Popular Science

The landscape that the Brat Pack memorialized is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out like an '80s movie. You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, through Susannah Gora's interviews with key players such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.

From the kid who brought you Fargo Rock City, the first book in history to garner the praise of Stephen King, David Byrne, Donna Gaines, Sebastian Bach, Jonathan Lethem, and Rivers Cuomo, comes Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, the first book in history to examine breakfast cereal, reality television, tribute bands, Internet porn, serial killers, and the Dixie Chicks.

With the world facing divisive events and movements like the rise of nationalism, Trump, Brexit, Erdogan, and more, there's never been a more important time to travel. Rick believes the risks of travel are widely exaggerated, and that fear is for people who don't get out much. After years of living out of a suitcase, he still marvels at how different cultures may find different truths to be self-evident. By sharing his experiences from Europe, Central America, Asia, and the Middle East, Rick shows how we can learn more about own country by viewing it from afar.

Few events have had a more profound impact on the social and cultural upheavals of the Sixties than the psychedelic revolution spawned by the spread of LSD. This audiobook for the first time tells the full and astounding story - part of it hidden till now in secret Government files - of the role the mind-altering drug played in our recent turbulent history and the continuing influence it has on our time. And what a story it is, beginning with LSD’s discovery in 1943 as the most potent drug known to science.

While the success of Disneyland is largely credited to Walt and Roy Disney, there was a third, mostly forgotten dynamo instrumental to the development of the park: fast-talking Texan C. V. Wood. Three Years in Wonderland presents the never-before-told, full story of "the happiest place on earth".

Truly a medicine for body and soul, one of cannabis’ greatest gifts is its remarkable potential for spiritual healing and awakening. In this authoritative guide, editor Stephen Gray and 17 other influential voices of the modern cannabis movement explore the spiritual benefits of cannabis and offer guidance on how to interact with the intelligence of this plant ally, a companion and supporter of humanity for millennia.

Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren't always the saints that we make them out to be. Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups.

Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.

Thomas Sowell is one of America’s leading voices on matters of race and ethnicity. In his book, Inside American Education, he surveyed the ills of American education from the primary grades to graduate school with “an impressive range of knowledge and acuity of observation”, according to the Wall Street Journal. Now, in his book Race and Culture, he asks the question: “What is it that allows certain groups to get ahead?” and the answer will undoubtedly create debates for years to come.

For most of Jen Sookfong Lee's life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams. Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her.

Gary John Bishop’s newest audio original takes on three hot-button topics that seem to be flooding the media headlines, our social media newsfeeds, and our conversations with friends and family: conspiracy, upheaval, and pandemic. In this timely and important book, Gary will shine the light on each topic to provide new ways of understanding how they might be operating in our lives, and how we can take control.

In The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over 200 original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past 100 years.

Here, against a backdrop of late-night tattoo sessions and soldier-of-fortune trade shows, Dr. Thompson is at his apocalyptic best - covering emblematic events such as the 1987-88 presidential campaign, with Vice President George Bush, Sr., fighting for his life against Republican competitors like Alexander Haig, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson; detailing the GOP's obsession with drugs and drug abuse; while at the same time capturing momentous social phenomena as they occurred, like the rise of cable, satellite TV, and CNN - 24 hours of mainline news.

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the "attention merchants", contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions, but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.

Since its final episode aired in 2008, HBO's acclaimed crime drama The Wire has only become more popular and influential. The issues it tackled, from the failures of the drug war and criminal justice system to systemic bias in law enforcement and other social institutions, have become more urgent and central to the national conversation. But while there has been a great deal of critical analysis of the show and its themes, until now there has never been a definitive, behind-the-scenes take on how it came to be made.

Originally published in 1966, Susan Sontag's first collection of essays is a modern classic and includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation", as well as, her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Levi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.

Big decisions are hard. We consult friends and family, make sense of confusing “expert” advice online, maybe we read a self-help book to guide us. In the end, we usually just do what feels right, pursuing high stakes self-improvement—such as who we marry, how to date, where to live, what makes us happy—based solely on what our gut instinct tells us. But what if our gut is wrong? Biased, unpredictable, and misinformed, our gut, it turns out, is not all that reliable. And data can prove this.

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.

What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. Try as we might to avoid them, assholes are found everywhere - at work, at home, on the road, and in the public sphere. Encountering one causes great difficulty and personal strain, especially because we often cannot understand why exactly someone should be acting like that.

For all of human history, we have made permanent marks on our skin—for multifarious, fascinating, reasons. The oldest preserved tattooed skin that survives is European: Ötzi, the famous ‘Iceman’ mummy, whose body is covered in small tattoo marks, allows us a brief glimpse into the pre-history of the practice. Since then, people in every corner of the world have decided to tattoo themselves, and countless cultures have performed this ancient artistic practice. But for the most part, these fascinating histories remain stubbornly untold.