Popular Science

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.

This audiobook is a compilation of sightings, encounters, and evidential findings as they pertain to Bigfoot in North America and those who have encountered them.

Hairstyles of the Damned is an honest and affectionate depiction of wanting to belong, but never quite belonging. Joe Menos pitch-perfect prose illuminates the tumultuous realities of American adolescence, the disintegration of the modern family, and the way a mix-tape can change a persons life. Following the riotous exploits of Brian, a Catholic school malcontent, and his best friend Gretchen, a punk rock girl fond of brawling, this work pursues what it means to develop your own identity.

Gen X is the “forgotten generation.”

Virtually anyone who has ever watched a profound movie, a powerful TV show, or read a moving novel understands that entertainment can and does affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself? In You Are What You Watch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter Hickey proves how exactly how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.

Explore the benefits of a mindful approach to life Cutting-edge studies in neuroscience have in recent years proved what many doctors, therapists and other health professionals had long suspected: simple, repetitive tasks, performed with focus and attention - mindfulness, in other words - can...

Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper delves deeply into Michael Jackson's music and talent. From the artist's early days with the Jackson 5, to his stratospheric success as a solo artist, to "Beat It" and "Thriller", "Bad", and "The Man in the Mirror", to his volatile final years, his attempted comeback, and his untimely death, Knopper explores the beguiling and often contradictory forces that fueled Michael Jackson's genius.

Cool had a lot to do with sex, sex appeal, and sex roles. Girls have never received enough credit for the fantastic leap of the mind they took in the 60s. In these post-women's-power days, we've come to take a lot for granted. But when the 17-year-old girl from the comfortable home started adopting some of the attitudes of the black jazz musician, the lessons of centuries of class and gender indoctrination were dumped in the trash along with the pink plastic curlers.

It is increasingly in the media, but what exactly is culture jamming and how does it work? Culture jamming is a form of protest in which advertisements and other media messages are re-arranged or parodied in humorous or disturbing ways. The term covers a range of practices, including sabotaging billboards, spoofing well-known ads, and hoaxing the mainstream media.

Learn about your world with iMinds Specialist Series. Have a particular interest? Recognize gaps in your knowledge? iMinds Specialist works across each of our 12 categories bringing you targeted information to broaden your mind.

Pop Culture, Volume 1, looks at the history of fireworks, the role of culture jamming, the phenomenon of the flash mob, the dance style called krumping, the "mocumentary" film genre, and the street art called Stencil Art.

Technology has given average humans far more health and wealth and freedom of action than ever. New gifts spill forth at an accelerating pace as the sheer amount that we know rockets beyond our ability to process. This acceleration has some pondering a looming singularity - an approaching time of transition, spurred in part by new kinds of artificial intelligence - that could make the year 2050 as strange to us as a cave dweller would find our modern cities. Are these extrapolations well based?

Learn about the idea that everyone has 15 minutes of fame with iMinds insightful audio knowledge series.

Commenting on the increasingly fleeting nature of celebrity, in 1968 artist Andy Warhol quipped: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." In a 21st-century world of reality TV and youtube, it appears Warhol's prediction has come true. The changing nature of celebrity over time is an interesting backdrop to today's short-lived fame.

Let's zoom in to the Internet, that magnificent new world for latter-day explorers, so much more vast than any realm discovered by Columbus or Magellan. Zealous enthusiasts point to how much more knowledge the average person can access, predicting better students, better workers, better minds and citizenship. Pessimists perceive a dumbing down that spread users too thin, resulting in shallowness that could be lethal to politics, to clear thinking. Is Google making us stupid? Let's weigh the evidence.

Happy Singlehood charts a way forward for singles to live life on their terms, and shows how everyone - single or coupled - can benefit from accepting solo living. Based on personal interviews, quantitative analysis, and extensive review of singles' writings and literature, author Elyakim Kislev uncovers groundbreaking insights on how unmarried people create satisfying lives in a world where social structures and policies are still designed to favor marriage.

From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, language, and music, as told by our own DNA. In The Disappearing Spoon, bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In The Violinist's Thumb, he explores the wonders of the...

Knowing how to craft SQL queries and navigate your way around a database is an essential skill if are a Database Administrator, System Administrator, or Programmer. This book guides you step-by-step by teaching you how to create databases, populate those databases with data, extract just the data you need, and much more.

On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark best seller Thy Neighbor's Wife, Gay Talese received an anonymous letter from a man in Colorado. "Since learning of your long-awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America," the letter began, "I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book." The man went on to tell Talese an astonishing secret: that he had bought a motel to satisfy his voyeuristic desires.

This is the first biography of Greer for two decades, drawing on unprecedented access to her extensive personal archive, opened at Melbourne University in 2016. Kleinhenz has interrogated Greer's personal and professional files, spoken to people who have known her from her school days onwards, and read every word written by and about her. Beginning with Greer’s troubled early life in 1940s Melbourne, it traces her career, relationships with men and women, her travels and her home life and examines Greer’s work and ideas from The Female Eunuch to the #MeToo movement.

In these lively and fascinating essays, scientists from around the world weigh in on the latest advances in the search for intelligent life in the universe and discuss just what that might look like. Since 2000, science has seen a surge in data and interest on several fronts related to E.T...

Americans are caught up in bulk. We guiltily watch Amazon boxes pile up on the porch, wade through endless reviews to find the perfect product, and crave the comforting indulgence of a chain restaurant. In American Bulk, Emily Mester intertwines cultural critique and personal history to explore how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. With humor and sharp intellect, she reflects on the joys and anxieties of family Costco trips, how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty taught her the insidious art of the sale, and what it means to get Mall Sad.