"No rock critic-living or dead, American or otherwise-has ever written about pop music with the evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield." So said Chuck Klosterman about Love is a Mix Tape, Sheffield's paean to a lost love via its soundtrack. Now, in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Sheffield shares the soundtrack to his eighties adolescence. When he turned 13 in 1980, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music and himself, and in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran we get a glimpse into his transformation from pasty, geeky "hermit boy" into a young man with his first girlfriend, his first apartment, and a sense of the world. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies; the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads; and, like any all-American boy, this one was searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. It's all here: Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Members Only jackets. Girls, every last one of whom seems to be madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran. Sheffield's coming-of-age story is one that we all know, with a playlist that any child of the eighties or anyone who just loves music will sing along with. These songs-and Sheffield's writing-will remind readers of that first kiss, that first car, and the moments that shaped their lives.

    But will those Nobel bastards honor them, too? Only God, our merciless and just God, knows."-Dave Eggers"The funniest publication in the United States."-The New Yorker"This publication is tasteless and destructive to our shared values. Read it for yourself and you'll see what I mean. Seriously, what else could make me laugh-much less laugh uproariously-while being offended week after week after week?"-Al Gore"The Onion is the funniest thing in news since Dan Rather's spooky stare."-Matt Groening"Brutal satire that rushes into the far reaches of race, class, sexuality, and culture where many publications-and critics-fear to tread."-Chicago Tribune"The Onion, unlike any other entity in our media culture, offers a refreshingly honest look at our complicated life."-Ken Burns

    This hilarious book is the first to bring more than fifty authors and stories from classic literature back to life and online. Schmelling uses the conventions of social networking-profile pages, status updates, news feeds, and applications-to retell everything from The Odyssey to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Lolita. Every day 150 million active users of Facebook log on to reconnect with old classmates, add pictures, share quizzes, and post news stories, notes, and videos. In Schmelling-s network, Satan and Beelzebub connect using the fiend finder, Don Quixote vows vengeance against Superpoke, Jane Eyre listens to Jay-Z-s -Hard-Knock Life- on repeat, Ernest Hemingway completes the -Are you a real man?- quiz, and Oedipus works on his family tree. A loving spoof of the most-trafficked social networking website in the world and a playful game of literary who-s who, Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don-t Float will have book lovers and Facebook addicts alike twittering with joy.

    Urbanites everywhere, from ironic hipsters to earth-conscious commuters, are taking to the bike like aquatic mammals to water. BikeSnobNYC cycling's most prolific, well-known, hilarious, and anonymous blogger brings a fresh and humorous perspective to the most important vehicle to hit personal transportation since the horse. Bike Snob treats readers to a laugh-out-loud rant and rave about the world of bikes and their riders, and offers a unique look at the ins and outs of cycling, from its history and hallmarks to its wide range of bizarre practitioners. Throughout, the author lampoons the missteps, pretensions, and absurdities of bike culture while maintaining a contagious enthusiasm for cycling itself. Bike Snob is an essential volume for anyone who knows, is, or wants to become a cyclist.

    Impossible, you say? Not according to advertisers who flood the web with stock photos of perfect parents and children. They’d have you believe that parenting is a piece of cake, and every significant moment of family life takes place on a spotless white couch. So when Sara Given, a real mother of a real toddler, saw a picture of a radiant new mother in a cute little sundress breastfeeding her newborn in the middle of a golf course, she finally had enough. She launched a Tumblr, which is now visited by tens of thousands of new parents looking for a daily pick-me-up. Because what better way is there to deal with the stress and strain of being a new parent than laughter? The perfect gift of cheer and solidarity, Parenting Is Easy exploits the disconnect between these preposterous photos and what happens in real life, and makes every reader laugh out loud—and feel better, too, because we’re in on the joke.

    No, please, take your time. And definitely spread out, too, so you create a barricade of idiots. I am so thankful that you forced me to walk on the street and risk getting hit by a car in order to pass you so I could resume walking at a normal human pace.Jimmy Fallon has a few people and a few things to thank. In this brand-new book, the very first to come from his show, he addresses some 200 subjects in need of his undying "gratitude." Each page will feature one note and a photograph of its recipient. But why read any more about formatting when you could just read a few more samples;Thank you, guy whose chair made a farting noise, for prompting him to spend the next 20 minutes awkwardly shifting around trying to re-create the noise, so people would know it was just the chair. Thank you, Miley Cyrus, for being 16 and acting like a stripper at the Teen Choice Awards. If you REALLY wanna piss off your dad, why not just cut off his allowance? From Hilary Clinton to a light bulb he is too lazy to replace, these are the moments and memories that make Jimmy's life a little bit fuller.

    But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.

    Blue: The Ultimate Fan Guide, the series creators at Rooster Teeth bring together more than a decade's worth of ephemera and behind-the-scenes information. Inside you'll find:– Character dossiers– Character-driven lists, including "The Wisdom of Caboose"– Charts and statistics mapping out character, world, and episode trivia, such as how many times Simmons has sucked up to Sarge over the course of the series– The best Red vs. Blue quotes ever of all time– Alternate stories and unexplored character arcs– Spotlights on the Red vs. Blue cast and crew, who share unique anecdotes, behind-the-scenes stories, and insights into the award-winning series– Shooting scripts, including cut lines, deleted scenes, and trivia– More than 200 full-color images– And more!

    Browning explores the often-changing war aims of the major belligerents-Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and Spain-and links diplomatic and military events to the political and social context from which they arose.

    The Book of the Year is a hilarious guide to 2017’s most extraordinary events, unearthed by the creators of the award-winning hit comedy podcast No Such Thing As A Fish. Each week, over a million people tune in to find out what bizarre and astonishing facts Dan, James, Anna and Andy have found out over the previous seven days. Now the gang have turned their attention to the news of the past twelve months. You’ll discover the curious details behind the main headlines – how Donald Trump slept on the 66th floor of a 58-storey building, what effect Brexit had on Coco Pops, and why China’s president can’t stand Winnie the Pooh – as well as hundreds of stories you may have missed entirely, like the news that:- Qatar built a refugee camp for camels- 2,000 bees were stolen in Beeston- The victim of Britain’s first ever shark attack ended up with a cut thumb. From bizarre arrests to baffling elections, via a surprising amount of sausage news, The Book of the Year is an eye-opening tour of the incredible year you didn’t know you’d lived through.

    In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

    . . or it might have been last night, when you watched three episodes in a row. But either way, fifteen years after the show first aired, it's more popular than ever, and fans have only one problem--what to watch, or read, next.Fortunately, Rolling Stone writer Andy Greene has that answer. In his brand-new oral history, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, Greene will take readers behind the scenes of their favorite moments and characters. Greene gives us the true inside story behind the entire show, from its origins on the BBC through its impressive nine-season run in America, with in-depth research and exclusive interviews. Fans will get the inside scoop on key episodes from "The Dundies" to "Threat Level Midnight" and "Goodbye, Michael," including behind-the-scenes details like the battle to keep it on the air when NBC wanted to pull the plug after just six episodes and the failed attempt to bring in James Gandolfini as the new boss after Steve Carell left, spotlighting the incredible, genre-redefining show created by the family-like team, who together took a quirky British import with dicey prospects and turned it into a primetime giant with true historical and cultural significance.Hilarious, heartwarming, and revelatory, The Office gives fans and pop culture buffs a front-row seat to the phenomenal sequence of events that launched The Office into wild popularity, changing the face of television and how we all see our office lives for decades to come.

     The true story of how mildly successful guitarist and New York Times writer Dan Crane relinquished his instrument and became Björn Türoque (pronounced "b-yorn too-RAWK"), the second greatest air guitarist in the nation. This exploration of the international air guitar sub-culture addresses the issue of dedicating oneself to an invisible art in order to achieve the ultimate goal of "airness"-that is, when air guitar transcends the "real" art that it imitates and becomes an art form in and of itself.

    Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. 33,000 Pages44 Million Words10 Billion Years Of History1 Obsessed ManTo fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but unconvinced. With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the impending birth of his first child. The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.

    What made Arthur Duke of Wellington the military genius who was never defeated in battle? Peter Snow recalls how Wellington evolved from a backward, sensitive schoolboy into the aloof but brilliant commander.