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Blue Mind: How Water Makes You Happier, More Connected and Better at What You Do
By Wallace J. Nichols. 2014
Why are we drawn to the ocean each summer? Why does being near water set our minds and bodies at…
ease? In Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols revolutionizes how we think about these questions, revealing the remarkable truth about the benefits of being in, on, under, or simply near water. Grounded in cutting-edge studies in neurobiology, cognitive psychology, economics, and medicine, and made real by stories of innovative scientists, doctors, athletes, artists, environmentalists, businesspeople and lovers of nature - stories that fascinate the mind and touch the heart - Blue Mind will awaken readers to the vital importance of water to the health and happiness of us all.Up, Down, and Around the City (The World Around You)
By Christianne Jones. 2022
Zoom! The elevator zips from the bottom floor to the top floor of a tall building. Beep! Beep! The subway…
stops for people to get on and off. Using bright photographs and interactive, rhyming text, this picture book will help young readers discover position words while exploring the city.Fire Trucks (Wild About Wheels)
By Nancy Dickmann. 2022
Smoke pours out of a window. Call 911. A fire truck is on its way! Fire trucks carry the equipment…
needed to put out fires and help people in emergencies. Young readers will find out about fire trucks, their main parts, and how these important vehicles are used.Snowplows (Wild About Wheels)
By Nancy Dickmann. 2022
Whoosh! Snow flies into the air as a snowplow pushes it out of the way. These big machines help keep…
drivers safe. Besides moving snow, they can put sand and salt on roads to make them safer. Young readers will learn about the main parts of snowplows, how they work, and where these important vehicles are used.Police Cars (Wild About Wheels)
By Keli Sipperley. 2022
Lights flash and sirens sound! A police car is on its way! Police cars keep our roads and neighborhoods safe.…
Police cars are fast and carry equipment for fighting crime. Young readers will find out about police cars, their main parts, and how these important vehicles are used.Delivery Trucks (Wild About Wheels)
By Nancy Dickmann. 2022
Delivery trucks carry millions of packages around the country each day. In New York City alone, 1.5 million packages are…
delivered every day! Young readers will learn about the types of delivery trucks, their main parts, and what they carry inside.Soaring in Style: How Amelia Earhart Became a Fashion Icon
By Jennifer Lane Wilson. 2022
Long before Amelia Earhart became a superstar, she was a girl who longed to touch the stars. But the dresses…
women had to wear at the time made those dreams seem almost impossible. Amelia didn't let that stop her. As a young aviator breaking records and expectations, she learned to fly her plane with flair. Later, she dared to create a trendsetting fashion line for active women like herself. Soaring in Style tells the groundbreaking story of how Amelia Earhart defied expectations in the air and on the ground to become America’s first celebrity fashion designer.Tow Trucks (Wild About Wheels)
By Nancy Dickmann. 2022
A car breaks down on the highway. It won’t go. What vehicle can help? A tow truck! Tow trucks carry…
broken vehicles to repair shops so they can be fixed and get back on the road. Young readers will find out about tow trucks, their main parts, and how these important vehicles are used.City Buses (Wild About Wheels)
By Nancy Dickmann. 2022
You need to get to another part of a big city quickly. What can you do? Take the city bus!…
City buses take people where they need to go day after day. They help people get to workplaces, stores, and more. They are hard at work in all types of weather. Young readers will learn about the main parts of city buses, how they work, and why they are important to cities and the people who ride them.The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
By Malcolm Gladwell. 2000
'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around…
him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George StephanopoulosThe Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 (Cinema and Youth Cultures)
By Neil Archer. 2022
This in-depth study of one of the twenty-first century’s most acclaimed films, The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 considers the contribution…
of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film to the understanding of ‘youth’ in a contemporary, digital age. The book starts by situating The Social Network within the contexts of ‘youth film’, arguing that it challenges and reshapes the boundaries of this genre by rethinking the notion of ‘youth’ itself in the present century. It goes on to consider in detail the aesthetics at work in the film, arguing for its critical and reflexive use of an ‘accelerated’ audio-visual style, in order to capture both the new visual regimes of the personal computer era, and the ethical and intellectual ambiguities of Facebook itself as a creation. Finally, it locates the film within the broader visual styles and fashion codes of a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century consumer culture that incorporates and commodifies rebellion and dissent: qualities that underpinned Facebook’s emerging, paradoxical identity as at once the epitome of ‘hacker’ culture and also a multi-billion-dollar global company. Reframing the meaning of youth cinema, this volume in the Cinema and Youth Culture series is ideal for students, researchers and scholars of cinema studies, youth culture and digital cultures.How and why does a catastrophic disaster change public discourse and social narratives? This is the first book to comprehensively…
investigate how Japanese newspapers, TV, documentary films, independent journalists, scientists, and intellectuals from the humanities and social sciences have critically responded to the Fukushima nuclear disaster over the last decade. In Japan, nuclear power consistently had more than 70% support in opinion polls. However, the Fukushima disaster of 2011 has caused a shift in public opinion, and the majority of the population now desires an end to nuclear power in Japan. Alternative energy and countermeasures against climate change have thus become hot-button issues in public discourse. Moreover, topics previously left undiscussed have become common talking points among journalists and intellectuals: Concealed power structural dynamics that work upon Japan’s politics, bureaucracy, industry, academia, and media; Japan’s peculiar, strong support for nuclear power, despite being a nation subjected to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its latent ability to develop nuclear weapons by utilizing the plutonium generated by its power plants; and Japan’s dependence on the US’ nuclear umbrella. These discussions have often evolved into macro-level controversies over ‘Japan’ and its ‘modernity’. In this book, Hidaka critically evaluates how the Fukushima disaster has shaken hegemonic public discourse and compares it to the impact of previous moments of ‘disaster culture’ in modern Japanese history, such as The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Pacific War. Offers vital insights into contemporary Japanese culture and social discourse for students and scholars alike.Transmedia Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century (Routledge Advances in Transmedia Studies)
By Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Christina Meyer. 2022
This volume provides engaging accounts with transmedia practices in the long nineteenth century and offers model analyses of Victorian media…
(e.g., theater, advertising, books, games, newspapers) alongside the technological, economic, and cultural conditions under which they emerged in the Anglophone world. By exploring engagement tactics and forms of audience participation, the book affords insight into the role that social agents – e.g., individual authors, publishing houses, theatre show producers, lithograph companies, toy manufacturers, newspaper syndicates, or advertisers – played in the production, distribution, and consumption of Victorian media. It considers such examples as Sherlock Holmes, Kewpie Dolls, media forms and practices such as cut-outs, popular lectures, telephone conversations or early theater broadcasting, and such authors as Nellie Bly, Mark Twain, and Walter Besant, offering insight into the variety of transmedia practices present in the long nineteenth century. The book brings together methods and theories from comics studies, communication and media studies, English and American studies, narratology and more, and proposes fresh ways to think about transmediality. Though the target audiences are students, teachers, and scholars in the humanities, the book will also resonate with non-academic readers interested in how media contents are produced, disseminated, and consumed, and with what implications.Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves, Revised Edition
By Gene Fowler, Bill Crawford. 2002
&“Border Radio tells the 50,000-watt clear-channel story of the most outrageous and audacious phenomenon to ever hit the airwaves.&”—Los Angeles…
Times Before the Internet brought the world together, there was border radio. These mega-watt &“border blaster&” stations, set up just across the Mexican border to evade U.S. regulations, beamed programming across the United States and as far away as South America, Japan, and Western Europe. This book traces the eventful history of border radio from its founding in the 1930s by &“goat-gland doctor&” J. R. Brinkley to the glory days of Wolfman Jack in the 1960s. Along the way, it shows how border broadcasters pioneered direct sales advertising, helped prove the power of electronic media as a political tool, aided in spreading the popularity of country music, rhythm and blues, and rock, and laid the foundations for today&’s electronic church. The authors have revised the text to include even more first-hand information and a larger selection of photographs. &“The magic of [a] wildly colorful chapter in broadcast history lives on in this entertainingly informative look at the forces and the people who contributed to the rise of the medium.&”—Chicago Tribune &“Characters like Wolfman Jack, Reverend Ike, Norman Baker, &“Dr.&” J. R. Brinkley, Pappy O&’Daniel and others were master showmen and tremendously successful salesmen. Secret-formula medicines, magic prayer cloths, Crazy Water Crystals, and goat-gland rejuvenations are just part of this often hilarious telling of this outrageous period in broadcast history.&”—Variety &“If you&’re wondering where Herbalife, Home Shopping Network, No-Money-Down Seminars, and Jim and Tammy Bakker found their inspiration and techniques, look no further than this superb book.&”—Dallas Morning NewsSuper Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes
By Adilifu Nama. 2011
&“A welcome overview of black superheroes and Afrocentric treatments of black-white relations in US superhero comics since the 1960s.&” –ImageTexT…
JournalWinner, American Book Award, Before Columbus FoundationSuper Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented. Adilifu Nama sees the value—and finds new avenues for exploring racial identity—in black superheroes who are often dismissed as sidekicks, imitators of established white heroes, or are accused of having no role outside of blaxploitation film contexts.Nama examines seminal black comic book superheroes such as Black Panther, Black Lightning, Storm, Luke Cage, Blade, the Falcon, Nubia, and others, some of whom also appear on the small and large screens, as well as how the imaginary black superhero has come to life in the image of President Barack Obama. Super Black explores how black superheroes are a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that express a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity. The book also demonstrates how these figures overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, equality, forgiveness, and ultimately, racial justice.&“A refreshingly nuanced approach . . . Nama complicates the black superhero by also seeing the ways that they put issues of post-colonialism, race, poverty, and identity struggles front and center.&” –Rain TaxiFangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture (American Music Series)
By Hannah Ewens. 2020
One of Pitchfork&’s 15 Favorite Music Books of 2020: &“An entertaining, in-depth examination of fan subcultures.&” ―The A.V. Club &“To…
be a fan is to scream alone together&”—this is the discovery Hannah Ewens makes in Fangirls: how music fandom is at once a journey of self-definition and a conduit for connection and camaraderie; how it is both complicated and empowering; and how now, more than ever, fandoms composed of girls and young queer people create cultures that shape and change an entire industry. Speaking to hundreds of fans from the UK, US, Europe, and Japan, Ewens tells the story of music fandom using its own voices, recounting previously untold or glossed-over scenes from modern pop and rock music history. In doing so, she uncovers the importance of fan devotion: how Ariana Grande represents both tragedy and resilience to her followers, or what it means to meet an artist like Lady Gaga in person. From One Directioners to members of the Beyhive to the author&’s own fandom experiences, this book reclaims the &“fangirl&” label for its young members, celebrating their purpose, their power, and, most of all, their passion for the music they love. &“Excellent.&” —The IndependentHysterical!: Women in American Comedy
By Linda Mizejewski. 2017
Susan Koppelman Award Winner: “A juicy read for those who love the many ways female comics use their art to…
question the patriarchy.” ?BustAmy Schumer, Samantha Bee, Mindy Kaling, Melissa McCarthy, Tig Notaro, Leslie Jones, and a host of hilarious peers are killing it nightly on American stages and screens, smashing the tired stereotype that women aren’t funny. But today’s funny women didn’t come out of nowhere. Fay Tincher’s daredevil stunts, Mae West’s linebacker walk, Lucille Ball’s manic slapstick, Carol Burnett’s athletic pratfalls, Ellen DeGeneres’s tomboy pranks, Whoopi Goldberg’s sly twinkle, and Tina Fey’s acerbic wit all paved the way for contemporary unruly women, whose comedy upends the norms and ideals of women’s bodies and behaviors.Hysterical! Women in American Comedy delivers a lively survey of women comics from the stars of the silent cinema up through the multimedia presences of Tina Fey and Lena Dunham. This anthology of original essays includes contributions by the field’s leading authorities, introducing a new framework for women’s comedy that analyzes the implications of hysterical laughter and hysterically funny performances. Expanding on previous studies of comedians such as Mae West, Moms Mabley, and Margaret Cho, and offering the first scholarly work on comedy pioneers Mabel Normand, Fay Tincher, and Carol Burnett, the contributors explore such topics as racial/ethnic/sexual identity, celebrity, stardom, censorship, auteurism, cuteness, and postfeminism across multiple media. Situated within the main currents of gender and queer studies, as well as American studies and feminist media scholarship, Hysterical! masterfully demonstrates that hysteria—women acting out and acting up—is a provocative, empowering model for women’s comedy.“An invaluable collection and a great read.” ?Journal of Popular CultureWinner of a Susan Koppelman Award for Best Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in Feminist Studies, Popular and American Culture Associations (PACA), 2017Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America)
By Kate Shindle. 2014
For nearly a hundred years, young women have competed for the title of Miss America—although what it means to wear…
the crown and be our “ideal” has changed dramatically over time. The Miss America Pageant began as a bathing beauty contest in 1920s Atlantic City, New Jersey, sponsored by businessmen trying to extend the tourist season beyond Labor Day. In the post–World War II years, the pageant evolved into a national coronation of an idealized “girl next door,” as pretty and decorous as she was rarely likely to speak her mind on issues of substance. Since the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, the pageant has struggled to find a balance between beauty and brains as it tries to remain relevant to women who aspire to become leaders in the community, not hot babes in swimsuits. In Being Miss America, Kate Shindle interweaves an engrossing, witty memoir of her year as Miss America 1998 with a fascinating and insightful history of the pageant. She explores what it means to take on the mantle of America’s “ideal,” especially considering the evolution of the American female identity since the pageant’s inception. Shindle profiles winners and organization leaders and recounts important moments in the pageant’s story, with a special focus on Miss America’s iconoclasts, including Bess Myerson (1945), the only Jewish Miss America; Yolande Betbeze (1951), who crusaded against the pageant’s pinup image; and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko (1987), a working-class woman from Michigan who wanted to merge her famous title with her work as an oncology nurse. Shindle’s own account of her work as an AIDS activist—and finding ways to circumvent the “gown and crown” stereotypes of Miss America in order to talk honestly with high school students about safer sex—illuminates both the challenges and the opportunities that keep young women competing to become Miss America.A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema
By Kendall R. Phillips. 2018
&“An illuminating history . . . it&’s clear that the right story can still terrify us; A Place of Darkness…
is a primer on how the movies learned to do it.&” —NPR Horror is one of the most enduringly popular genres in cinema. The term &“horror film&” was coined in 1931 between the premiere of Dracula and the release of Frankenstein, but monsters, ghosts, demons, and supernatural and horrific themes have been popular with American audiences since the emergence of novelty cinematographic attractions in the late 1890s. A Place of Darkness illuminates the prehistory of the horror genre by tracing the way horrific elements and stories were portrayed in films prior to the introduction of the term &“horror film.&” Using a rhetorical approach that examines not only early films but also the promotional materials for them and critical responses to them, Kendall R. Phillips argues that the portrayal of horrific elements was enmeshed in broader social tensions around the emergence of American identity and, in turn, American cinema. He shows how early cinema linked monsters, ghosts, witches, and magicians with Old World superstitions and beliefs, in contrast to an American way of thinking that was pragmatic, reasonable, scientific, and progressive. Throughout the teens and twenties, Phillips finds, supernatural elements were almost always explained away as some hysterical mistake, humorous prank, or nefarious plot. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, constituted a substantial upheaval in the system of American certainty and opened a space for the reemergence of Old-World gothic within American popular discourse in the form of the horror genre, which has terrified and thrilled fans ever since. &“[A] fascinating read.&” —Sublime HorrorVideo Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means “timespace,” is an effective interpretive lens through which…
to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games. Using ‘slow readings’ attuned to deconstruction along the lines of post-structuralist theory, gender studies, queer studies, continental philosophy, and critical theory, Mike Piero exposes the often-overlooked misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, and patriarchal structures present in many Triple-A video games through their arrangement of timespace itself. Beyond understanding time and space as separate mechanics and dimensions, Piero reunites time and space through the analysis of six chronotopes—of the bonfire, the abject, the archipelago, the fart as pharmakon, madness, and coupled love—toward a poetic meaning making that is at the heart of play itself, all in affirmation of life, equity, and justice.