Popular Science

Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.

Known to mankind since prehistoric times, opium is arguably the oldest and most widely used narcotic. Opium: A History traces the drug's astounding impact on world culture - from its religious use by prehistoric peoples to its influence on the imaginations of the Romantic writers; from the earliest medical science to the Sino-British opium wars.

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.

Recuperamos El acoso moral, un longseller de Paidós, donde la autora analiza este tipo de relaciones perversas a través de numerosos testimonios y nos enseña a identificarlas allá donde se produzcan, ya sea en la pareja, la familia o la empresa. «Acoso moral» es el concepto que describe la posibilidad de destruir a alguien solo con palabras, miradas o insinuaciones. En este libro, que se alimenta de numerosos testimonios, la autora analiza la especificidad de este tipo de relaciones perversas y nos enseña a identificarlas allá donde se produzcan, ya sea en la pareja, la familia o la empresa.

Elements of Wit is an engaging audiobook that brings together the greatest wits of our time, and previous ones from Oscar Wilde to Nora Ephron, Winston Churchill to Christopher Hitchens, Mae West to Louis CK, and many in between. With chapters covering the essential ingredients of wit, this primer sheds light on how anyone - introverts, extroverts, wallflowers, and bon vivants - can find the right zinger, quip, parry, or retort... or at least be a little bit more interesting.

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.

Everyone loves senior Carson Toliver, the captain and quarterback of the football team, heartthrob of South Burlington County Regional High - especially the girls. Even Jack's best friend, Weezy, has a crush on him. But Jack is surprised when Weezy tells him that Carson took her on a date and attacked her. Jack tries to convince her to report Carson, but Weezy would rather just forget it ever happened. But then Carson starts telling his own version of what happened that night, and suddenly everyone is calling her "Easy Weezy". Jack's concern turns to rage.

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all.

Discover and understand the key ideas that underpin the core science of chemistry and learn about the great minds who uncovered them. Written in plain English, The Chemistry Book is packed with short, pithy explanations of some of the most historic moments in science, from the birth of atomic...

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.

Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of disintermediation: cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. Flow is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub.

What was it about a small, humble folk instrument that allowed it to become an American icon? The guitar represents freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. Tim Brookes explores with adoration these ideas and how they became entwined with the history of America.

Looking to connect with family and friends over shared memories? This audiobook is your perfect companion. Are you seeking a fun way to keep your mind active? Want to bond with your grandchildren over shared stories? Trivia for Seniors brings back the joy of favorite past moments while creating new ones with loved ones. Filled with over 500 multiple-choice questions from the 1950s to 1990s, this collection covers music, movies, historical events, and cultural milestones.

This audiobook includes forewords read by the authors, Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert. The International Bestseller 'Ambitious . . . pleasingly full of cutting-edge topics - New Scientist 'A physics book unlike any other. The scope, depth and artistry are breathtaking' – John Preskill...

Elton John is not only "still standing," he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock music that he helped to shape during his six decades in the music industry. Yet few of his numerous biographies and song guides take him as a historical subject worthy of scholarly study. In contrast, On Elton John approaches the artist seriously and analytically, while still couched in a highly accessible style.

In this audiobook, the authors of the widely-acclaimed Wellness Syndrome throw themselves headlong into the techniques of self-optimization, a burgeoning movement that seeks to transcend the limits placed on us as mere humans, whether the feebleness of our bodies or our mental incapacities. Cederstrom and Spicer, devoted each month of a roller coaster year to a different way of improving themselves: January was Productivity, February their bodies, March their brains. June was for sex and September for money. Perhaps the trickiest was April, a month devoted to relationships.

Long before Superman or Batman made their first appearances, there was Zorro. Born on the pages of the pulps in 1919, Zorro fenced his way through the American popular imagination, carving his signature letter Z into the flesh of evildoers in Old Spanish California. Zorro is the original caped crusader, the first hero to have a band called the Avengers, and the character who laid the blueprint for the modern American superhero. In Zorro's Shadow, historian and Latin American studies expert Stephen J. C. Andes investigates the legends behind the mask of Zorro.

Misinformation and myths have attached themselves to the Egyptian pyramids since ancient Greece and Rome. While many Americans believe that the pyramids were built by aliens, archaeologists understand that the Giza pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty around 2450 BCE. So why is there such a disconnect between scholarly opinion and the popular view of Egypt? Jason Colavito takes us back to Late Antique Egypt, where the replacement of polytheism with Christianity gave rise to local efforts to rewrite the stories of Egyptian history in the image of the Bible.

24 and Philosophy is a book you just can't do without. It's all here, folks: the reason presidents trust him; how Jack cuts through the lies and ambiguities; why he puts his life on the line for others; and how he knows which knee cap to blow out to get that all-important next lead. With the help of 20 "24 crazed" philosophers, you'll figure out what makes this guy tick, and much much more.