Popular culture Books

The first book on a fascinating mysterious death with art as big business at the center. Indiana's work is loved even by those unfamiliar with his name. Expect major review attention from mainstream and art news media. Robert Indiana's life, work and...

For fans of Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and co-founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, Any Night of the Week charts the evolution of Toronto's diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the nineteenth...

As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for...

Decades before the emergence of a French self-styled 'hood' film around 1995, French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs they found an inexhaustible reservoir of forms, landscapes and social...

Chic, sophisticated, seductive and enigmatic, the Parisienne possesses a je ne sais quoi that makes her difficult to define. But who or what is the Parisienne, and how is she depicted in cinema? The first book-length study on the subject combines...

A collection of scholarship on monsters and their meaning-across genres, disciplines, methodologies, and time-from foundational texts to the most recent contributions.From the mythical monstrous races of the ancient world to the murderous cyborgs of our...

Throughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist--and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer...

The Fifth Installment of the Addicted Animal series-aparody of the hit show Breaking Bad.The crossover you didn't know you needed.If You Give A Lab A Lab: Barking Badis a gritty, yet adorablestory about a Labrador Retriever who rises from lovable...

A lie of omission-withholding needed information to correct a false belief. There is a sharp and more hostile divide emerging in the United States. The shift is documented by various polls, and the speed of the change is alarming. There are certainly...

Bring your own manga characters to life!With millions of fans around the world, manga is a beloved art form. Now you, too, can learn how to draw your favourite characters from Japanese comics and anime! Manga Art for Everyone shows you how to draw...

Age range 9+For fans of The Vampire Diaries, Dracula, or any original bloodsucker comes a parody of the children's classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar In this hilarious parody of a children's classic, The Very Thirsty Vampire presents a charming...

Most people love cats. They're fluffy, playful, and can be a joy to have as a companion. However, they can also be huge assholes. So what can you do? How do you deal with a roommate who always seems to be plotting to kill you? While we all love sharing...

Classic and loveable Betty Boop is as fashionable, inspiring, and popular as ever! If there's one thing Betty knows, it's how to make a lasting impression. For more than 80 years, the glamorous international icon has sung, sashayed, and...

Original book of photographs and text by the noted director/writer/producer Brian Levant, presenting his extraordinary collection of animated feature and comic toys, including hundreds of iconic characters represented in figures, banks, games,...

TiHKAL: The Continuation is the sequel to PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story but can stand alone to any reader. Where PiHKAL focuses on a class of compounds called phenethylamines, TiHKAL is written about a family of psychoactive drugs known as tryptamines...

Alexander (better known as "Sasha") and Ann Shulgin's foundational work in the genre was the first book to fully impart the how-to chemistry, and convey the effects, of many of the entheogenic drugs that are currently being studied and used to heal...

Used worldwide as both an anesthetic and a recreational psychedelic drug, ketamine has recently attracted the attention of medical researchers, law enforcement officers, and people interested in exploring alternative spirituality and consciousness. The...

The Pleasures of Cocaine conveys the impartial facts of the uses and abuses of cocaine. Without bias, many different aspects are covered:History, effects, uses, pleasures, dangers Avoiding abusive side effects Determining quality Substances used to cut...

This revised and updated edition of the classic Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana had complete information on growing marijuana indoors and out. Full of examples, fantastic illustrations and horticultural knowledge. Drake is a leading authority on...

Accurately details the history of laughing gas through to modern times (including historical ramblings & jest), and delves into the medical side of things -- in a light-hearted manner. Finally, while it never promotes nor condones the use of this...

Cult classic, revised and updated. Alchemist D. Gold reveals the inner world of marijuana and hashish, uncovering secrets and modern techniques to enhance potency. First published in 1974, the original edition of Cannabis Alchemy sold over 100,000...

Describes the dramatic effects people experience when consuming psychoactive mushrooms. There are over 100 "entheogenic" fungi known to stimulate ecstatic states in curious seekers. Stafford recounts the known history of magic mushrooms, also called...

Provides a framework for understanding the enormous amount of information available on psychoactive substances. Stafford relays the history, botany, chemistry, physical and mental effects, forms, sources, and preparations of LSD-the most potent and...

The triumphs and tragedies of growing up as the son of a famous Beat artist.Tosh is a memoir of growing up as the son of an enigmatic, much-admired, hermetic, and ruthlessly bohemian artist during the waning years of the Beat Generation and the heyday of...

Noah Cross, Norma Desmond, Norman Bates, Harry Lime these are a few of nearly a hundred names that inhabit the mind of the narrator as he starts to compose short biographies of some of the most famous characters in the history of film noir. He sketches...

For anyone wanting to get beyond tired travel guide cliches, A Geek in Indonesia is a hip, irreverent, and streetwise introduction to Southeast Asia's biggest country.Jump from the beaches of Bali to a tour bus circuit of the...

Every year, millions of foreign tourists flock to China - only to find themselves overwhelmed by the complexities of navigating the world's largest and fastest culture. A professor, blogger, and avid China explorer, Matthew B. Christensen created this...

A Geek in Korea reinvents the culture guide for the Internet age. Packed with articles and photographs, it covers all the touchstones of Korean culture - from Buddhism and Confucianism to chapters on the traditional arts and...

Jokes change from generation to generation, but the experience of the comedian transcends the ages: the drive, jealousy, heartbreak, and triumph. From the Marx Brothers to Milton Berle to George Carlin to Eddie Murphy to Louis CK-comedy historian Kliph...

Entertaining television challenges the idea that the BBC in the 1950s was elitist and 'staid', upholding Reithian values in a paternalistic, even patronising way. By focusing on a number of (often controversial) programme case studies - such as the soap...

This pioneering book studies the rise, heyday and demise of regionalism from the Belle Epoque until the Eve of the Second World War. By using a novel comparative perspective it gives a fresh view of the relationship between cultural regionalism,...

Robin Nelson's State of play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analusis of the aesethetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework...

Presents the 1925 Paris Exhibition as a key moment in attempts to update the image of Paris as "capital of the 19th century". At the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris itself, as much as the commodity, was put on...

Brazil has one of the most significant and productive film industries in Latin America. This ground-breaking study provides an entertaining insight into the Brazilian films that have most captured the imagination of domestic audiences over the years.The...

Nicola McDonald's collection and the romances it investigates are crucial to our understanding of the aesthetics of medieval narrative and to the ideologies of gender and sexuality, race, religion, political formations, social class, ethics, morality and...

This study traces the evolution of the various categories of "factual entertainment" programmes which have come to dominate our screens over the last decade. The book focuses on issues such as the changes in the braodcasting environment which have given...

An introduction to popular film and the way in which it is studied, this book brings together the critical approaches and issues that have sought to define popular film from the 1950s to the present day. It inlcudes discussion of mass culture theory and...

A revealing collection of quotations from world-renowned artist Damien Hirst.Hirst-isms is a collection of quotations - bold, surprising, often humorous, and always insightful - from celebrated artist Damien Hirst, whose controversial work explores the...

A unique collection of brilliant quotations from the legendary Pop artistOne of the most influential artists of his time and ours, Andy Warhol is nearly as renowned for what he said as for what he did. Indeed, he is so quotable that things he never said...

Featuring never-before-seen drawings by the renowned contemporary artist, a beautiful facsimile edition that reveals the working process of an extraordinary creative mindSketchbook reproduces original working drawings and sketches by the contemporary...

Celebrated artist Keith Haring (19581990) has been embraced by popular culture for his signature bold graphic line drawings of figures and forms. Like other graffiti artists in the 1980s, Haring found an empty canvas in the advertising panels scattered...

Antiques & Arts Weekly Holiday Books Round-up 2020 How artists created an aesthetic of 'positive barbarism' in a world devastated by World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb.In Brutal Aesthetics, leading art historian and...

An innovative and accessible guide to doing social research in the digital ageThe rapid spread of social media, smartphones, and other digital wonders enables us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable,...

The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators-from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrenciesBitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is...

An exploration of the artistic and cultural influences that shaped writer and illustrator Edward GoreyThe illustrator, designer, and writer Edward Gorey (1925-2000) is beloved for his droll, surreal, and slightly sinister drawings. While he is perhaps...