Pretty Vacant: A History of UK Punk


Phil Strongman - 2007
    Oxford Street is a sea of long hair and flared jeans; prog rock prevails. But Ron Watts, the 100 Club’s “rock night” manager, has witnessed the impromptu and chaotic gigs at High Wycombe College of Art. He invites the Sex Pistols to start a residency in central London, and over the next eighteen months, everything changes.            Unlike many writers, Phil Strongman was actually at the 100 Club punk festival in September 1976 and witnessed punk’s violent and dramatic rise. After tracing its underground roots in New York and Detroit, Strongman shows how the Sex Pistols and the Clash, along with their confreres, took rock ’n’ roll closer to the edge than any band before them. But after the outrage over the Pistols’ legendary outburst on Bill Grundy’s TV show catapulted the band into the center of a press feeding frenzy, it was swiftly eclipsed by the blossoming of a new movement in time for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Punk had traveled from the underground to the mainstream in the space of six months.            Based on new interviews with Malcolm McLaren, Jah Wobble, Glen Matlock, Roadent, and many more, Strongman vividly re-creates the punk eruption and charts its spread across Britain and to the West Coast of the United States. Thirty years after its inception, UK punk has found its definitive account in Pretty Vacant.

I Love Lucy Book


Bart Andrews - 1985
    In answer to countless requests from I Love Lucy fans around the world, Bart Andrews has revised, updated, and expanded his classic book on TV's most beloved series.B & W photographs throughout.

When in French: Love in a Second Language


Lauren Collins - 2016
    Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “Je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French. When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidentally telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.

Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century


Chuck Klosterman - 2017
    His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine Ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and The Guardian.Chuck Klosterman's tenth book (aka Chuck Klosterman X) collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. Klosterman presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese Democracy, The Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena. This is a tour of the past decade from one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.

When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain: History's Unknown Chapters


Giles Milton - 2016
    There's the man who survived the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there's many, many more.Covering everything from adventure, war, murder and slavery to espionage, including the stories of the female Robinson Crusoe, Hitler's final hours, Japan's deadly balloon bomb and the emperor of the United States, these tales deserve to be told.

National Geographic Greatest Landscapes: Stunning Photographs That Inspire and Astonish


National Geographic Society - 2016
    With vast deserts in twilight, snowcapped mountain ranges at the brink of dawn, a forest in the height of autumn colors, these indelible images will magnify the beauty, emotion, and depth that can be captured in the split second of a camera flash, taking readers on a spectacular visual journey and offering an elegant conduit to the world around them. Paired with illuminating insights from celebrated photographers, this beautiful book weaves a vibrant tapestry of images that readers will turn to again and again.

Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life


Steven Hyden - 2016
     Beatles vs. Stones. Biggie vs. Tupac. Kanye vs. Taylor. Who do you choose? And what does that say about you? Actually -- what do these endlessly argued-about pop music rivalries say about us? Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Each chapter in Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me focuses on a pop music rivalry, from the classic to the very recent, and draws connections to the larger forces surrounding the pairing. Through Jimi Hendrix vs. Eric Clapton, Hyden explores burning out and fading away, while his take on Miley vs. Sinead gives readers a glimpse into the perennial battle between old and young. Funny and accessible, Hyden's writing combines cultural criticism, personal anecdotes, and music history -- and just may prompt you to give your least favorite band another chance.

Crap Cars


Richard Porter - 2004
    Traveling from the '60s to the '90s, it showcases the cheapest, the tackiest, and the mechanically inept, including cars made by companies like Porsche and BMW that put them to shame. There's also the blobby Merkur Scorpio, the ungainly Rolls-Royce Camargue, the squarish Maserati Biturbo, and the (ironically) flammable Renault Fuego. Each photo spread is accompanied by a short, hilarious critique by Richard Porter, a crap car expert, who sees straight through all the pimped-out bodywork to the true lemon that lies underneath.Crap Cars is the perfect gift for anyone who loves cars or the casualties of bad taste, or for that special someone who misses their own beloved, long-gone piece of crap.

The Alien Abduction Files: The Most Startling Cases of Human Alien Contact Ever Reported


Kathleen Marden - 2013
    Both women experienced missing time while driving with a companion, and were later taken from their homes. Both have been unwilling participants in ongoing experimental procedures that appear to follow family genetic lines. Both witnesses have given detailed descriptions of the crafts' interiors and technology, medical procedures, messages from the visitors, and the types of ETs they have encountered, including their society's hierarchical structure. Even more startling, both have independently described finding themselves on identical huge craft, within the same timeframe.The Alien Abduction Files finally reveals:The little-known details of alien experimental proceduresThe theoretical science that can explain alien technologyThe messages conveyed by the ETs to abduction experiencersThe vulnerabilities and benefits of living life as an abduction experiencerThe evidence that these phenomena are real.

13: The Story of the World's Most Notorious Superstition


Nathaniel Lachenmeyer - 2004
    presidents join the Thirteen Club? What is the only major New York hotel that has a thirteenth floor? In 13, a fascinating cultural history-cum-detective story, Nathaniel Lachenmeyer gets to the root of how one superstition—the fear of the number 13—developed among wildly divergent societies. A book about mythmaking, 13 explores why people believe what they believe, and the real reason Friday the 13th is the most unlucky day in the world.

Motherfoclóir: Dispatches from a Not So Dead Language


Darach Ó Séaghdha - 2017
    As the title suggests, 'Motherfoclóir' takes an irreverent, pun-friendly and contemporary approach to the Irish language. The translations are expanded on and arranged into broad categories that allow interesting connections to be made, and sprinkled with anecdotes and observations about Irish and Ireland itself, as well as language in general. The author includes stories about his own relationship with Irish, and how it fits in with the most important events in his life. This is a book for all lovers of the quirks of language.

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie


Wendy McClure - 2011
     Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder-a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places she's never been to, yet somehow knows by heart. She retraces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family-

Flying Saucers & Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs


Stanton T. Friedman - 2008
    Nuclear physicist & lecturer Stanton T. Friedman has distilled over 40 years of research, sharing his work on a variety of classified advanced nuclear & space systems. He answers relevant physics questions in lay terms, establishing that travel to nearby stars is possible without violating physical laws. Photographs of advanced propulsion systems, on some of which he worked, are included. He also presents data demonstrating the human ability to withstand high accelerations. He shows that government policy on this subject has been to provide false claims & disinformation, a kind of cosmic Watergate. Flying Saucers & Science presents data from large-scale scientific UFO studies few have detailed. It deals with cover-ups as well as reasons for aliens to visit Earth without landing on the White House lawn. He criticizes the SETI program & details the antipathy of some sf writers to UFOs. False notions about those who believe in the reality of alien visitors & the adequacy of coverage by journalistic & scientific communities are reviewed. The book reveals what technologies might allow interstellar travel, where aliens may originate, why they visit & why governments may cover them up. Readers will never feel the same about UFOs again.Foreword by Edgar MitchellForeword by Bruce MaccabeeIntroductionThe case for the ET origin of flying saucersYou can get here from there From where do they come?The cosmic WatergateThe cult of SETI The UFO "why" questions Science, science fiction & UFOs-UFOs & public opinion Update on crashed saucers at RoswellThe press & flying saucers The Operation Majestic 12 documentsWhat does it matter?BibliographyIndexAbout the Author

The Witches Are Coming


Lindy West - 2019
    From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.”We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.

Freud for Beginners


Richard Osborne - 1993
    His influence on 20th-century thinking and issues is arguably unparalleled, affecting attitudes on sex, religion, art, culture, and more. Written for the layperson, Freud for Beginners explains the doctor's dogma with wit and clarity, all in a contemporary context.