Showing titles in Popular Culture

Smart, humorous, and strikingly original essays by one of “America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time.” (Rebecca Traister) In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society.

Author Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for apocalypse or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal. Filled with marvelous characters, stories, and ideas, Digital Cash is an engaging and accessible account of the strange origins and remarkable technologies behind today’s cryptocurrency explosion.

Two leading data scientists offer an up-close and user-friendly look at artificial intelligence: what it is, how it works, where it came from and how to harness its power for a better world. Dozens of times per day, we all interact with intelligent machines that are constantly learning from the wealth of data now available to them. These machines, from smartphones to talking robots to self-driving cars, are remaking the world in the 21st century in the same way that the Industrial Revolution remade the world in the 19th.

Dall'indimenticabile ingegnere-filosofo partenopeo, un autore da 20 milioni di copie. «In questo libro pongo 4 grandi domande: 1 Esiste Dio? 2 Esiste il Destino? 3 Che cos'è il tempo? 4 Che cos'è lo spazio? A esse cerco di trovare, se non proprio una risposta, almeno un tentativo di risposta.»

WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH AGEE PRIZE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE The American Open Road offers a rich exploration of how the mythos of the open road has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. Beginning with the post–World War II boom that solidified car culture as central to American life...

It's hard to imagine our world without its stars and celebrity geniuses—they become a part of our culture and history, seeming permanent and preordained. But as Cass Sunstein shows in this startling book, that is far from the case. Focusing on both famous and forgotten (or simply overlooked) artists and luminaries in music, literature, business, science, politics, and other fields, he explores why some individuals become famous and others don't, and offers a new understanding of the role of greatness, luck, and contingency in the achievement of fame.

When twelve-year-old Anne Shirley came to Avonlea, she quickly won everyone’s heart. Now, she’s five years older, almost a woman, and about to embark on a new adventure: becoming the teacher in her old Avonlea school. It’s an exciting year as Anne struggles to win over all her students, welcomes two new members to her family, and feels the first stirrings of love.

From the moment there was an “online,” there was sex online. The famous test image used by software engineers to develop formats like the jpeg was “Lena,” taken from Playboy’s November 1972 centerfold. Early bulletin boards and multi-user domains quickly came to serve their members...

In July 1997, the first contestant voted off the first episode of the first ever reality TV elimination show took his own life. Expedition Robinson was the first show of its kind anywhere, and it was going to be remembered not for breaking the mold of television, but for a death, the first of at least 40 suicides linked globally to a reality TV show.

More than one-fifth of children want to become influencers, and it's easy to understand why. What if you could escape economic uncertainty by winning the internet's attention? What if you could turn the adoration of your social media followers into a lucrative livelihood? But as Symeon Brown explores in this searing exposé, the reality is much murkier. From IRL streamers in LA to Brazilian butt lifts, from sex workers on OnlyFans to fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes, these are the incredible stories that lurk behind the filtered selfies and gleaming smiles.

Is the top still spinning? Was it all a dream? In the world of Christopher Nolan's four-time Academy Award-winning movie, people can share one another's dreams and alter their beliefs and thoughts. Inception is a metaphysical heist film that raises more questions than it answers: Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of "self" and "other"?

An unauthorized look at the philosophical issues raised by popular television show House. House was one of the top three television dramas on the air, pulling in more than 19 million viewers for each episode. This latest book in the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series takes a deeper look at the characters and issues raised in this Emmy Award-winning medical drama, offering entertaining answers to the fascinating ethical questions viewers have about Dr. Gregory House and his medical team.

Brought to you by Penguin. Since prehistory, bunkers have been built as protection from cataclysmic social and environmental forces, and as places of power and transformation. Today, the bunker has become the extreme expression of our greatest fears: from pandemics to climate change and nuclear...

"A rich inquiry into what it means to pay (and maintain) attention in a world increasingly permeated with distraction and interference.” —Publisher’s Weekly Combining expert storytelling with genuine self-scrutiny, Casey Schwartz details the decade she spend taking Adderall to help her pay...

Will Castro, star of Velocity Channel's Unique Rides and one of the most popular car customizers in America, has achieved the American Dream, finding great success doing something he loves. He has worked with marquee names in entertainment, and Unique Hustle is packed with anecdotes of some of the biggest names in sports, music, film, and television.  

The inside story of the rise, fall, and rise of FanDuel and DraftKings - two companies that began as obscure startups and, seemingly overnight, became billion dollar companies, and just as quickly found themselves the target of the FBI and Department of Justice and the center of a national scandal.

Getting Gamers will show that rather than being a waste of time, video games can help us develop skills, make friends, succeed at work, form good habits, and be happy. Taking the time to learn what's happening in our heads as we play and shop allows us to approach games and gaming communities on our own terms and get more out of them. With examples from the games themselves, Jamie Madigan offers a fuller understanding of the impact of games on our psychology and the influence of psychology on our games.

From Out of the Binders co-founder Lux Alptraum, a controversial look at women, sex, and lying -- why myths about women's deceit persist, how they came to be, and ultimately why we must trust women When we talk about sex, we talk about women as mysterious, deceptive, and - above all -...

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.

The Secret Life of Science is a dispatch from the frontlines of modern science. It paints a startling picture of a complex scientific ecosystem that has become the most competitive free-market environment on the planet. It reveals how big this ecosystem really is, what motivates its participants, and who reaps the rewards.