Showing titles in Popular Culture

Drawing on new research and enlivened by Touré's unique pop-cultural fluency, I Would Die 4 U relies on surprising and in-depth interviews with Prince's band members, former girlfriends, musicologists, and even Bible scholars to deconstruct the artist's life and work. Prince's baby boomer status allowed him to play a wise older brother to the latchkey kids of Generation X. Defying traditional categories of race, gender, and sexuality, he nonetheless presented a very traditional conception of religion and God in his music.

READ BY ACTOR GEORGE NEWBERN NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Franklin Foer’s dark and witty tale of the soccer world reveals the meaning of globalization in all its joys and horrors.”—Robert Kagan Now available in audio, just in time for the 2026 World Cup in North America, the bestselling sports...

From backrooms of Max's and CBGB's to the Tropicana Hotel in Los Angeles and back, Punk Avenue is a tour de force of stories from someone at the heart of the era. With brilliant, often hilarious prose, Phil Marcade relays first-hand tales about spending a Provincetown summer with photographer Nan Goldin and actor-writer Cookie Mueller, having the Ramones play their very first gig at his party, working with Blondie's Debbie Harry on French lyrics for her songs, enjoying Thanksgiving with Johnny Thunders' mother, and starting the beloved NYC punk-blues band The Senders. 

This centennial edition of Emily Post’s classic guide to etiquette has been completely rewritten with up-to-date and comprehensive advice on the need-to-know manners, customs, and best practices of today. For the past one hundred years, Emily Post has been America’s definitive source for how...

In Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet, Donald R. Prothero demystifies these conspiracies and offers answers to some of humanity's most outlandish questions. Applying his extensive scientific knowledge, Prothero corrects misinformation that con artists and quacks use to hoodwink others about geology - hollow earth, expanding earth, and bizarre earthquakes-and mystical and paranormal happenings - healing crystals, alien landings, and the gates of hell.

From the authors of Quackery, a visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science. From the easily disproved to the wildly speculative, to straight-up hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science—it’s a...

All around us people are looking at their phones too much, eating too much, drinking too much. Our world is addicted to fleeting distracting pleasures that get us nowhere. Dr Anna Lembke provides a clear way back to a balanced life. This audiobook is about pleasure. It's also about pain. Most...

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 Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Daredevil: Born Again, the comic's titular hero has his life destroyed after his most menacing enemy learns his real identity. His attempts to rebuild his life and sanity result in one of the most gripping and impactful superhero storylines of all time. Released in 1986, the storyline is an extraordinary exploration of what happens when a hero's identity is revealed, and his personal life completely annihilated. We see Daredevil reduced to the lowest depths in the character's history, but we also follow his painstaking path toward redemption.

Winner of Audiobook of the Year at The Specsavers National Book Awards 2018 Penguin presents the audio edition of The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, read by Benedict Cumberbatch. The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting journey to discover the meaning...

Art Monsters is a landmark feminist intervention in the way we think about women's stories and bodies, calling attention to a radical genealogy of feminist art that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims. Exploring a rich lineage of visual artists, thinkers, and writers, Elkin examines the ways feminists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth of their experiences as bodies.

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.

Stephen Mansfield, the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author, has highlighted the growing popularity of Mormonism—a belief system with cultic roots—and the implications of its critical rise. Mormons are moving into the spotlight in pop culture, politics, sports, and entertainment via presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, media personality Glenn Beck, mega-bestselling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, and The Book of Mormon, the hottest show on Broadway.

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. 

John and Paul were more than friends, collaborators or rivals in the sense we normally understand those terms. They were both exceptionally intense young men who had the fabric of their world ruptured at a young age. There have been millions of words written about The Beatles, but this is the first book to focus on what lay at the heart of this phenomenon: the alchemy of two young men. Ian Leslie explores this volatile, madly creative quasi-marriage and misunderstood story. The result is a wildly enjoyable biography, told through the songs, which will make us see and hear John and Paul afresh.

Journalist Debbie Nathan reveals the true story behind the famous case of Sybil, the woman with sixteen different personalities.

"Like a J.D. Salinger novel rolled in Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinogen dust." —Ann Powers, author of Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell "[Waiting for Britney Spears] transformed and transported me." ―Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year A frenetic, gonzo account of...

Coming off the breakthrough success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Killing Yourself to Live, bestselling essayist and pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman assembles his best music journalism and media commentary previously unavailable in book form—including the groundbreaking 1996 piece...

An entertaining and deeply nostalgic dive into how female pop stars broke through the music industry in the 2000s and altered the cultural landscape forever, from the Ringer writer and Every Single Album podcast cohost “Hit Girls bridges our butterfly-clipped, bedazzled past with today’s...

What if Batman knew your name and wanted to be friends with you? What if you were the one that Tony Stark died to save? What if it was you that Luke Skywalker would stop at nothing to redeem? Hollywood Heroes will awaken you to these questions and help you to see a God who stops at nothing to redeem you. Fictional stories about heroes help us realize that there is evil to fight, souls to be won, and growth to be achieved. It helps us recognize - regardless of religious or cultural beliefs - that sacrificing your life for another’s is a powerful and beautiful display of love.