Entertainment Science

In the early '80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music's most lucrative genres. Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island.

The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie goes behind the scenes of a genre where cult hits mingled with studio blockbusters, where giants like Spielberg and Coppola rubbed shoulders with baby-faced first-timers, and where future superstars Sean, Demi, and Tom all got their big break. Music, comedy, and politics all play a part in the surprisingly complex history of the '80s teen movie. And while the films might have been aimed primarily at adolescents, the best tackle universal issues and remain relevant to all ages.

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school - in her 60s - to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful, demands of a life fully lived.

With well over 200 episodes and a dozen seasons, The Big Bang Theory is one of America's favorite television series, bringing a new class of character to mainstream television: the science nerd. In spite of its evident popularity and influence in shaping public attitudes to science and scientists, there are relatively few books that explore the show's culture and social dimension. The Science of The Big Bang Theory looks behind the comedy scenes and scripts of this long-running and successful TV show.

You may know W. Kamau Bell from his new Emmy-nominated hit show on CNN, United Shades of America. Or maybe you've read about him in The New York Times, which called him "the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years." Or maybe from The New Yorker fawning over his brand of humor writing: "Bell's gimmick is intersectional progressivism: he treats racial, gay, and women's issues as inseparable."

Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch’s life-long fascination with classical music has taken her through Juilliard and into the shiny world of symphony halls and international concert tours. She’s loved classical music her whole life. But she’s also hated classical music her whole life. After all, if you can like Beyoncé without liking Bieber, you can certainly like Brahms without liking Bach—especially since they were born 148 years apart and the thing we call “classical music” is really just centuries of compositions shoved into one hodge-podge of a genre.

Going back home was not exactly what Tim and the C&C gang expected. Trouble continues to follow them back to Gulf Coast Mississippi. Trouble...and a gnome...and an undead midget.

As climate change has escalated into a crisis, the reuse of existing structures is the only way to even begin to preserve our wood, sand, silicon, and iron, let alone stop belching carbon monoxide into the air. Our housing crisis means that we need usable buildings now more than ever, but architect and critic Aaron Betsky shows that new construction—often seeking to maximize profits rather than resources, often soulless in its feel—is not the answer.

Shooting Midnight Cowboy is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema but also the story of a country (and an industry) beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and then basic cable networks like FX and AMC, dramatically stretched television’s narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and artistic ambition. Just as the Big Novel had in the 1960s and the subversive films of New Hollywood had in 1970s, television shows became the place to go to see stories of the triumph and betrayals of the American Dream.

When Fancy Feast was in her high school production of "Cabaret," she convinced the director to cast her as a sexy Kit Kat Club Girl, not the old landlady part that always, always goes to the fat girl. In a black slip and fingerless gloves, Fancy made her debut appearance in a fluorescent-lit high school auditorium—and has never looked back. In Naked, Fancy draws back the curtain to reveal a world that most denizens of the daytime never see.

Fey magic and animal magic: that troublemaking imp Trix Woodcutter has both, if not the ability to use them to their full potential. While traveling with his companion - the golden girl Lizinia - to see the King of Eagles, Trix is sent a vision of the Faerie Queen, who is in desperate need of his help.

The Gamesmaster is a narrative memoir chronicling the life and career of Flint Dille. And while he isn't exactly a household name, you almost certainly know his work - which includes credits from some of the most important and successful entertainment franchises throughout the world across the cartoon, film, video game, and comic book industries and beyond.

This is Diablo's captivating fish-out-of-water story of her yearlong walk on the wild side, from quiet gentlemen's clubs to multilevel sex palaces and glassed-in peep shows. In witty prose she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at this industry through a writer's keen eye, chronicling her descent into the skin trade and the effect it had on her self-image and her relationship with her now husband.

Teardrop launches a new series from Lauren Kate, author of the #1 New York Times best-selling Fallen series. Haunting, mysterious, romantic and steeped in mythology, Teardrop is the epic saga of Eureka Boudreaux, a 17-year old Louisiana girl whose tears have the power to raise the lost continent of Atlantis . . . a world where everything you love can be washed away.

Eva Nine is at her bravest in the final book in the New York Times best-selling trilogy from the fantastical mind of Tony DiTerlizzi.

All hope for a peaceful coexistence between humankind and aliens seems lost in the third installment of the WondLa trilogy. Eva Nine has gone into hiding for fear of luring the wicked Loroc to her companions. However, news of the city Solas being captured by the human leader, Cadmus Pryde, forces Eva into action once again. With help from an unlikely ally, Eva tries to thwart Loroc’s ultimate plan for both mankind and the alien life on Orbona.

Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”, country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.

How to deal with the colonial history of art in museums and monuments in the public realm is a thorny issue that we are only just beginning to address. Alice Procter provides a guide for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about art history and tells the stories that have been left out of the canon. A much-needed provocation to look more critically at the accepted narratives about art and rethink and disrupt the way we interact with the museums and galleries that display it.