A cultural critic and investigative journalist uncovers the full history of the Barbie doll, from her introduction in 1959 through countless transformations, makeovers and career changes to its emergence as an international pop culture icon.

An exploration of the origins of sexual expression in popular culture from 1968 to 1973 places the writers, producers, and actors responsible for creating these controversial works within their cultural and social frameworks.

Glen David Gold, author of the best seller Carter Beats the Devil, now gives us a grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized figure of Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and intimate, heartrending and darkly comic, that captures the moment when American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity.
Sunnyside opens on a winter day in...

"Essays about 1990s popular culture, politics, sports, literature, music"--

Hailed as one of the best books of 2009 by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, this vibrant portrait of 1930s culture masterfully explores the anxiety and hope, the despair and surprising optimism of distressed Americans during the Great Depression. Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called "one of our best and most distinguished critics of American literature," has brought together a staggering range of material, from epic Dust Bowl migrations...

Cool'. It was a new word and a new way to be, and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture. 'The Origins of Cool in Postwar America' uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define a global attitude and style. As Joel Dinerstein reveals in this dynamic book, cool began as a stylish defiance of racism, a challenge to suppressed sexuality, a philosophy of individual rebellion,...

"For decades, Renata Adler's writing has upheld and defined the highest standards of investigative journalism. A staff writer at The New Yorker from 1963 to 2001, Adler has reported on civil rights from Selma, Alabama; on the war in Biafra, the Six-Day War, and the Vietnam War; on the Nixon impeachment inquiry and Congress. She has also written about cultural matters, films (as chief film critic for The New York Times), books, politics, and pop music....

"A captivating chronicle of the pivotal decade in American sports, when the games invaded prime time, and sports moved from the margins to the mainstream of American culture. Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in THE BIG TIME, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade-the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning...

A comprehensive look at the 1960s, which had the Vietnam War, a sexual revolution, a feminist revolution, the Kennedy era, scientific advancements, exploding ghettos, freedom riders, and other important changes in music, art, literature, science, politics, and civil rights.