Entertainment Culture

Martin Torgoff details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new segment of the American fabric. Channeling his decades of writing experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the launch of heroin in Harlem.

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.

The Mockumentary.. or fake documentary.. is becoming an increasingly successful film and television formula across many genres. Although they all investigate very different people, places, and events, they all share one key characteristic that differentiates them from most documentaries. None of it is real. They're all make-believe.

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s...

Discover the science behind the most popular sci-fi franchise of all time. Capturing the imagination and hearts of crowds worldwide, Star Wars is a fantastic feat of science fiction and fantasy. We marvel at the variety of creatures and technology and the mystery behind the force. But how much of the Star Wars world is rooted in reality? Could we see some of the extraordinary inventions materialize in our world?

Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.

Throughout her career, Carole Pope has blazed a trail for the diva and anti-diva in all of us, and here she offers a no-holds-barred look at her adventures in the music scene – on the concert stage, in the recording studio, and in the bedroom. Known for ushering Canada from the punk movement...

The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies, James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters’ inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness.

Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, ER, Cheers, Law & Order, Will & Grace…Here is the funny, splashy, irresistible insiders’ account of the greatest era in television history -- told by the actors, writers, directors, producers, and the network executives who made it happen…and watched it all fall...

Millions of people go to enormous lengths to achieve fame. Fame is woven into our lives in ways that may have been unimaginable in years past. Mining decades of experience, writer, director, producer, and actress Justine Bateman writes a visceral, intimate look at the experience of Fame. Combining the internal reality-shift of the famous, theories on the public’s behavior at each stage of a famous person’s career, and the experiences of other famous performers, Bateman takes the listener inside and outside the emotions of Fame.

In this "saucy and smart" memoir, a journalist uses pop culture as a lens to navigate her identity as a Black woman (Oprah Daily). Nichole Perkins takes readers on a rollicking trip through the last twenty years of music, media and the internet, exploring her experience with mental illness, her...

Noah Lefevre, creator of Polyphonic, explores how our favorite music does more than entertain. From Aretha Franklin carving out her own space in what had been considered a man's world by reworking the chauvinistic lyrics to the 1967's hit "Respect," to Doja Cat's successful backlash against toxic fans of the digital age; from a broken amplifier on "Rocket 88" ushering in the distorted sounds of rock n' roll, to Kendrick Lamar's release of "Alright," which became the unofficial anthem to the BLM protests-each song mirrors the strife, change and progress of our country's narrative.

REMARKABLE BIOGRAPHY OF AN ICON There's little debate that Robert De Niro is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, screen actors of his generation, perhaps of all time. His work, particularly in the first 20 years of his career, is unparalleled. Mean Streets, the Godfather Part II, Taxi...

What does it mean to call something "new"? Why is Western art and culture, even after postmodernism, still so obsessed with the concept? What are the consequences of relying on culture to bring about social change? In this provocative book, David Balzer argues that Western culture was never designed to produce truly new or original artifacts. Rather, we move from fixation to fixation, trend to trend—a cycle of creation and destruction with deep origins in Judeo-Christianity and the paganism that preceded it.

This Is Our Music, declared saxophonist Ornette Coleman's 1960 album title. But whose music was it? At various times during the 1950s and 1960s, musicians, critics, fans, politicians, and entrepreneurs claimed jazz as a national art form, an Afrocentric race music, an extension of modernist innovation in other genres, a music of mass consciousness, and the preserve of a cultural elite. This original and provocative book explores who makes decisions about the value of a cultural form and on what basis.

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for...

The Star Wars films continue to revolutionize science fiction, creating new standards for cinematographic excellence and permeating popular culture around the world. The films feature many complex themes ranging from good versus evil and moral development and corruption to religious faith and pragmatism, forgiveness and redemption, and many others.

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.

Learn about Stencil Art with iMinds insightful audio knowledge series. In any urban setting throughout the world today, you can expect to see examples of stencil art. On street corners, train stations and public toilets the world over stencil art is a favoured tool of the graffiti artist. Many consider such imagery urban pollution, the work of mindless vandals. Such attitudes ignore what has fast become one of the most significant artistic and cultural movements of the early 21st century.

This is the first academic study of sneakers and the subculture that surrounds them. Since the 1980s, American sneaker enthusiasts, popularly known as 'sneakerheads' or 'sneakerholics', have created a distinctive identity for themselves, while sneaker manufacturers such as Reebok, Puma and Nike have become global fashion brands. How have sneakers come to gain this status and what makes them fashionable?