Popular History

You mean this place we go to five days a week has a history? Cubed reveals the unexplored yet surprising story of the places where most of the world's work - our work - gets done. From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to The Office, from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, Cubed is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is - and what it might become.

Guthrie kept moving throughout his life, making friends, soaking up influences, and writing about his experiences. Along the way, he produced more than 3,000 songs, as well as fiction, journalism, poetry, and visual art, that gave voice to the distressed and dispossessed. In this insightful audiobook, Will Kaufman examines the artist’s career through a unique perspective: the role of time and place in Guthrie’s artistic evolution.

We may not often think of our clothes as having a function beyond covering our naked bodies and keeping us a little safer from the elements. But to discount the enormous influence of clothing on anything from economic cycles to the future of water scarcity is to ignore the greater meaning of the garments we put on our backs. Disrobed vividly considers the role that clothing plays in everything from natural disasters to climate change to terrorism to geopolitics to agribusiness.

Cookbooks are not political in conventional ways. Yet, as repositories of human taste, cookbooks transmit specific blends of flavor, texture, and nutrition across space and time. Cookbooks both form and reflect who we are. Cookbook Politics argues that cookbooks highlight aspects of our lives we rarely recognize as political - taste, production, domesticity, collectivity, and imagination - and considers the ways in which cookbooks have or do politics, from the most overt to the most subtle.

With every touchdown, home run, and three-pointer, star athletes represent an American dream that only an elite group blessed with natural talent can achieve. However, Kimball concentrates on what happens once these modern warriors meet their untimely demise. As athletes die, legends rise in their place.

Americans have long been fascinated with the oddness of the British, but the English, says literary critic Terry Eagleton, find their transatlantic neighbors just as strange. Only an alien race would admiringly refer to a colleague as "aggressive," use superlatives to describe everything from one's pet dog to one's rock collection, or speak frequently of being "empowered."

The hundreds of end-of-time prophecies splashed across the consciousness from the time of clay tablets to our Internet have had something besides hysteria in common: every one of them has been wrong. Here is a survey of three millennia of apocalyptic prophecies, tracing one of the most remarkable threads of our cultural history: our long and unproductive fascination with apocalyptic myths and miracles that can solve our problems without requiring committed action in our own lives.

The New York Yankees. The Boston Red Sox. For a hundred years, no two teams have locked horns as fiercely or as frequently, and no two seasons frame the colossal battle more perfectly than 2003 and 2004. Now, with incredible energy and access, leading sports columnist Mike Vaccaro chronicles the history of the greatest rivalry in sports, and the two stunning American League Championship Series that define a century of baseball.

This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life.

More than 60,000 books have been published on the Civil War. Most Americans, though, get their ideas about the war why it was fought, what was won, what was lost not from books but from movies, television, and other popular media. In an engaging and accessible survey, Gallagher guides listeners through the stories told in recent film and art, showing how they have both reflected and influenced the political, social, and racial currents of their times.

Comic book superheroines bend steel, travel across time and space, and wield awesome forces. These mighty females do everything that male superheroes do. But they have to work their wonders in skirts and high heels. The Supergirls asks whether their world of fantasy is that different from our own. Are the stories of Wonder Woman’s search for an identity, Batwoman and Power Girl’s battle for equality, and Manhunter’s juggling of a crime fighting career and motherhood also an alternative saga of modern American women?

Why is the athlete so important to us? Few public figures can dominate the public imagination with such power and authority. Drawing from art, literature, politics, and history, Something like the Gods explores the powerful grip the athlete has always held on the Western imagination. Amidon examines the archetype of the competitor as it evolved from antiquity to the present day, from athlete-warriors such as Achilles and Ulysses to global media icons like Ali, Jordan, and Tiger Woods.

For more than 75 years, Catwoman has forged her own path in a clear-cut world of stalwart heroes, diabolical villains, and damsels in distress. Her relentless independence across comic books, television, and film set her apart from the rest of the superhero world. When female-led comics were few and far between, Catwoman headlined her own series for over 20 years. But her unique path had its downsides as well.

"In nome della mia ormai pluridecennale consuetudine con le piante, ho immaginato che queste care compagne di viaggio, come genitori premurosi, dopo averci reso possibile vivere, vengano a soccorrerci osservando la nostra incapacità a garantirci la sopravvivenza. Come? Suggerendoci una vera e propria costituzione su cui costruire il nostro futuro di esseri rispettosi della Terra e degli altri esseri viventi.

Twitter, Facebook, e-publishing, blogs, distance-learning and other social media raise some of the most divisive cultural questions of our time. Some see the technological breakthroughs we live with as hopeful and democratic new steps in education, information gathering, and human progress. But others are deeply concerned by the eroding of civility online, declining reading habits, withering attention spans, and the treacherous effects of 24/7 peer pressure on our young.

From monsters to witches and ancient libraries to lost islands, The Life Fantastic seeks to trace the origins of ideas, their surprising paths, and unexpected ways in which they interact and manifest throughout history. By digging around the roots of literary genres, popular stories, and ancient myths, Noa propels the listener back and forth through time, from high to popular culture, from art to politics and religion, on a journey to ever-expanding horizons. This is an invitation to explore the collective subconscious of Western culture.

La contracultura en México se desplaza entre varios géneros, cubriendo los grandes movimientos y las manifestaciones contraculturales más importantes que ha tenido nuestro país, tales como los pachucos, los existencialistas, las pandillas juveniles o el rockanroll. En esta obra alucinante, el autor también da cuenta de las expresiones juveniles que han incidido en la música, la literatura, el teatro, el cine, la gráfica, la televisión y las publicaciones.

For word nerds and grammar geeks, a witty guide to the most commonly mispronounced words, along with their correct pronunciations and pithy forays into their fascinating etymologies and histories of use and misuse.

Ace Collins has dug deep to uncover the true stories behind your favorite Christmas songs. Explore how these songs came into being, and discover a deeper appreciation for these melodic messages of peace, hope, and joy that celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Aparentemente da noite para o dia, o programa de TV mais popular da história da América Latina havia desaparecido de todas as redes a cabo e de streaming, e ninguém sabia o motivo. Seu desaparecimento trouxe à tona questões sobre a história confusa do programa. Nesta série, investigamos os problemas políticos, cômicos e interpessoais do programa, juntamente com a experiência de assistir a um programa que definiu gerações da televisão latino-americana. Separamos a nostalgia dos danos reais causados por Chaves para reformular o que significa amar uma obra de arte complicada.