Entertainment Science

Jay-Z: Made in America is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson’s decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced, as gifted a wordsmith as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Rita Dove. But as a rapper, he’s sometimes not given the credit he deserves for just how great an artist he’s been for so long.

A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: Everyone here wants something...and everyone has something to lose. Leda Cole's flawless exterior belies a secret addiction - to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched. Eris Dodd-Radson's beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart. Rylin Myers' job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world - and a romance - she never imagined...but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?

Deltora is a land of monsters and magic. The evil Shadow Lord has become aware that Lief, Barda, and Jasmine are searching for the seven lost gems of the magic Belt of Deltora. He knows that the Belt's power will threaten his terrifying rule if the gems can be returned to it. Five gems have already been found. The next stone lies hidden in the underwater lair of the hideous and ferocious Glus. Already pursued by the servants of the Shadow Lord, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine will need all their strength and courage to face the Maze of the Beast.

In a city the size of New York, things go missing all the time. When a Nobel Prize-winning chemist vanishes without a trace, his granddaughter taps Alex to find him. Locating people is easy for someone with the best finding rune in the city, but when Alex tracks down the missing man, he has no memory of who he is or what happened to him, and his research is missing.

Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Adam Sisman's definitive biography, published in 2015, provided a revealing portrait of this fascinating man; yet some aspects of his subject remained hidden. The Secret Life of John le Carré reveals a hitherto-hidden perspective on the life and work of the spy-turned-author and a fascinating meditation on the complex relationship between biographer and subject. “Now that he is dead,” Sisman writes, “we can know him better.”

In How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, veteran journalist Chris Taylor traces the series from the difficult birth of the original film through its sequels, the franchise’s death and rebirth, the prequels, and the preparations for a new trilogy. Taylor provides portraits of the friends, writers, artists, producers, and marketers who labored behind the scenes to turn Lucas’s idea into a legend.

The Moog synthesizer "bent the course of music forever" Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation-suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Moog's gamechanging sounds saturated sixties counterculture and burst into the disco party in the seventies to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and became a star.

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.

Comedians Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld never thought anyone would watch their silly little sitcom about a New York comedian sitting around talking to his friends. NBC executives didn't think anyone would watch either, but they bought it anyway, hiding it away in the TV dead zone of summer. But against all odds, viewers began to watch, first a few and then many, until nine years later nearly 40 million Americans were tuning in weekly.

A riveting saga in the history of rock ‘n’ roll: the decades-long rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound - Leo Fender and Les Paul - and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.

Picking up where Under the Big Black Sun left off, More Fun in the New World explores the years 1982 to 1987, covering the dizzying pinnacle of LA's punk rock movement as its stars took to the national - and often international - stage. Detailing the eventual splintering of punk into various sub-genres, the second volume of John Doe and Tom DeSavia's west coast punk history portrays the rich cultural diversity of the movement and its characters, the legacy of the scene, how it affected other art forms, and ultimately influenced mainstream pop culture.

The five members of an elite commando group nicknamed "the Stone Wolves" once raged against Creterakian rule. Now, four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living. But a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. Hopscotch, RedWire, the Killer, Lulz, and Recoil will soon wish their pasts could stay dead.

Blue mages learn skills from beasts. This is the story of one fortunate enough to be taken in by dragons.

Why does fashion hold so much power over us? Most of us care about how we dress and how we present ourselves. Style offers clues about everything from class to which in-group we belong to. Bad Feminist for fashion, Dress Code takes aim at the institutions within the fashion industry while reminding us of the importance of dress and what it means for self-presentation. Everything—from societal changes to the progress (or lack thereof) of women’s rights to the hidden motivations behind what we choose to wear to align ourselves with a particular social group—can be tracked through clothing.

"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person." ( The World According to Mister Rogers)

Arthur Black's voice is unmistakable on the radio and on the page. His is the voice of reason, with a generous helping of funny; the voice that scolds us for our universal human quirks, but who says it with the tone and words that make us laugh out loud at ourselves and our neighbors. A Chip Off the Old Black, Black's latest collection of stories, will knock a sense of humor into any reader, boasting nearly 100 tales featuring everything from yarnbombing to Bambi.

Back in January 1995 in Los Angeles, California, a Singaporean pornstar named Annabel Chong took cultural rebellion to an extreme, on terms that had never been negotiated before. She was filmed having sex with a long receiving line of men, servicing them 251 times over a ten-hour period to set a new world record: The World’s Biggest Gangbang.

Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters.

It is year two of the Bunkyu era. Six years have passed since the alcohol craze that stole yet more loved ones from Jinya's life, but as time marches forward, so must he. The new era keeps Edo on edge as the anti-shogunate movement gains momentum with each passing day.

Finding out that she was a witch was strange enough, but now Nicole must face the realization that she has the rare power to kill with just a touch. No one can know her secret - not even Blake, who she's had undeniable chemistry with since first moving to town. Now Nicole, Blake, and the three others with elemental powers must journey abroad to stop a series of monsters that they previously believed to be dead from rising once again and destroying the mortal world. Will they all survive the quest?