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America's preeminent columnist presents his penetrating and surprising reflections on everything from embryo research to entitlement reform, from Halley's Comet to border collies, from Christopher Columbus to Martin Luther King, from drone warfare to American decline. Features a special, highly autobiographical introduction.
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"From one of our leading film historians and interpreters: a brilliantly researched, irresistibly witty, delightfully illustrated examination of "the marriage movie": what it is (or isn't) and what it has to tell us about the movies--and ourselves. As long as there have been feature movies there have been marriage movies, and yet Hollywood has always been cautious about how to label them--perhaps because unlike any other genre of film, the marriage...
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Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: one, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, able to cope with complexity and to separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this "other society," comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans and a celebration of violence push reality, complexity and nuance to the margins....
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Grounded in Christian principles, this accessible and engaging book offers an informed and fascinating approach to popular culture. William D. Romanowski provides affectionate yet astute analysis of familiar, well-loved movies and television characters from Indiana Jones to Homer Simpson, and he speaks with historical depth and expertise on films from Casablanca to Crash and music from Bruce Springsteen to U2.
Romanowski's confessional...
Romanowski's confessional...
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In a fascinating and comprehensive intellectual history of modern communication in America, Daniel Czitrom examines the continuing contradictions between the progressive possibilities that new communications technologies offer and their use as instruments of domination and exploitation.
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Is NYPD Blue a less valid form of artistic expression than a Shakespearean drama? Who is to judge and by what standards?In this new edition of Herbert Gans's brilliantly conceived and clearly argued landmark work, he builds on his critique of the universality of high cultural standards. While conceding that popular and high culture have converged to some extent over the twenty-five years since he wrote the book, Gans holds that the choices of typical...
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An impassioned, darkly amusing look at how corporations misuse copyright law to stifle creativity and free speech
If you want to make fun of Mickey or Barbie on your Web site, you may be hearing from some corporate lawyers. You should also think twice about calling something "fair and balanced" or publicly using Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. It may be illegal. Or it may be entirely legal, but the distinction doesn't matter if...
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When Jordan Kisner was a child, she was saved by Jesus Christ at summer camp, much to the confusion of her nonreligious family. She was, she writes, “just naturally reverent,” a fact that didn’t change when she—much to her own confusion—lost her faith as a teenager. Not sure why her religious conviction had come or where it had gone, she did what anyone would do: “You go about the great American work of assigning yourself to other gods:...
10) Goodbye, Guns N' Roses: The Crime, Beauty, and Amplified Chaos of America's Most Polarizing Band
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Goodbye, Guns N' Roses transports the reader into a mind-altering trip through the colors, scandals, nihilism, and mythology that make Guns N' Roses so much more than another "hair metal" band.
A valentine and a breakup letter to one of rock's most controversial bands.
Goodbye, Guns N' Roses is a genre-rattling attempt to explain the appeal of America's most divisive rock band. While it includes uncharted history and the self-lacerating connoisseurship...
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A witty, charming, and engaging dive into trivia’s colorful history, from America’s highest-earning game show contestant of all time and host of Jeopardy!
“Insightful, informative, and written with a strong dose of humor and humility. . . . I loved this book.”—Will Shortz, crossword editor, The New York Times
Ken Jennings is trivia’s...
“Insightful, informative, and written with a strong dose of humor and humility. . . . I loved this book.”—Will Shortz, crossword editor, The New York Times
Ken Jennings is trivia’s...
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Brings together, for the first time, the best of Gladwell's writing from The New Yorker in the past decade, including: the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill; the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz; spotlighting Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen; and the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer." Gladwell also explores intelligence tests, ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias," and...
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2017.
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Explains how the influences of dreamers, zealots, hucksters, and superstitious groups shaped America's tendency toward a rich fantasy life, citing the roles of individuals from P.T. Barnum to Donald Trump in perpetuating conspiracy theories, self-delusion, and magical thinking.
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What becomes of life, experience, and truth in the hyper-consumerist culture of the twenty-first century? What happens to the phenomenological call to go "back to the things themselves" when these things, to an ever greater degree, involve a televised life that is not ours to live, celebrities who are utterly like us yet infinitely untouchable, and uncannily pluripotent electronic gadgets? Combining sustained philosophical inquiry with fragmentary...
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Impress your friends with knowledge of all things American-geography, history, entertainment, people, culture, and quirky miscellany. More than 3,000 questions will fill countless hours of fun as you learn fascinating facts about our country. Now with facts and trivia related to the American flag and "The Star-Spangled Banner," The Big Book of American Trivia has hours of fun packed within its pages. Perfect for party games, family gatherings, and...
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Be they actors, comedians, singers, dancers, or talk show hosts and personalities, everyone from George Burns and Milton Berle to Jack Benny and Jackie Gleason to Sid Caesar and Caesar Romero ignited their own particular brand of "man-erisms." In the process, they each inspired their own particular brand of audience to cheer them on-whatever their guise. This book will explore and celebrate the men who invented manliness and became stars in the process.
It...
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National Book Award Finalist: The "impressive" conclusion to the "magisterial trilogy on the mythology of violence in American history" (Film Quarterly).
"The myth of the Western frontier-which assumes that whites' conquest of Native Americans and the taming of the wilderness were preordained means to a progressive, civilized society-is embedded in our national psyche. U.S. troops called Vietnam 'Indian country.' President John Kennedy invoked 'New...





