stand up to repeated readings, analysis, and dialogue."--Association for Recorded Sound Collections JournalTable of ContentsIntroduction: ; 1. Carol Vernallis and Amy Herzog ; Cinema in the Realm of the Digital: Foundational Approaches ; 2. Thomas Elsaesser, Digital Cinema: Convergence or Contradiction? ; 3. Jean-Pierre Geuens, Angels of Light ; 4. William Whittington, Lost in Sensation-Reevaluating the Role of Cinematic Sound in the Digital Age ; Dialogue: Screens and Spaces ; 5. Sean Cubitt, Large Screens, Third Screens, Virtuality and Innovation" ; 6. Will Straw, Public Screens and Urban Life" ; Glitches, Noise, and Interruption: Materiality and Digital Media ; 7. Laura U. Marks, A Noisy Brush with the Infinite: Noise in Enfolding-Unfolding Aesthetics" ; 8. Lisa Coulthard, Dirty Sound: Haptic Noise in New Extremism" ; 9. Caetlin Benson-Allott, "Going Gaga for Glitch: Digital Failure @nd Feminist Spectacle in Twenty-F1rst Century Music Video" ; 10. Joanna Demers, "Discursive Accents in Some Recent Digital Media Works" ; 11. Melissa Ragona, "Doping the Voice" ; Uncanny Spaces and Acousmatic Voices ; 12. William Cheng, "Monstrous Noise: Silent Hill and the Aesthetic Economies of Fear" ; 13. Amy Herzog, "'Charm the Air to Give a Sound': The Uncanny Soundscape of Punchdrunk's Sleep No More>" ; 14. George Toles, "A Gash in the Portrait: Martin Arnold's Deanimated" ; 15. Warren Buckland, "The Acousmatic Voice and Metaleptic Narration in Inland Empire" ; Dialogue: Visualization and Sonification ; 16. Lev Manovich, "Visualization Methods for Media Studies" ; 17. Jake Smith, "Explorations in Cultureson" ; Virtual Worlds, Paranoid Structures, and States of War ; 18. Dale Chapman, "Music and the State of Exception in Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men" ; 19. Matthew Sumera, "Understanding the Pleasures of War's Audiovision" ; 20. James Buhler and Alex Newton, "Outside the Law of Action: Music and Sound in the Bourne Trilogy" ; 21. Eleftheria Thanouli, "Debating the Digital: Film and Reality in Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog" ; 22. Theo Cateforis, "Between Artifice and Authenticity: Music and Media in Wag the Dog" ; Blockbusters! Franchises, Remakes, and Intertextual Practices ; 23. Jessica Aldred, "'I Am Beowulf! Now, It's Your Turn': Playing With (And As) the Digital Convergence Character" ; 24. Carol Donelan and Ron Rodman, "Lion and Lambs: Industry-Audience Negotiations in the Twilight Saga Franchise" ; 25. Aylish Wood, "Sonic Times in Watchmen and Inception" ; 26. Miguel Mera, "Inglo(u)rious Basterdization? Tarantino and the War Movie Mashup" ; Dialogue: De-Coding Source Code ; 27. Garrett Stewart, "Sound Thinking: Looped Time, Duped Track" ; 28. Sean Cubitt, "Source Code: Eco-Criticism and Subjectivity" ; 29. James Buhler, "Notes to Source Code's Soundtrack" ; Rethinking Audiovisual Embodiment ; 30. Kiri Miller, "Virtual and Visceral Experience in Music-Oriented Videogames" ; 31. David McCarthy and Maria Zuazu, "A Gaga-World Pageant: Channeling Difference and the Performance of Networked Power" ; 32. Paul Morris and Susanna Paasonen, "Coming to Mind: Pornography and the Mediation of Intensity" ; Sounds and Images of the New Digital Documentary ; 33. John Belton, "The World in the Palm of Your Hand: Agnes Varda, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and the Digital Documentary" ; 34. Selmin Kara, "The Sonic Summons: Meditations on Nature and Anempathetic Sound in Digital Documentaries" ; 35. Jennifer Peterson, "Workers Leaving the Factory: Witnessing Industry in the Digital Age" ; Modes of Composition: Digital Convergence and Sound Production ; 36. Eric Lyon, "The Absent Image in Electronic Music" ; 37. Jann Pasler, "Hugues Dufourt's Cinematic Dynamism: Space, Timbre, and Time in L'Afrique d'apres Tiepolo" ; 38. Ron Sadoff, "Scoring for Film and Video Games: Collaborative Practices and Digital Post-Production" ; 39. Nicola Dibben, "Visualising the App Album with Bjork's Biophilia" ; Digital Aesthetics Across Platform and Genre ; 40. Carol Vernallis, "Accelerated Aesthetics: a New Lexicon of Time, Space and Rhythm" ; 41. Jay Beck, "Acoustic Auteurs and Transnational Cinema" ; 42. Allan Cameron, "Instrumental Visions: Electronica, Music Video, and the Environmental Interface" ; Index

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisFollowing the story begun in Baseball: The Early Years, Harold Seymour explores the glorious and grevious era when the game truly captured the American imagination with legendary figures like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, but also appalled fans with startling scandals. The Golden Age begins with the formation of the two major leagues in 1903, and describes how the organization of the professional game improved from an unwieldy three-man commission to the strong rule of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Seymour depicts the ways in which play on the field developed from the low-scoring, pitcher-dominated game of the `dead ball'' era before the First World War to the high scores of the `lively ball'' era of the 1920s.Trade Review"Seymour's books remain the most entertaining and informative histories about baseball's position in American culture."--H. Gehrig Coleman, University of Texas Praise for Volume II: "Will grip every American who has invested part of his youth and dreams in the sport, and it will inform everyone else who is interested in an American phenomenon as native as apple pie."--The New York Times "Noteworthy for its thoroughness and for the way its author relates the sport to American life....Seymour has an eye for humorous detail."--Publishers Weekly "[A] splendidly researched baseball history."--Business Week "Sports historians will welcome [this volume] as a contribution to our growing knowledge of American baseball."--Journal of American History "With devastating documentation [Seymour] portrays the contrast between the beauty of the game on the field and widespread dishonesty off it."--The New Republic

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Book SynopsisIn 'Different Drummers', Michael Kater explores the underground history of jazz in Hitler's Germany using archival records and assembled interviews. He offers a frightening and fascinating look at life and popular culture during the Third Reich, showing that for the Nazis, jazz was an especially threatening form of expression.Trade Review"In this admirable and well-researched study, Michael Kater explores the ambiguous relationship that jazz had to the National Socialist state and society, and in the process problematizes the liberating qualities that jazz supposedly possesses. Even more significantly, the manner of the new cultural hsitory, Kater uses his study to illuminate and investigage a number of social, political and cultural issues that engage the interests of specialists in the period."--German Studies Review"Outstanding....a fine mix of archival research with the collection of oral and written testimonies. It is virtually encyclopedic in its effort to convey the life stories of so many contributors to German jazz; to evaluate the sound of particular musicians; to analyze the audience--generally urban, young, middle-class--and the business; to identify the personal connections and the main locales."--American Historical Review"Most people would assume that jazz was completely stamped out at home by the fascist government in the 1930s. Michael Kater's remarkable book paints a very different picture and deals in great detail with a little-known chapter in jazz history....There is not a jazz fan, no matter how knowledgeable, who will fail to learn a great deal by reading this important book."--Scott Yanow, Jazziz"Kater's superbly researched story is fascinating and horrifying, yet in a sense rewarding, since it shows the lengths to which young Germans would go to keep the faith with a music that was their common link."--The Los Angeles Times"Richly rewarding, challenging, provocative, and eminently insightful."--The Jazz Report"Meticulous scholarship and...astute use of oral testimony."--London Times Higher Education Supplement

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Book SynopsisWhy doesn''t self-help help? Millions of people turn to self-improvement when they find that their lives aren''t working out quite as they had imagined. The market for self-improvement products--books, audiotapes, life-makeover seminars and regimens of all kinds--is exploding, and there seems to be no end in sight for this trend. In Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life, cultural critic Micki McGee asks what our seemingly insatiable demand for self-help can tell us about ourselves at the outset of this new century. The answers are surprising. Rather than finding an America that is narcissistic or self-involved, as others have contended, McGee sees a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. For Americans today, a central component of working has become working on themselves. Be all one can be, they are told. Build your own personal brand. As women have entered the paid labor force in growing numbers, the Protestant work ethic has been augmented by a Romantic imperative that one create a vision--a script--for one''s life. More and more, Americans are compelled to regard themselves in effect as human capital. No longer simply an enterprising or entrepreneurial individual, the new worker is the artist and the artwork, the CEO of Me, Inc., in Tom Peters'' memorable phrase, and the central product line. Self-Help, Inc. reveals how makeover culture traps Americans in endless cycles of self-invention and overwork as they struggle to stay ahead of a rapidly restructuring economic order. A lucid and fascinating treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, this book will strike a chord with its diagnosis of the self-help trap and with its suggestions for how we can address the alienating conditions of modern work and family life.Trade ReviewMcGee writes clearly and thoughtfully.... She moves seamlessly from high theory to pop psychobabble, using the former to illustrate the powers of the latter. Overall, she offers a compelling argument for resisting the self-improvement genre's worldview. * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ; Prologue. Covey's Daughter and Her Dilemma ; Introduction. From Self-Made to Belabored ; 1. From Calling to Vision: Spiritual, Secular and Gendered Notions ; 2. From Power! to Personal Power!: Survivalism and the Inward Turn ; 3. From Having It All to Simple Abundance: Gender and the Logic of Diminished Expectations ; 4. The Self at Work: From Job-Hunters to Artist-Entrepreneurs ; 5. At Work on the Self: The Making of the Belabored Self ; 6. All You Can Be, or Some Conclusions ; Appendix. Some Notes on Method ; Notes ; Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWhat did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers'' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central toThe Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, an ambitious nine-volume series devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present.Between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the later seventeenth, governments, institutions and individuals learned to use inexpensively-produced printed texts to inform, entertain, and persuade. Cheap print quickly became rooted in British and Irish culture, both elite and popular. This substantial and authoritative collection of essays - the first of its kind - examines the developing role of popular printed texts in the first two centuries of print in Britain and Ireland. Its forty-five chapters (with sixty-siTrade Reviewthe work is richly illustrated with photographs of all sorts of early modern documents that help bring the discussions home to us. The book (like the series of which it is part) is something we would expect every major university library to buy, and for students of popular culture, print culture, and popular print culture to make much use of. * Jonathan Roper, Folklore *a sophisticated, balanced overview of the current state of research into the social, cultural and political role popular print played in early modern Britain ... it will prove to be indispensible for scholars researching the cultural history of this period, as well as for librarians whose role it is to preserve these ephemeral relics of the past for future generations. * Erika Delbecque, University of Surrey *the very considerable range of contemporary printed sources deployed here is testimony to the contributors and their subject alike. * David McKitterick, Library and Information History *Popular culture is proverbially evanescent, so attempting to grasp the ephemera of an earlier age is a difficult task ... It is this vanished world that this impressive and authoritative volume, the first in the Oxford History of Popular Print Culture and the first of its kind, aims to recover ... [The] diversity is one of the book's major strengths, allowing the topic to be pursued across multiple different genres and critical perspectives. * Harriet Phillips, Cambridge Quarterly *Table of ContentsPREFACE; LIST OF TABLES; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS; NOTES ON CONVENTIONS; NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS; CHRONOLOGY; PART ONE: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS; PART TWO: SOME INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS; PART THREE: THEMES; PART FOUR: FORMS AND GENRES; PART FIVE: CASE STUDIES; BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Book SynopsisGlamour is one of the most tantalizing and bewitching aspects of contemporary culture - but also one of the most elusive. The aura of celebrity, the style of the fashion world, the vanity of the rich and beautiful, and the publicity-driven rites of café society are all imbued with its irresistible magnetism. But what exactly is glamour? Where does it come from? How old is it? And can anyone quite capture its magic? Stephen Gundle answers all these questions and more in this first ever history of the phenomenon, from Paris in the tumultuous final decades of the eighteenth century through to Hollywood, New York, and Monte Carlo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Napoleon to Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, from Beau Brummell to Gianni Versace. Throughout, the book captures the excitement and sex appeal of glamour while exposing its mechanisms and exploring its sleazy and sometimes tragic underside. As Gundle shows, while glamour is exciting and magnetic, its promise isTrade ReviewCovering over two centuries in an inevitably fast paced 400 pages, Stephen Gundle is persuasive. * Hannah Greig, BBC History Magazine *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Walter Scott and the origins of glamour ; 2. 1. Building the shopping city in London and Paris ; 3. The birth of sex appeal ; 4. Wealth and style in the gilded age ; 5. Cafe society and the publicity phenomenon ; 6. The Hollywood star system ; 7. The Riviera touch ; 8. Glamour for the masses ; 9. Photography and the public image ; 10. Style, pastiche, and excess ; 11. Harlots and heiresses ; Conclusion

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Book SynopsisRussia in Britain offers the first comprehensive account of the breadth and depth of the British fascination with Russian and Soviet culture, tracing its transformative effect on British intellectual life from the 1880s, the decade which saw the first sustained interest in Russian literature, to 1940, the eve of the Soviet Union''s entry into the Second World War. By focusing on the role played by institutions, disciplines and groups, libraries, periodicals, government agencies, concert halls, publishing houses, theatres, and film societies, this collection marks an important departure from standard literary critical narratives, which have tended to highlight the role of a small number of individuals, notably Sergei Diaghilev, Constance Garnett, Theodore Komisarjevsky, Katherine Mansfield, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf. Drawing on recent research and newly available archives, Russia in Britain shifts attention from individual figures to the networks within which they operated,Table of ContentsIntroduction ; "For God, for Tsar, and for Fatherland!" Russians on the British Stage from Napoleon to the Great War ; Oscar Wilde's Vera; or The Nihilists ; Britain and the International Tolstoyan Movement ; The Free Russian Library in London, 1898-1917 ; 'Avert Your Eyes and Hold Your Noses': Non-Chekhovian Russian and Soviet Drama on the British Stage, 1900-1940 ; Tsar's Hall: Russian Music in London, 1895-1926 ; Le Sacre du printemps in London: The Politics of Embodied Freedom in Early Modern Dance and Suffragette Protest ; Russian Aesthetics in Britain: Kandinsky, Sadleir, and Rhythm' ; Reading Russian: Russian Studies and the Literary Canon ; The Translation of Soviet Literature: John Rodker and PresLit ; Russia and the British Intellectuals: The Significance of the Stalin-Wells Talk ; British Film Culture and Soviet Cinema ; Soviet Films and British intelligence in the 1930s: The Case of Kino Films and MI5 ; Afterword: A Time and a Place for Everything: On Russia, Britain, and Being Modern

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Book SynopsisIn Assimilate, S. Alexander Reed provides the first ever critical history of industrial music. Through a series of revealing explorations of works spanning the entirety of industrial music's past, and drawing on extensive interviews, Reed paints a thorough historical picture that includes not only the bands, but the structures that supported them, and the scenes they created.Trade ReviewAssimilate succeeds in providing an absorbing and extensive introduction to the industrial scene. * Rob Upton, University of Nottingham, Music and Letters *Well-written and impeccably researched, Assimilate is worth a look not only by music fans looking to learn about this industrial wall of sound, but also by scholars of pop culture wondering why the kids feel the way they do. * Electric Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. A Fading Vision Lost in Time ; 2. The Pan-Revolutionary ; 3. The "I"-Word ; Part 1: Technology and the Preconditions of Industrial Music ; I. Italian Futurism ; 1. Industry ; 2. The Aesthetics of the Machine ; 3. Crash ; II. William S. Burroughs ; 1. Junkie ; 2. The Control Machines ; 3. Brainwashing and the Conflation of Authority ; 4. Mediatic Verses ; 5. The Cut-Up ; 6. Process as Composition ; 7. Media ; 8. Techno-Ambivalence ; III. Industrial Music and the Avant-Garde ; 1. Noise and Revisionism ; 2. The Revolutionary Class ; Part 2: Industrial Geography ; IV. Northern England ; 1. Progress in Hell ; 2. The Original Sound of Sheffield ; 3. Meatwhistle and ClockDVA ; 4. Throbbing Gristle ; 5. Manchester in the Shadow of War ; V. Berlin ; 1. An Island Out of This Planet ; 2. Strategies Against Architecture ; 3. German-ness ; 4. Ingenious Dilettantes ; 5. West Germany Beyond Berlin ; VI. San Francisco ; 1. Madness in Any Direction, at Any Hour ; 2. Monte Cazazza and Self-Propaganda ; 3. Z>'ev and Survival Research Laboratories ; 4. Factrix and Chrome ; VII. Mail Art, Tape Technology, and the Network ; 1. Fluxus and UFOs ; 2. A History of Tape Trading ; 3. Taping as a Political Act ; 4. The Eternal Network ; 5. A Virtual Scene ; Part 3: Industrial Music as Music ; VIII. The Tyranny of the Beat: Dance Music and Identity Crisis ; 1. Those Heady Days of Idealism Are Over ; 2. Irony ; 3. Technology and Rhythm ; 4. Futurist Pop ; 5. Pleasure ; 6. Industrial Identity ; IX. <"After Cease to Exist>": England 1981-1985 ; 1. The Mission is Terminated ; 2. London ; 3. Beyond London ; X. Body to Body: Belgian EBM 1981-1985 ; 1. A Satellite State ; 2. Luc Van Acker ; 3. Front ; 4. Musical Order ; 5. Bodily Order ; XI. Industrial Music as a Theatre of Cruelty ; 1. Artaud-Damaged ; 2. Theatricalities of All Kinds ; XII. "She's a Sleeping Beast": Skinny Puppy and the Feminine Gothic ; 1. From Pop to Puppy ; 2. Vancouver's Fertile Ground ; 3. Disrupting Maleness ; 4. The Feminine Gothic ; Part 4: People and Industrial Music ; XIII. Wild Planet: WaxTrax! Records and Global Dance Scenes ; 1. Industrial Music and the Mainstream ; 2. The Beginnings of WaxTrax! ; 3. Ministry ; 4. Mixing and Merging ; 5. The Business of Chaos ; 6. Clubbing and Participatory Culture ; 7. New Beat ; 8. The WaxTrax! Heyday ; XIV. Q: Why Do We Act Like Machines? A: We Do Not. ; 1. Pretty Hate Machine ; 2. Industrial Harmony ; 3. Language, the Self, and Gender ; 4. Get Me an Industrial Band ; 5. Resembling the Machine ; XV. Death ; 1. Death as Event ; 2. Death as Metaphor ; 3. Death as Fashion ; 4. New Life ; XVI. Wonder ; 1. Covenant and the Ubiquitous Sublime ; 2. Apoptygma Berzerk and the Spontaneous Sublime ; 3. VNV Nation and the Unthinkable Sublime ; 4. The Futurepop Backlash ; 5. Clubbed to Death ; 6. The Longevity of Industrial Bands ; 7. Industrial Music Is Dead? ; Part 5: Meaning and Revolution ; XVII. Back and Forth: Industrial Music and Fascism ; 1. Extremism as the Norm ; 2. Silent Politics ; 3. Loud Apolitics ; 4. The Effects of Fascism's Spectre ; 5. Fascist Assimilation ; 6. The Hidden Reverse ; XVIII. White Souls in Black Suits: Industrial Music and Race ; 1. Whiteness ; 2. The Inheritance of Blues, Jazz, and Dub ; 3. Exotica, Caricature, and the Techno-Oblivious ; 4. Technology and Racial Engagement ; 5. Black and White ; 6. Repetition and the English Ballad ; XIX. Is There Any Escape for Noise? ; 1. Unpalatable Truths ; 2. The First Two Options ; 3. Transgression as Law ; 4. The Future Happened Already ; 5. Pleasure, Flag Planting, and Revolution ; 6. The Third Mind

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Book SynopsisDig argues that in hip culture it is sound itself, and the faculty of hearing, that is the privileged part of the sensory experience. Through a string of lucid and illuminating examples, author Phil Ford shows why and how music became a central facet of hipness and the counterculture.Trade ReviewWhat Dig offers to scholars of U.S. music is its indispensable modeling of a nimble, oblique, and resonant approach to cultural critique. Fords work reminds us of the galvanizing interchange that always tacitly binds music to ideas: it reads the intellectual discourse of an era as something with the properties of music, something mobile, volatile, and alive. For this reason alone, Fords Dig promises to become a canonical entry in the field of early twenty-first century musicology. * Dale Chapman, Journal of the Society for American Music *[Ford's] conclusions on the Beats, popular music in American culture and the ever-continuing onrush of (blindfold consuming) square culture, nemesis of those who âdigâ things, are unquestionably worth reading. * Dr. A. Ebert, Jive Talk *Table of ContentsTable of Contents ; Introduction: Dig ; Chapter 1: Koan (What Is Hip?) ; 1. What is Hip? ; 2. The Suzuki Rhythm Boys ; 3. The Devil's Staircase ; 4. The Black Spot ; Chapter 2: Somewhere/Nowhere ; 1. Precambrian ; 2. Game Ideology ; 3. 1948: Smart Goes Crazy ; 4. Miles and Monk ; 5. Somewhere/Nowhere ; Chapter 3: Sound Become Holy (The Beats) ; 1. Sound Become Holy ; 2. The Sadness of It All ; 3. Digging What They Dig ; 4. Astounding and Prophetic ; 5. Stenciled off the Real ; Chapter 4: Hip Sensibility in an Age of Mass Counterculture ; 1. Right On, Mr. Horowitz ; 2. The Square ; 3. Asymmetrical Consciousness ; 4. Elitism ; 5. Mass Culture Critique ; 6. The Decline of Midcentury Modernism and the Birth of Postmodernism ; 7. Sound Museum ; Chapter 5: Mailer's Sound ; 1. The Sound is the Thing, Man ; 2. Abstraction ; 3. Whiteness ; 4. Mailer's Sound ; 5. Enantiodromia ; Chapter 6: "Let's Say That We're New, Every Minute" (John Benson Brooks) ; 1. Off-Minor ; 2. Music of the Isms ; 3. DJology ; 4. Cipher ; 5. Magical Hermeneutics ; 6. Technologies of Experience ; 7. Practice

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Book SynopsisThis book shows how le hip hop reflects a republic of culture rather than a culture industry; a minority identity politics that takes shape as a movement poetics or figural language; and the public valorization of dance as a technique, meriting unemployment compensation and understood as a high-tech knowledge practice.Trade ReviewFelicia McCarren has succeeded brilliantly in taking dance out of its disciplinary confines, showing how vital a consideration of hip-hop is to any attempt to understand the dynamics of race and identity in contemporary France; the progress of the globalization of culture; the transformational power of moving bodes; and the mutually constitutive relation between bodies and technologies. McCarren makes it impossible for semiotics or cultural theory to remain indifferent to dance. * Carrie Noland, author of Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture *The strengths of McCarren's research lay both in the cross-disciplinary structural analysis of national ideology and state funding of the arts (and research on the arts) insofar as they relate to particular communities and individuals in complex national, social, and cultural situations. Likewise, McCarren's introduction to works that might not be widely known to scholars bring new perspectives on French concert dance and the ways in which dance might be read as part of debates on national and global politics. * H-France Review *...Offers an original perspective on contemporary hip-hop theatre. * Dance Review Journal *Table of ContentsContents ; Introduction: "French?": Circulation, Immigration and Assimilation ; Part I: Politics and poetics ; Chapter 1: Hop Hop Citizens: politics, culture and performance ; Chapter 2: Hip Hop Dance "speaks" French: droit de citer ; Chapter 3: Hip Hop as post-colonial representation: Farid Berki's Invisible Armada and Exodust ; Part II: Technology and techniques ; Chapter 4: Dancing In and Out of the Box: Frank II Louise's Drop It!(2000) and Compagnie Choream's Epsilon (1999) ; Chapter 5: Breaking history: Helene Cixous' L'histoire terrible mais inachevee de Norodom Sihanouk, Roi du Cambodge and Yiphun Chiem's Apsara (2007) ; Chapter 6: Techniques: French urban dance in intellectual context ; Conclusion

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Book SynopsisList of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Half the World Away: Television, Space, Time and Memory Haunting the Memory: Moments of Return in Television Drama Who Do You Think You Are? Memory and Identity in the Family History Documentary Safe Returns: Nostalgia and Television Television's Afterlife: Memory, the Museum and Material Culture Notes Bibliography IndexTrade Review'Television, Memory and Nostalgia provides an insightful and highly evocative consideration of television's multiple relationships to memory, and is stimulating in both its range of examples and in the way that the book cuts a path through debates within television and memory studies. The book moves elegantly from a broad-based critical and theoretical reflection on television time and memory utilizing The Royle Family to brilliant effect - towards a series of chapters that examine memory texts, memorialized TV moments, and the material networks of television memory. These are all handled with considerable critical skill. Amy Holdsworth pulls off a sometimes rare quality in academic writing, producing a work that is, at once, intellectually stimulating and original, but also accessible and effortless to read.' - Paul Grainge, University of Nottingham, UK 'Television, Memory and Nostalgia is an exemplary work of interdisciplinary scholarship that will have a significant impact on its readers' thinking about the vexed relationships between our media and our memories. Holdsworth's investigation of television's contemporary "memory boom" draws together the theories and methodologies of television and memory studies in a manner that complicates the fundamental assumptions of both disciplines, dismantling the doxa that television fosters - and itself suffers from - a profound amnesia. Breaking with past treatments of this subject, Holdsworth focuses on the quotidian as opposed to the catastrophic, on popular as opposed to consecrated texts, and on memory's spatial dimensions as opposed to time. The originality of the book's approach extends to its presentation: sprinkled amidst its meticulous analyses of clip shows, season-ending montages, museum exhibitions, and discarded television hardware are deeply personal descriptions of Holdsworth's own televisual madeleines. These recollections beautifully capture the sensuousness of memory, and the sensuousness of television as well.' - Max Dawson, Northwestern University, Chicago, USATable of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Half the World Away: Television, Space, Time and Memory Haunting the Memory: Moments of Return in Television Drama Who Do You Think You Are? Memory and Identity in the Family History Documentary Safe Returns: Nostalgia and Television Television's Afterlife: Memory, the Museum and Material Culture Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA social history of marijuana use in America. Beginning with the hemp farming of George Washington, author Larry 'Ratso' Sloman traces the story of our nation's love/hate relationship with the resilient weed we know as marijuana.

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Book SynopsisIt''s Bigger Than Hip Hop takes a bold look at the rise of a generation that sees beyond the smoke and mirrors of corporate-manufactured rap and is building a movement that will change not only the face of pop culture, but the world.M. K. Asante, Jr., a passionate young poet, professor, filmmaker, and activist who represents this new movement, uses hip hop as a springboard for a larger discussion about the urgent social and political issues affecting the hip-hop and post-hip-hop generations.Through insightful anecdotes, scholarship, revolutionary rap lyrics, personal encounters, and conversations with youth across the globe as well as icons such as Chuck D and Maya Angelou, Asante illuminates a shift that can be felt in the crowded spoken-word joints in post-Katrina New Orleans, seen in the rise of youth-led organizations committed to social justice, and heard around the world chanting It''s bigger than hip hop.

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Book SynopsisMoroccan culture today is a blend of Berber, African, Arab, Jewish, and European influences in an Islamic state. In the Literature and Media chapter, the oral culture of the Berbers and the new preference for Western-style education and use of French and even English are highlights.Trade ReviewNjoku recounts the modern culture, society, and lifestyle of Morocco, which combines Berber, African, European, Arab, and Jewish customs. The introduction covers the history of the country, its land, people, and languages. The majority of the discussion centers on religions, including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, politics, literature in indigenous and Western languages, media, traditional and contemporary art and architecture, cuisine and dishes, types of dress, ceremonies, gender roles, marriage, family, social customs, festivals, music, and dance. * Art Book News Annual *[I]ncorporat[es] a wealth of information in a relatively short book in very accessible language… with this book in hand, those students new to Moroccan affairs or, indeed, the study of North Africa and the Middle East, will need to look no further for a broad introduction to the subject of Moroccan culture and customs - any issue a student could possibly wish to read about is touched upon by Njoku. * The Maghreb Review *Culture and Customs of Morocco allows for a thorough understanding of Moroccan culture; from its history and religious influences through its social, political and cultural strengths. Chapters also provide critical overviews of changes and improvements in progress, as well as surveying the country's people, land, and economy. A powerful coverage which will appeal into high school and public library collections. * Midwest Book Review/Internet Bookwatch *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Chronology Introduction Religion and World View Literature and Media Art and Architecture/Housing Cuisine and Traditional Dress Gender Roles, Marriage, and Family Social Customs and Lifestyle Music and Dance Glossary Bibliographic Essay Index

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Book SynopsisThis book is a comprehensive, historical bible on the subject of urban street dance and its influence on modern dance, hip hop, and pop culture.Urban street dance—which is now referred to across the globe as "break dance" or "hip-hop dance"—was born 15 years prior to the hip hop movement.Trade ReviewAn intriguing window into the work and world of Guzman-Sanchez, an urban street dancer, and the performances he was part of, starting in the mid-1960s and continuing through the 1970s and beyond. . . . Because of the author's central participation in the era examined, this brief volume serves as a primary document from a true believer and respected practitioner. * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue 1. Forgotten Era—An Initial Spark 2. 1965 and Soul Boogaloo 3. The Oakland Funk Boogaloo Generation 4. The Next Evolution in Oakland 5. South Central Los Angeles 6. Chain Reaction—The Valley Evolution 7. Posing to Punking 8. Oakland to San Francisco 9. Oakland Funk Boogaloo to Popping 10. The Bronx to the Burroughs 11. Reduced to the Level of a Toy Epilogue Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe story of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and their place in American culture, from outlaw machine to all-American icon.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisAn assortment of the most provcative essays, reporting, rants and raves from the first 10 years of the overwhelmingly successful Bitch magazine - the touchstone of hip young feminist thought.

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Book Synopsis"A wonderfully entertaining book of American folklore and humor."—Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times Book ReviewTrade Review"This is a fascinating book, but I still say all those stories actually happened to the mother of a friend of mine's doctor's wife." -- Roy Blount Jr.

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Book Synopsis"Elliott's absorbing account will make readers think again about the ways that science shapes our personal identities."—American ScientistTrade Review"A superbly crafted book." "An absorbing read that probes our foibles and uncertainties with gentleness, wisdom, and humor." "Elliott grips the reader's attention all the way." "An impressive achievement."

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Book Synopsis

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisMother Teresa was one of the most written about and publicised women in modern times. Apart from Pope John Paul II, she was arguably the most advertised religious celebrity in the last quarter of the twentieth century. During her lifetime as well as posthumously, Mother Teresa continues to generate a huge level of interest and heated debate.Gëzim Alpion explores the significance of Mother Teresa to the mass media, to celebrity culture, to the Church and to various political groups. A section explores the ways different vested interests have sought to appropriate her after her death, and also examines Mother Teresa''s own attitude to her childhood and to the Balkan conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s.This book sheds a new and fascinating light upon this remarkable and influential woman, which will intrigue followers of Mother Teresa and those who study the vagaries of stardom and celebrity culture.Trade Review'It is a clever book, providing a great deal of original and new thought on the subject.' - Primrose Peacock, Friends of Albania 'In his unparalleled scholarly book, Alpion has presented a multidimensional portrait of Mother Teresa. And she appears human as she rarely did in any discourse about her.' - Gaston Roberge, The New Leader'In its depth, breadth, and seriousness, this volume may stand for some time to come as the single most imporant biography of Mother Teresa in English ... A great value of this book is that [Alpion] has provided us with the fullest portrait yet of her native culture and her maturation' – Center for Islamic Pluralism'This book of Alpion's feels like a whiff of delightfully fresh air. It is the work of an open and dedicated scholar, who despite his reverence for the nun has yet striven to be as unbiased as possible, never letting his emotions get in the way. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to everyone.' – Bulletin of the Faculty of Foreign Studies'I enjoyed this book and anyone interested in how Albanian identity is understood and constructed should take the time to read it carefully.' -- Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies‘Alpion’s examination of Mother Teresa’s celebrity is a case study of corporate identity management in today’s global media environment. His weaving of primary texts into the setting of this character piece creates a comprehensive cross-cultural examination that has the potential to become a new archetypal work of this mercurial personality.’ -- Marvin Williams, American Communication Journal, USA‘In its depth, breadth, and seriousness, this volume may stand for some time to come as the single most important biography of Mother Teresa in English.’ -- Stephen Schwartz, Illyria, New York, USA‘After Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? scholarship about Mother Teresa will not be the same.… In his unparalleled scholarly book, Alpion has presented a multidimensional portrait of Mother Teresa. And she appears human as she rarely did in any discourse about her.’ -- Professor Gaston Roberge, The New Leader, India‘One must ungrudgingly give it to Alpion that this has been a work of monumental proportions involving great dexterity….All methodological exclusivity has been abjured, allowing the multihued disciplines to coalesce as needed in the research….All this makes the book compulsory reading.’ -- Professor Bonita Aleaz, Head of Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta, The Asia Journal of Theology, India‘[A] superbly researched work…. After Germaine Greer, Christopher Hitchens and Susan Shields this book of Alpion’s feels like a whiff of delightfully fresh air…. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to everyone.’ -- Professor Cyril Veliath, Bulletin of the Faculty of Foreign Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan‘Alpion is to be congratulated on both the depth of his research spread over several years, and the balanced way he sets out his facts….It is a clever book, providing a great deal of original and new thought on the subject but it is not a book to skim through in a couple of hours.’ -- Primrose Peacock, Catholic South West, UK‘Alpion’s book....is unique in locating the appeal of Mother Teresa within today’s broader celebrity culture…. For Alpion, celebrity culture is a modern form of religion and Mother Teresa was the ultimate religious celebrity of the modern era.’ --Dr Stuart Derbyshire, Spiked Magazine, UK‘Alpion [who] writes illuminatingly about different forms of "celebrity discourse"…has written an absorbing analysis what this nun has meant to the world.’ -- John Hodgson, Light Magazine, UK‘This engaging book raises as many questions as it answers…. Alpion unpacks the full historical background in meticulous detail... The result is intriguing, if a little unsatisfactory. His thesis is original: Mother Teresa knew well what she was about… Her success and subsequent "fame" were of her own making, and she was far brighter than she made out… So there was sacrifice involved in her quest for fame, but was her integrity one of the casualties? That is what this book tries to explore — hence its telling subtitle.’ -- Dr Lavinia Byrne, Church Times, UK‘Alpion has not simply added another book to the already vast literature on Mother Teresa; he has actually enriched it. …Alpion has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary popular culture.’ --Dr Michael Schmidt-Neke, Albanische Hefte, Bochum, Germany‘I can’t but conclude that after all of his careful research and reasoned probing, Alpion was personally touched by this great woman…. Alpion does ask some controversial questions. However, his answers are fair and reasoned from his point of view.’ -- Dr Margaret Nutting Ralph, Albanian Journal of Politics, Chapel Hill, NC, USA‘[T]he book does offer the migrationist a very useful account of an exceptional migration trajectory and, although this is not a declared objective of the book, it is also worth reading for its migratory sub-text. Mother Teresa as a migrant woman in the early part of the twentieth century makes for fascinating speculation regarding her motives and the modality of her mobility. I enjoyed this book and anyone interested in how Albanian identity is understood and constructed should take the time to read it carefully.’ -- Professor Glyn Davies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, UK‘The most authoritative English-language author on Blessed Teresa of Kolkata is Gëzim Alpion…a pioneer in the academic study of the phenomenon of celebrity.’ -- Stephen Schwartz, Folks Magazine, India‘In addition to [Aroup] Chatterjee’s books Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict and Mother Teresa: The Untold Story, and Christopher Hitchens’ The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, there is one by Gëzim Alpion, titled Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? which was as critical of Teresa as the other works mentioned earlier. Published in 2006, it exposed the well-orchestrated publicity blitz that Mother Teresa encouraged about herself, even when her real charity work didn’t count for much.’Dr T. Hanuman Chowdary, Swarajya, India'The main thrust of this carefully argued work is two fold. Firstly it concentrates on the loss of her father when a child becoming the mainspring driving the rest of Mother Teresa's life with 'Jesus' as a parental and marital substitute. Secondly it shows with considerable clarity how Mother Teresa used and was used by politicians, governments, the church, her admirers and a few detractors to achieve her objectives in what I consider was the result of her Albanian psyche. It is a clever book, providing a great deal of original and new thought on the subject but it is not a book to skim through in a couple of hours.' - Primrose Peacock, Friends of Albania '...this book of Alpion's feels like a whiff of delightfully fresh air. It is the work of an open and dedicated scholar, who despite his reverence for the nun has yet striven to be as unbiased as possible, never letting his emotions get in the way. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to everyone.' - Journal of the Faculty of Foreign Studies'In his unparalleled scholarly book, Alpion has presented a multidimensional portrait of Mother Teresa. And she appears human as she rarely did in any discourse about her.' - Gaston Roberge, The New Leader'This book is the work of an open and dedicated scholar, who, despite his reverence for the nun, has striven to be as unbiased as possible, never letting his emotions get in the way. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to everyone.' - Cyril Veliath, The New Leader'In its depth, breadth, and seriousness, this volume may stand for some time to come as the single most imporant biography of Mother Teresa in English ... A great value of this book is that [Alpion] has provided us with the fullest portrait yet of her native culture and her maturation' – Center for Islamic Pluralism'This book of Alpion's feels like a whiff of delightfully fresh air. It is the work of an open and dedicated scholar, who despite his reverence for the nun has yet striven to be as unbiased as possible, never letting his emotions get in the way. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to everyone.' – Bulletin of the Faculty of Foreign Studies'Alpion has written an absorbing analysis.' –Light Magazine'Alpion unpacks the full historical background in meticulous detail ... the result is intriguing ... original.' – The Church Times'Alpion gives us a thorough and well researched look in Mother Teresa's life.' - Margaret Nutting, Albanian Journal of Politics'In its depth, breadth, and seriousness, this volume may stand for some time to come as the single most important biography of Mother Teresa in English.' - Stephen Schwartz, IllyriaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface by Professor David Marsh Introduction 1. Mother Teresa and Celebrity Culture 2. The Balkans Appropriation of Mother Teresa 3. The Forgotten Years 4. Mother Teresa’s Attitude towards Her Early Years 5. Jesus the Divine Superstar 6. From Church Rebel to Church Asset Conclusion. Select Bibliography. Select Filmography. Index

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Book SynopsisTeenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the Post-Elvis Era combines music and cultural history and criticism to examine how rock and the rock lifestyle have been merchandised first to a teenage audience and eventually to a worldwide consumer society. Well-known, iconoclastic writer/ critic David Walley examines the entire rock culture and how it has infused all aspects of American (and world) life, from entertainment to politics to academic education. In a series of what he describes as word-jazz rock and roll improvisations and variations, Walley examines how adult culture has been adolescent-ized and what the ramifications are on our society.Walley is not an uninvolved observer-his personal story and opinions are right up front, where they belong. Famous for being the first writer to recognize the commercial genius of Frank Zappa (in the landmark book, No Commercial Potential, first published in 1972 and still in print today), Walley iTable of ContentsPreface to the first Edition, Preface to the Second Edition 1 This, Here, Soon 2 Who Stole the Bomp (from the Bomp Sha Bomp)? 3 BIame It on the Sixties 4 Boxers or Briefs? Music Politics in the Post-EIvis Aqe 5 Play School: You Can Dress for 11, but You Can't Escape It 6 The Twinkie Defense 7 Breakdown Bad Day at Internet 8 ASRin~ Alice: Fightin~ for the Right to Party 9 Don't Touch Me There: Whatever Happened to Foreplay? 10 White Punks on Dope: Why CamilIe PagIia 15 Academe's Answer to Betty Page

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Book SynopsisGET INSIDE GRIMM. NBC’s hit television series Grimm pits modern detective Nick Burkhardt of the Portland Police against a cast of terrifying villains—lifted directly from the pages of classic fairytales. In the world of the show, the classic stories are actually a document of real events, and Nick himself is descended from a long line of guardians, or Grimms, charged with defending humanity from the mythological creatures of the world. From The Big Bad Wolf to Sleeping Beauty, The Mythology of Grimm explores the history and folkloric traditions that come into play during Nick’s incredible battles and investigations—tapping into elements of mythology that have captured our imaginations for centuries.

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