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Showing 281 - 300 of 583 items
By Antoine Maillet. 1991
By Guy Beausoleil. 1991
By Judith Flanders. 2014
Flanders traces the evolution of the house from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century across northern Europe and America,…
showing how the homes we know today bear only a faint resemblance to homes though history. What turned a house into a home? Why did northwestern Europe, a politically unimportant, sociologically underdeveloped region of the world, suddenly became the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution, the capitalist crucible that created modernity? While investigating these important questions, Flanders uncovers the fascinating development of ordinary household items--from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows--while also dismantling many domestic myths.From a Vice magazine columnist whose beat is "the future," here is entertaining speculation featuring both authoritative research and a…
bit of mischief: a look at how humanity is likely to weather such happenings as the day nuclear war occurs, the day the global internet goes down, the day we run out of effective antibiotics, and the day immortality is achieved. If you live on planet Earth you're probably scared of the future. How could you not be? Some of the world's most stable democracies are looking pretty shaky. Technology is invading personal relationships and taking over jobs. Relations among the three superpowers-the US, China, and Russia-are growing more complicated and dangerous. A person watching the news has to wonder: is it safe to go out there or not? Taking inspiration from his virally popular Vice column "How Scared Should I Be?," Mike Pearl in The Day It Finally Happens games out many of the "could it really happen?" scenarios we've all speculated about, assigning a probability rating, and taking us through how it would unfold. He explores what would likely occur in dozens of possible scenarios-among them the final failure of antibiotics, the loss of the world's marine life, a complete ban on guns in the US, and even the arrival of aliens-and reports back from the future, providing a clear picture of how the world would look, feel, and even smell in each of these instances. For fans of such bestsellers as What If? and The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, The Day It Finally Happens is about taking future events that we don't really understand and getting to know them in close detail. Pearl makes science accessible and is a unique form of existential therapy, offering practical answers to some of our most worrisome questions. Thankfully, the odds of humanity's pulling through look pretty good.By Lauren Michele Jackson. 2019
Explores how trends started in black communities are co-opted then turned into white profit and how this appropriation continues to…
uphold economic, political, and social inequality. In White Negroes, cultural commentator, essayist, and scholar Lauren Michele Jackson explores trends started in Black communities that have caught on and become cool, hugely popular and lucrative, but that exclude Black communities once mainstream audiences and mainstream dollars latch on. The consequences of this phenomenon can be easy to miss, as it is so ingrained in our consumer habits. Yet over and over, Black intellectual property is converted into white profit - one hashtag, hair style, music genre, and dance move at a time. This, Jackson argues, plays a role in keeping Black people from achieving economic, political, and social equity. Weaving together media scholarship and cultural critique, Jackson re-situates cultural appropriation as more than just a new buzzword. It is, she contends, simply another chapter in the long history of whiteness thriving at the expense, stolen labor and ingenuity of Black people. Further, her interrogation and exposure of the interracial antagonism resting on the other side of appropriation unravels behavior that feels normal only because it is common. Piercing, audacious, and bursting with pop-culture touchstones, White Negroes introduces a bold new voice in Jackson. Her debut is both a love letter to the creativity of Black folks and an urgent call for more thoughtful consumption by those who consider themselves "allies."By Nikki Tate. 2018
Christmas is a popular holiday celebrated by people all over the world. Learn about the games played, foods eaten, music…
played and favourite ways of decorating in different parts of the world. With lots of fun facts (about everything from frumenty to the jolly old man in red himself) and recipes, there's plenty in this volume to satisfy anyone with an interest in the festive season. Grades 4-7. 2018.By Jennifer Croll, Aneta Pacholska. 2019
A fiercely fabulous look at men’s fashion rule-breakers and icons Sashay away, ladies: it’s the boys’ turn for the fashion…
spotlight. From Louis XIV to Kanye West, Jennifer Croll takes us on a tour of daring and different men throughout history who have all used fashion to get what they want. Just as she did in her award-winning Bad Girls of Fashion, Croll shows us the power of clothes and the links between fashion and politics, art, social movements, and more. Croll's lively and engaging prose draws in the reader, providing enough information to satisfy both budding fashionistas and pop-culture junkies alike. Aneta Pacholska’s illustrations are modern and fun, perfectly complementing the text and making the book as exciting to look at as it is to read. In-depth features include Louis XIV, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Malcolm X, Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, Clyde Frazier, Malcolm McLaren, David Bowie, and Kanye West, with a diverse array of shorter biographies enriching the text.By Sophie Mas, Caroline De Maigret. 2019
From the bestselling authors of How to be Parisian, what smart, savvy, fabulous French women think, feel and advise as…
they hit forty on life, love, and everything else Older, but Better, but Older has the playful wit, self deprecation and worldly advice we have come to expect from these bestselling authors, but now that advice is focused on the French woman's mindset as she hurtles towards forty. Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas are back to amuse you with how they find they are modifying their favorite bad-girl behavior as they address beauty, love, seduction as well as lifestyle, family, work, and living alone. They are still bohemian iconoclasts saying what you don't expect to hear. They will tell you things aren't what they used to bewhen a thirty-year-old guy arrives at a party and does not even glance at you; when you wake up feeling great and everyone tells you how tired you look; you know you're an adult when you're excited just to go home. Neuroses vs. confidence, resistance vs. acceptance, passion vs. serenity, de Maigret and Mas through spirited short stories capture the different stages of ageingas nostalgic but modern Parisian women. From the privately absurd to the strangely universal, this book captures moments of everyday life that will make the reader nod, cringe, and laugh out loud.By Kurt Andersen. 2017
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of…
the United States...?othing less than the most important book that I have read this year."-Lawrence O'Donnell How did we get here? In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what's happening in our country today-this post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through-is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. Over the course of five centuries-from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials-our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies-every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails. Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE "This is a blockbuster of a book. Take a deep breath and dive in."-Tom Brokaw "[An] absorbing, must-read polemic...? provocative new study of America's cultural history."-Newsday "Compelling and totally unnerving."-The Village Voice "A frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping into their beards."-The Guardian "This is an important book-the indispensable book-for understanding America in the age of Trump."-Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da VinciA myth-busting, jaw-dropping, fun-filled tour through the science of your favorite fantastical world. Award-winning comedian and popular-science writer Helen Keen…
uncovers the astounding science behind the mystical, blood-soaked world of Game of Thrones, answering questions like: Is it possible to crush a person's head with your bare hands? What really happens when royal families interbreed? Does Cersei have Borderline Personality Disorder? What curious medical disorder does Hodor suffer from? And more. Join Keen as she investigates wildfire, ice walls, face transplants, and every wild feature of Westeros and beyond, revealing a magical world that may be closer to our own than we think. The Science of Game of Thrones is the ultimate guide to the epic series as well as the perfect gift for science-lovers and fans. So pour yourself a bowl of brown, climb on your beast of burden, and prepare yourself to see the Seven Kingdoms as you have never seen them before.By Steve Jenkins, Caprice Crane, Derek Walter. 2016
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 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. 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.By Chuck Klosterman. 2016
New York Times bestselling author Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about…
our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or-weirder still-widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we "overrate" democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we've reached the end of knowledge? Klosterman visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We're Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers-George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Diaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others-interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It's a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It's about how we live now, once "now" has become "then."By Candace Bushnell. 2019
Set between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a country enclave known as The Village, Is There Still Sex…
in the City? gathers Bushnell's signature short, sharp, satirical commentaries on the love and dating habits of middle-aged men and women as they continue to navigate the ever-modernizing world of relationships. Throughout, Bushnell documents 21st century dating phenomenon, such as the "Unintended Cub Situation" in which a sensible older woman suddenly becomes the love interest of a much younger man, the "Mona Lisa" Treatment-a vaginal restorative surgery often recommended to middle-aged women, and what it's really like to go on Tinder dates as a fifty-something divorcee. Bushnell also updates one of her most celebrated stories from Sex and the City, "The Bicycle Boys," which is about a breed of New York men who are always trying to bring their bikes up to women's apartments. Once an anomaly, Bushnell charts their new ubiquity, in addition to where and how to do your own man stalking via bicycle (and whether or not it's worth it). In Is There Still Sex in The City? Bushnell looks at love and life from all angles-marriage and children, divorce and bereavement, and the very real pressures women face to maintain their youth and have it all. This is a pull-no-punches social commentary and an indispensable companion to one of the most revolutionary dating books of the twentieth centuryIn 2002, acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan's groundbreaking book LAbyrinth ignited a firestorm with its startling disclosures about corruption in the…
LAPD. It told the story of Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective, who uncovered a cabal of "gangsta cops" tied to Marion "Suge" Knight's notorious rap label, Death Row Records, and allegedly to the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Over twenty years later, no one has been held accountable for their killings. Now, Dead Wrong tells the story of the last sixteen years in the B.I.G. investigations and uncovers the conspiracy of silence that met the estate's wrongful death suit against the city. Back in 2001, an eyewitness identified the man who shot Biggie as Amir Muhammad, a man who was a former LAPD officer, Death Row associate, and convicted bank robber David Mack's college roommate and the only man to visit him in prison. Poole's investigation was repeatedly directed away from Mack and Muhammad, and the wrongful death lawsuit sought to make the city explain why-but instead, investigators encountered a disturbing pattern of selective investigation, hidden evidence, and possible witness tampering. Exclusive interviews with the FBI's lead investigator of the Biggie murder demonstrate a conspiracy that went to the top and that implicates some of the most powerful men in law enforcement nationallyJames Twitchell takes an in-depth look at the ads and ad campaigns—and their creators—that have most influenced our culture and…
marketplace in the twentieth century. P. T. Barnum’s creation of buzz, Pepsodent and the magic of the preemptive claim, Listerine introducing America to the scourge of halitosis, Nike’s “Just Do It,” Clairol’s “Does She or Doesn’t She?,” Leo Burnett’s invention of the Marlboro Man, Revlon’s Charlie Girl, Coke’s re-creation of Santa Claus, Absolut and the art world—these campaigns are the signposts of a century of consumerism, our modern canon understood, accepted, beloved, and hated the world over.By Chuck Palahniuk. 2006
From the bestselling author of Fight Club and Diary, a collection of essays and journalistic pieces that prove that real…
life has imagination beaten cold in the strangeness and wonder departments Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. The pieces that comprise Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Encounters with alternative culture heroes Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis; the peculiar wages of fame attendant on the big budget film production of the movie Fight Club; life as an assembly-line drive train installer by day, hospice volunteer driver by night; the really peculiar lives of submariners; the really violent world (and mangled ears) of college wrestlers; the underground world of iron-pumping anabolic steroid gobblers; the immensely upsetting circumstances of his father's murder and the trial of his killer-each essay or vignette offers a unique facet of existence as lived in and/or observed by one of our most flagrantly daring and original literary talents.By Suzi Weiss-Fischmann. 2019
Today, OPI is known as a global beauty icon, famous for its trend-setting colors and celebrity collaborations with the biggest…
stars from film, television, music, and sports. But behind all the glamour is the little-known tale of OPI's unlikely origins-an intimate and inspiring story of a timid schoolgirl who arrives in this country with little money and no English and becomes the business leader known worldwide as "Suzi, the First Lady of Nails." Suzi reveals the events that led her family to flee Communist Hungary and eventually come to New York City in pursuit of the American dreamBy Lee Child. 2020
Inspired by the ongoing international success of the city-based Akashic Noir Series ( Brooklyn Noir, Boston Noir, Paris Noir ,…
etc.), Akashic created the Drug Chronicles Series in 2011. Following The Speed Chronicles (William T. Vollmann, Megan Abbott), The Cocaine Chronicles (Lee Child, Laura Lippman), The Heroin Chronicles (Jerry Stahl, Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch), and The Marijuana Chronicles (Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates) comes The Nicotine Chronicles , masterfully curated by blockbuster hit maker Lee Child. In recent years, nicotine has become as verboten as many hard drugs. The literary styles in this volume are as varied as the moral quandaries herein, and the authors have successfully unleashed their incandescent imaginations on the subject matter, fashioning an immensely addictive collection. Featuring brand-new stories by: Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Ames, Eric Bogosian, Achy Obejas, Michael Imperioli, Hannah Tinti, Ariel Gore, Bernice L. McFadden, Cara Black, Christopher Sorrentino, David L. Ulin, Jerry Stahl, Lauren Sanders, Peter Kimani, and Robert ArellanoBy Timothy Caulfield. 2020
"Will vaccinate you against misinformation!"—Dr. Jen Gunter, renowned gynecologist and author of The Vagina Bible An entertaining and practical guide…
to getting through the day with less stress and better health, from the host of the hit TV series A User's Guide to Cheating Death . We make a ridiculous number of decisions every day—possibly even thousands . We make decisions about when to wake up, how to brush our teeth, what to have for breakfast, how to get our kids to school, the amount of coffee to drink, and on and on. Making so many decisions is tough. It can cause stock analysts to perform progressively worse over the course of a day. It can lead us to make poor decisions about the food we eat—the more brain fatigue we experience, the more junk food we consume. And the more deliberate the decision—that is, the more we need to think about it—the more fatiguing the process. There are many social forces at work that make how and what we choose an unnecessarily anxious process. But it doesn't have to be. In Relax, Dammit! , health policy expert Timothy Caulfield takes us through a regular day—from the moment we wake up to when we go to sleep—and shows the underlying science behind our actions and habits. What he reveals is that we make decisions that are based, to a lesser or greater extent, on misinformation. Whether he's studying cell phone use, bike commuting, or raw-milk cheese consumption, Caulfield shows that many of the things we believe to be healthier, safer, or just better, simply aren't. With solid grounding in current and reliable scientific findings, the author points to a less stressful way forward—which means we can all afford to relax a lot more. Insightful, sometimes controversial, and always entertaining, Relax, Dammit! is a surprising and liberating guide to modern lifeBy Cathal Kelly. 2018
"The most fascinating things about life are the banalities we so rarely discuss amongst ourselves but that we devote most…
of our energies to navigating. How did that day you've forgotten look? What did it feel like? Were you lonely? Did you have the sense you were progressing anywhere? Probably not. Yet string a few thousand of them together and that's a life." —From Boy Wonders Cathal Kelly grew up in the seventies and eighties, decades when dressing like Michael Jackson seemed like a good idea and The Beachcombers—"an adventure show about logging"—seemed to make sense. But apart from fashion missteps and baffling TV plotlines, Kelly's youth was a time of wonder, obsession and discovery. Navigating an often fraught family life, Kelly sought refuge in books, music, movies, games and at least one backyard hole. However, looking back he sees that his passion for George Orwell, Star Wars or The Smiths was never just about the book, movie or band. Rather, it was about the promise each new experience offered him in making sense of the world, and how he might find a home within it. By turns funny, elegiac and insightful, Boy Wonders is an unvarnished celebration of growing up and stumbling toward identity. It's about the good and the bad of those brief years when we find purpose without end, obsession without limit and joy in the strangest of places.