Hip: The History is the story of how American pop culture has evolved throughout the twentieth century to its current position as world cultural touchstone. How did hip become such an obsession? From sex and music to fashion and commerce, John Leland tracks the arc of ideas as they move from subterranean Bohemia to Madison Avenue and back again. Hip: The History examines how hip has helped shape -- and continues to influence -- America's view of itself, and provides an incisive account of hip's quest for authenticity.

Acclaimed social critic Curtis White describes an all-encompassing and little-noticed force taking over our culture and our lives that he calls the Middle Mind: the current failure of the American imagination in the media, politics, education, art, technology, and religion. Irreverent, provocative, and far-reaching, White presents a clear vision of this dangerous mindset that threatens America's intellectual and cultural freedoms, concluding with an imperative to reawaken and unleash the once powerful American imagination.

The Middle Mind is pragmatic, plainspoken, populist,...

Beth Lisick started out as a homecoming princess with a Crisco-aided tan and a bad perm. And then everything changed. Plunging headlong into America's deepest subcultures, while keeping both feet firmly planted in her parents' Leave It to Beaver values, Lisick makes her adult home on the fringe of mainstream culture and finds it rich with paradox and humor. On the one hand, she lives in "Brokeley" with drug dealers and street gangs; on the other, she drives a station wagon with a baby seat in the back, makes her own chicken stock, and attends ladies' luncheons. How exactly did...

Part expose, part x-rated travel guide -- the ultimate insider's look at America's adult playground

Vegas. It's a place where Midwestern couples become uninhibited swingers, where shy schoolgirls morph into sexy strippers pulling in $1,000 a night, and where randy tourists come to score at more than just blackjack and craps. What happens here, stays here -- and Vegas nightlife is hotter than it's ever been before.

In Skin City, journalist and longtime Vegas resident Jack Sheehan goes beyond the bright lights to explore the dark thrills of the city's sex...

Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. It explores the history of acquisition -- finding, choosing, spending -- from our amber-coveting Neolithic forebears to Renaissance nobles who outfitted themselves for power to twenty-first-century bargain hunters looking for...

From Santa Claus to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from Uncle Sam to Uncle Tom, here is a compelling, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining compendium of fictional trendsetters and world-shakers who have helped shape our culture and our lives. The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived offers fascinating histories of our most beloved, hated, feared, and revered invented icons and the indelible marks they made on civilization, including:

# 28: Rosie the Riveter, the buff, blue-collar factory worker who helped jump-start the Women's Liberation movement

# 7: Siegfried,...

What is emo? For starters it's a form of melodic, confessional, or EMOtional punk rock. But emo is more than a genre of music-it's the defining counterculture movement of the '00s. EVERYBODY HURTS is a reference book for emo, tracing its angsty roots all the way from Shakespeare to Holden Caufield to today's most popular bands.

There's nothing new about that perfect chocolate and peanut butter combination--teenagers and angst. What is new is that emo is the first cultural movement born on the internet. With the development of early social networking sites like Make Out Club (whose...

The Orifice as Sacrificial Site bases its argument on expert histories and primary documents of selected religions. Although based on textual analysis and documentary evidence this is essentially a social study. The goal of Aho's study is to discover explanatory principles of orifice management, rather than to expound on the peculiarities of individual faiths. The work locates the attributes religions share, instead of the qualities that differentiate them. The argument of the book is that these preeminently private sites are in reality -publicly accomplished.- The most secret...

Education forms a unique dimension of social status, with qualities that make it especially important to health. It influences health in ways that are varied, present at all stages of adult life, cumulative, self-amplifying, and uniformly positive. Educational attainment marks social status at the beginning of adulthood, functioning as the main bridge between the status of one generation and the next, and also as the main avenue of upward mobility. It precedes the other acquired social statuses and substantially influences them, including occupational status, earnings, and personal and...