Popular Culture

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

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

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

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

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

A no-nonsense and helpful guide on how to cope with a slew of mental-health issues that are hell-bent on ruining the lives of millions of people worldwide....

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

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

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

An entertaining and deeply nostalgic dive into how female pop stars broke through the music industry in the 2000s and altered the cultural landscape forever, from the Ringer writer and Every Single Album podcast cohost.

A viral linguist’s account of the ways our vocabularies are evolving, the internet’s influence on communication, and what our use of language reveals about the modern world

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

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

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

This no-holds-barred autobiography chronicles the remarkable life of Phil Robertson, the original Duck Commander and Duck Dynasty star, from early childhood through the founding of a family business....

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

A revelatory investigation into the rise and fall of the 'woke' movement and how we can prevent it from happening again.

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

How Virgil Abloh’s iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry embodied a groundbreaking transformation of the relationship between who we are and what we wear.

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

Celebrate your love of the Magic Kingdom with a must-have handbook that features everything from its stunning history to its iconic rides and attractions to surprising trivia, behind-the-scenes facts, and more.

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

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

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

One of the most admired nonfiction writers of our time retells the story of one truly fabulous year in the life of his native country....

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

It is no secret that we are in the midst of a cultural revolution. Activists in the 'woke' movement have claimed to be on the right side of history, and yet their approach has been intolerant, intemperate and, above all, illiberal. Having dominated the western world for the past fifteen years, there are clear signs the woke are now losing their power. The re-election of Donald Trump, the scaling back of DEI initiatives, and a growing awareness of the threats to women's sex-based rights has stirred a counter-revolution. But is this truly the end of woke? Or have the culture wars merely evolved?

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

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

America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles was an unknown young writer taking whatever job he could while pursuing his distant literary dreams. He'd instead become an eyewitness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by “the coy it-girl at the end of history.”

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

In this cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion's influence through the lens of American mythmaking. As a young girl, Didion was infatuated with John Wayne and his on-screen bravado, and was fascinated by her California pioneer ancestry and the infamous Donner Party. The mythos that preoccupied her early years continued to influence her work as a magazine writer and film critic in New York, offering glimmers of the many stories Didion told herself that would come to unravel over the course of her career. But out west, show business beckoned.

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

In this incisive new work, Adrian Daub analyzes the global spread of cancel culture discourse as a moral panic, showing that, though its object is fuzzy, talk of cancel culture in global media has become a preoccupation of an embattled liberalism. There are plenty of conservative voices who gin up worries about cancel culture to advance their agendas. But more remarkable perhaps is that it is centrist, even left-leaning, media that have taken up the rallying cry and really defined the outlines of what cancel culture is supposed to be.

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

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

Grammy-winning artist Kid Cudi took the stand in a Manhattan federal courtroom to deliver one of the most gripping testimonies of the decade — and it felt more like a scene from a psychological thriller than real life. Wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans, Cudi recounted a chilling night in December: a panicked phone call from Cassie, a confrontation with Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a sequence of events that ended with his Porsche torched by what looked like a Molotov cocktail. Inside the courtroom, his voice cracked as he recalled: A midnight escape to the Sunset Marquis A call ...

Remember the thrill of the open road? The anticipation of what bizarre, oversized, or wonderfully weird wonder awaited just around the next bend? Embark on a captivating expedition with "American Oddities - Roadside Wonders: A Nostalgic Journey to Giant Dinosaurs, Muffler Men, and the Golden Age of Americana Kitsch." This is your ultimate guide to the unforgettable, often outlandish, attractions that defined a unique era of American travel and ingenuity. Back when the automobile first empowered the average family to explore, the American highway became a canvas for creativity, commerce, and...

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

In this unofficial title, Rebecca Jennings takes the most iconic and unforgettable moments from Love Island to remind us dating should be fun—not just tolerable. A witty love letter to Love Island superfans, hopeless romantics, and serial swipers, Be the Bombshell will teach you to demand what you want unapologetically and to tell the difference between what’s worth the compromise and what’s settling for less than you deserve.

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

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

Big Tobacco Versus the World Cigarettes: the only consumer product that kills half its loyal customers when used exactly as intended. Yet somehow, for over a century, they’ve been marketed with charm, sophistication, cowboy hats, and cartoon camels. What gives? Big Tobacco Versus the World is a wry, sharp-eyed look at how a global industry managed to hook billions, bury the evidence, and keep the profits rolling while the bodies piled up. It’s a tale of manipulation, addiction, denial, and the people fighting back with facts, lawsuits, and a lot more stamina than a chain-smoker’s ...

The paranormal investigator series picks up with what we are calling series two. This series will feature more Famous investigators both real and fictional. This book will explore not only the lives of these investigators but their specialized fields of study. Collin de Plancy, like most other demonologists who came before him, followed the tradition of cataloging demons according to their names and titles. Dictionnaire Infernal is his most renowned work. Reginald Scot wasn't at first convinced of the idea of witches.

Lights, camera, quiz time! This book is your ultimate backstage pass to the world of television and film. Packed with 400 challenging and entertaining questions across 10 exciting chapters, it will take you on a thrilling journey through decades of iconic TV shows and blockbuster films. From classic British soaps like EastEnders to modern Netflix hits, cult sitcoms, and unforgettable reality TV moments, this book has something for every fan.