College students crammed into phone booths. Couples dancing until they drop. Daredevils swallowing one live goldfish after another. Streakers dashing naked down the street. Planking and flash mobs and robotic pets. These are just some of the crazy fads that have caught hold in the United States over the last century. Where do these ideas come from and why do they catch people's imagination? Fads reflect the mood and spirit of a particular time, and...

Written in cooperation with Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater, an oral history of the "Dazed and Confused" cult classic provides behind-the-scenes cast and crew stories about its unlikely production and commercial success.

Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman. With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an almost effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter, Klosterman attacks the entire spectrum of postmodern America: reality TV, Pamela Anderson and literary Jesus freaks. And don't even get him started on his love life and the whole Harry-Met-Sally situation....

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

Trailerama provides a visual wonderland filled with fascinating and diverse imagery that will surprise the average reader. From sheet music to greeting cards, postcards to Hollywood, the travel trailer is put on grand display in this kitschy celebration culled from the coffers of Trailer Travel's Phil Noyes.

What John Berger did to ways of seeing, well-known indie musician Damon Krukowski does to ways of listening in this lively guide to the transition from analog to digital culture. Having made his name in the late 1980s as a member of the indie band Galaxie 500, Damon Krukowski has watched cultural life lurch from analog to digital. And as an artist who has weathered the transition, he has challenging, urgent questions for both creators and consumers...

Explores how media and popular culture maligned and objectified women and girls in the 1990s, and how the sexism of the 1990s affected the sexism of the twenty-first century.

Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies-- one, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, able to cope with complexity and to separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this "other society," comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans and a celebration of violence push reality, complexity and nuance to the margins....

First airing in 1966, with a promise to "boldly go where no man has gone before," Star Trek would eventually become a bona fide phenomenon. Week after week, viewers of the series tuned in to watch Captain Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise as they conducted their five-year mission in space. Their mission was cut short by a corporate monolith that demanded higher ratings, but Star Trek lived on in syndication, ultimately becoming...