"Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. And yet today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are-gasp-fully fledged human beings. How...

We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration, band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups. But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation,...

"Peggy Orenstein's Girls & Sex broke ground, shattered taboos, and galvanized conversations about young women's right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unintended effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. To understand girls and sex, we also need to talk about boys and sex. Today's young men are subject to the same cultural forces as their female peers. They are steeped...

"In the tradition of "Bringing up Bebe" and "French Toast," Cathy Yandell's "The French Art of Living Well" is a delightful look at French culture, from literature to cuisine to humor and more, showing how the French have captured that magic elixir known as joie de vivre. What is joie de vivre, and why is it a fundamentally French concept? In search of those ineffable qualities that make up the joy of living, this lively book takes readers on a voyage...

"In nine lively essays, critc Aisha Harris invites us into the wonderful, maddening process of making sense of the pop culture we consume. Aisha Harris has made a name for herself as someone you can turn to for a razor-sharp take on whatever show or movie everyone is talking about. Now, she turns her talents inward, mining the benchmarks of her nineties childhood and beyond to analyze the tropes that are shaping all of us, and our ability to shape...

Visit the lush, sugar-coated township of Pollilop Drop and follow the journey of one lil' rotter kid, Pukeboy, who struggles to overcome his fear of playing guitar in front of an audience. He seeks advice from other rot-pack kids. Creatively frustrated, Pukeboy goes beyond the boundaries of Pollilop Drop and he finds an unexpected new friend. 46 vibrant illustrations pull the reader into the pop art world of Pollilop Drop and keep the pages turning....

"100 Places to See After You Die is written in the style of iconic bestselling travel guides. But instead of recommending must-see destinations in Mexico, Thailand, or Rome, this book outlines journeys through the afterlife, as dreamed up over the past 5,000 years of human history by our greatest prophets, poets, mystics, artists, and TV showrunners. Where's the best place to grab a bite to eat in the ancient Egyptian underworld? Which circles of...

A long-overdue paean to the predominant musical form of the 70s and a thoughtful exploration of the culture that spawned it Disco may be the most universally derided musical form to come about in the past forty years. Yet, like its pop cultural peers punk and hip hop, it was born of a period of profound social and economic upheaval. In Turn the Beat Around, critic and journalist Peter Shapiro traces the history of disco music and culture. From the...

At any given moment, 1.7 million users world-wide are streaming pornography. It is estimated that one-third of all Internet content is pornographic and that 1 in 4 Internet searches are porn-related. However, few media programs investigate pornography's impact beyond the simplistic cause-and-effect question of whether it is linked to sexual assault or sex addiction. Dr. Chyng Sun, the director of The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, and...