Art Study

At once the most lucrative, popular, and culturally oppositional musical force in the United States, hip-hop demands the kind of interpretation Imani Perry provides here: criticism engaged with this vibrant musical form on its own terms. A scholar and a fan, Perry considers the art, politics, and culture of hip-hop through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood.

C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.

Award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson explains that learning to hear the call of holiness requires cultivating a new imagination-one rooted in the act of reading. Learning to read with eyes attuned to the saints who populate great works of literature moves us toward holiness, where God opens up a way of living that extends far beyond what we can conjure for ourselves. Literature has the power to show us what a holy life looks like, and these depictions often scandalize even as they shape our imagination.

If I were a movie star, I would jet to places around the world. I would wear fancy costumes and get my hair and make-up done. I would make audiences laugh and cry. Dream big, and see what fun it is to be a movie star.

Read by the author. A single moment can change your life forever. When that moment arrives, will you be ready? In this deeply personal book, Madison Prewett invites you into the moments that shaped her so that you can learn how to stand firm in your own convictions before your big moment comes...

Suzuki teacher and author, Christine Goodner, explores what it takes to make music lessons work in our busy, modern lives in her first book, Beyond the Music Lesson: Habits of Successful Suzuki Families. Using exclusive interviews, current research, and Goodner’s own experience as a student, parent, and teacher, this book gives practical advice, specific ideas, and big-picture concepts sure to help every parent who listens to it.

Cosmic Publications is proud to provide all our listeners with this summary of James Nestor's Book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. Full of all the key points and takeaways from the original. Designed for the busy individual or professional.

Trans woman and screenwriter Tilly Bridges takes you through the trans allegories of the Matrix franchise, with deep dives into The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Animatrix, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Resurrections, tracking one person’s transition journey—from Thomas Anderson, to Neo… to Trinity. Each movie’s allegory is deeply layered, building from movie to movie, and speaks to a different aspect of trans existence.

Those who enjoy J. R. R. Tolkien—even those new to his classic stories—will love A Hobbit Devotional, featuring 60 humorous, challenging, and encouraging devotionals. The Hobbit has fascinated readers for more than 70 years. Now, this tale of humble folk who overcome fear, discouragement, and despair through steadfastness, courage, and hope forms the basis of a brand-new devotional book.

The one real difference between the American press and the Soviet state newspaper Pravda was that the Russian people knew they were being lied to. To expose the lies our media tell us today, controversial journalist James O'Keefe created Project Veritas, an independent news organization whose reporters go where traditional journalists dare not. Their investigative work - equal parts James Bond, Mike Wallace, and Saul Alinsky - has had a consistent and powerful impact on its targets.

As World War II approached, the six most powerful media moguls in America and Britain tried to pressure their countries to ignore the fascist threat. The media empires of Robert McCormick, Joseph and Eleanor Patterson, and William Randolph Hearst spanned the United States, reaching tens of millions of Americans in print and over the airwaves with their isolationist views.

Movies matter—that is the message of Reel to Real, bell hooks' classic collection of essays on film. They matter on a personal level, providing us with unforgettable moments, even life-changing experiences, and they can confront us, too, with the most profound social issues of race, sex and class. Here bell hooks—one of America's most celebrated and thrilling cultural critics—talks back to films that have moved and provoked her, from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction to the work of Spike Lee.

The Cost of Living explores the subtle erasure of women's names, spaces, and stories in the modern everyday. In this "living autobiography" infused with warmth and humor, Deborah Levy critiques the roles that society assigns to us and reflects on the politics of breaking with the usual gendered rituals. What does it cost a woman to unsettle old boundaries and collapse the social hierarchies that make her a minor character in a world not arranged to her advantage?

A delightful new recording of T. S. Eliot's beloved cat poems. Cats! Some are sane, some are mad and some are good and some are bad. Meet magical Mr. Mistoffelees, sleepy Old Deuteronomy and curious Rum Tum Tugger. But you'll be lucky to meet Macavity because Macavity's not there! In 1925, T. S. Eliot became codirector of Faber & Faber, who remain his publishers to this day.

Gina Frangello spent her early adulthood trying to outrun a youth marked by poverty and violence. Now a long-married wife and devoted mother, the better life she carefully built is emotionally upended by the death of her closest friend. Soon, awakened to fault lines in her troubled marriage, Frangello is caught up in a recklessly passionate affair, leading a double life while continuing to project the image of the perfect family. When her secrets are finally uncovered, both her home and her identity will implode, testing the limits of desire, responsibility, love, and forgiveness.

In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.

This explosively entertaining memoir abounds in gossip, satire, historical apercus, and trenchant observations. Vidal’s compelling narrative weaves back and forth in time, providing a whole view of the author’s celebrated life, from his birth in 1925 to today, and features a cast of memorable characters - including the Kennedy family, Marlon Brando, Anais Nin, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

At the center of The Dark Night of the Soul (La noche oscura del alma) is a poem written by the 16th century Spanish poet and mystic St John of the Cross. Consisting of eight stanzas, each of five lines, the poem outlines the journey in pursuit of divine union, within which the only source of light comes from the soul. This recording in English includes the poem itself and St John's two accompanying treatises (1584-1585), essentially commentaries, which offer line-by-line explanations of the poem. Many modern listeners have found guidance and consolation in this work.

A brilliant research mathematician reveals math to be a creative art form on par with painting, poetry, and sculpture, and rejects the standard anxiety-producing teaching methods used in most schools today. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart's controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike, altering the way we think about math forever.

Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for 40 years. They became friends and then roommates as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they roomed together again. Between them they made such memorable films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window.