For more than three quarters of a century, he has cycled from a figure of darkness to one of lightness and back again; he’s a bat-shaped Rorschach inkblot who takes on the various meanings our changing culture projects onto him. How we perceive Batman’s character, whether he’s delivering dire threats in a raspy Christian Bale growl or trading blithely homoerotic double-entendres with partner Robin on the comics page, speaks to who we are and how we wish to be seen by the world. It’s this endlessly mutable quality that has made him so enduring.And it’s Batman’s fundamental nerdiness—his gadgets, his obsession, his oath, even his lack of superpowers—that uniquely resonates with his fans who feel a fiercely protective love for the character. Today, fueled by the internet, that breed of passion for elements of popular culture is everywhere. Which is what makes Batman the perfect lens through which to understand geek culture, its current popularity, and social significance.In The Caped Crusade, with humor and insight, Glen Weldon, book critic for NPR and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, lays out Batman’s seventy-eight-year cultural history and shows how he has helped make us who we are today and why his legacy remains so strong.

    Bob Rotella is the preeminent golf psychologist to the game’s top players—he has coached stars like Keegan Bradley, Padraig Harrington, and Darren Clarke—and he has offered his advice to golfers of all skill levels in his bestselling books, including Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect and Golf Is a Game of Confidence. Now, he tackles the mind’s role in the most difficult aspect of golfing—the short game. It’s no secret that more than two-thirds of the shots a golfer makes are short ones: putts, chips, and pitches. Long drives may garner applause, but whether a golfer wants to win the Masters or just five bucks from a friend on Saturday morning, it’s the little shots that make the difference. Yet many players either fail to recognize or choose to ignore the importance of the short game. In The Unstoppable Golfer, Dr. Rotella applies the same wisdom and experience that have worked for clients like Davis Love III and Graeme McDowell to help every golfer master this special art of short shots and take all the frustration out of this increasingly challenging element of the game. Requiring extraordinary levels of concentration, the short game is typically a source of fear for amateurs and pros alike. In this book, Dr. Rotella teaches readers how to overcome that fear by using their minds to achieve a state of calm in which the focus is on one thing alone: the hole. Rotella shares stories about professionals with whom he has worked who have mastered the psychological aspect of successful putting by adhering to simple—but hard-to-follow—rules and practices that will improve any golfer’s game: stay focused on your targets, visualize your shots, commit to your routine, and accept completely whatever happened to the golf ball. On top of citing his experiences with golfers, Dr. Rotella also probes the science of memory and how knowledge of the brain’s workings—especially those areas that deal with physical tasks—can markedly improve a golf game, particularly when it comes to getting out of a bunker or taking the measure of a long putt. For casual and dedicated golfers alike, a better short game provides one of the ultimate pleasures of golf—a pleasure they will come to know by training their minds to allow them to become unstoppable golfers. SINCE 1984, GOLFERS COACHED BY DR. BOB ROTELLA HAVE WON A TOTAL OF: 74 major professional titles 2 Masters tournaments 12 U.S. Opens 12 British Opens 11 PGA Championships 4 U.S. Women’s Opens 6 LPGA Championships 5 Kraft-Nabisco Championships 5 Tradition Championships 7 Women’s British Opens 2 Senior PGA Championships 5 U.S. Senior Opens 3 Senior Players Championships

    Kevin Smith, the legendary independent film-maker, columnist and cultural commentator, launches himself on an unsuspecting world with a series of hilarious rants on the absurdity of just about everything. Unlike his unforthcoming screen alter-ego Silent Bob, Smith is ready to let rip at maximum volume, whether it be on the madness of Hollywood, 'The Unholy Tale of Greasy Reese Witherspoon', his bloodcurdling hatred of Britney Spears or the highly-sexed comics industry. Along the way we get a shocking insight into the making of Smith's movies, and learn far more than is necessary about his bathroom habits.

    NBC executives didn’t think anyone would watch either, but they bought it anyway, hiding it away in the TV dead zone of summer. But against all odds, viewers began to watch, first a few and then many, until nine years later nearly forty million Americans were tuning in weekly.In Seinfeldia, acclaimed TV historian and entertainment writer Jennifer Keishin Armstrong celebrates the creators and fans of this American television phenomenon, bringing readers behind-the-scenes of the show while it was on the air and into the world of devotees for whom it never stopped being relevant, a world where the Soup Nazi still spends his days saying “No soup for you!”, Joe Davola gets questioned every day about his sanity, Kenny Kramer makes his living giving tours of New York sights from the show, and fans dress up in Jerry’s famous puffy shirt, dance like Elaine, and imagine plotlines for Seinfeld if it were still on TV.

    Easy-to-find answers to the most common (and obscure but fascinating) baseball questions." - USA Today"A great starting point for newbies of the game." - Ron Kaplan, "501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die""Surprisingly, there is no other book so comprehensive, concise or readable." - St. Paul Pioneer-Press"Instructive and fun." - Chicago Sun-Times**Selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame Bookstore in Cooperstown**Lose yourself in all the marvelous memories and hallowed history of America’s national pastime with "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition." From the gloveless pioneers of the 1840s to the strife-ridden headlines of the 2000s, this comprehensive reference offers nearly 700 important baseball yarns, stats, and stories—cross-referenced and hyperlinked—in a style as lively as the game itself. Incredibly thorough, never dull, the book answers these and countless other questions:- Who was Ray Chapman, and why is he important?- Did Abner Doubleday really invent baseball?- What is sabermetrics?- Who set off the Pine Tar Incident?- Where was the first organized baseball game?- Were the Cubs cursed by a billy goat?- What are waivers and options?Written by SABR member and former college baseball broadcaster David H. Martinez and even selected as required reading for a college course on baseball history, "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition" puts over a century and a half of legends and lore, right in your mitt. It will settle arguments and provoke them, answer questions and ask them. It’s a must for veteran baseball fans—and a perfect way to get up to speed on baseball history for newcomers.

    Kennedy certainly has the authority to talk about the craft of writing books - it's just a wonder she's found the time. These are missives from the authorial front line - urgent and vivid, full of the excitement, fury and frustration of trying to make thousands of words into a publishable book. At the core of On Writing is the hugely popular blog that Kennedy writes for the Guardian - and we follow her during a three-year period when she finished one collection of stories and started another, and wrote a novel in between. Readers and aspiring writers will have almost everything they need to know about the complexities of researching, writing and publishing fiction, but they will be receiving this wisdom conversationally, from one of the funniest and most alert of our contemporary authors.Alongside the blogs are brilliant essays on character, voice, writers' workshops and writers' health and the book ends with the transcript of Kennedy's celebrated one-person show about writing and language that she has performed round the world to huge acclaim. Read together, all these pieces add up to the most intimate master-class imaginable from one of the finest - and most humane - writers in our language.

    TURN ON. GEEK OUT.Sorry, beautiful people. These days, from government to business to technology to Hollywood, geeks rule the world. Finally, here’s the book no self-respecting geek can live without–a guide jam-packed with 314.1516 short entries both useful and fun. Science, pop-culture trivia, paper airplanes, and pure geekish nostalgia coexist as happily in these pages as they do in their natural habitat of the geek brain.In short, dear geek, here you’ll find everything you need to achieve nirvana. And here, for you pathetic nongeeks, is the last chance to save yourselves: Love this book, live this book, and you too can join us in the experience of total world domination. • become a sudoku god• brew your own beer• build a laser beam• classify all living things• clone your pet• exorcise demons• find the world’s best corn mazes• grasp the theory of relativity• have sex on Second Life• injure a fish• join the Knights Templar• kick ass with sweet martial-arts moves• learn ludicrous emoticons• master the Ocarina of Time• pimp your cubicle• program a remote control• quote He-Man and Che Guevara• solve fiendish logic puzzles• touch Carl Sagan • unmask Linus Torvalds• visit Beaver Lick, Kentucky• win bar bets• write your name in ElvishJoin us or die, you will.Begun, the Geek Wars have

    In Tiger, Meet My Sister, Reilly com­piles the best of his columns from his last five years with ESPN, columns that will make you laugh, cry—and quite a few that may make you want to throw this book across the room. Rick Reilly tends to get under people’s skin like that.He has no compunction telling readers, in his singular quick-witted style, how he really feels about some of the most popular sports figures of our time. Wondering about quarterback Jay Cutler? “Cutler is the kind of guy you just want to pick up and throw into a swimming pool, which is exactly what Peyton Manning and two linemen did one year at the Pro Bowl.” Or how about Tiger Woods? “Sometimes you wonder where Tiger Woods gets his public-relations advice. Gary Busey?” But for every brazen takedown, Reilly has written a heartwarming story of the power of sports to heal the wounded and lift the downtrodden: the young Ravens fan with cancer who called the plays for a few—victorious—games in 2012, or the onetime top NFL recruit who was finally exonerated after serving five years for a crime he didn’t commit.With a new introduction and updates from Reilly on his most talked-about col­umns, as well as his expert opinion on athlete tattoos, NFL cheerleaders, and running with the bulls in Pamplona, Tiger, Meet My Sister showcases an unparalleled sportswriter at the top of his game.

    But between 1978 and 1979, acclaimed New Yorker short story writer Julie Hecht attempted to arrange an interview with him, hoping to discover how he came to do what he did. The one-hour interview turned into innumerable surreal meetings and phone conversations with her subject; but she couldn't always tell when his act was on. Whether driving recklessly on icy roads, or drawing the author unaware into his schemes and dada-esque pranks on unsuspecting waiters and college students, Andy Kaufman never seemed to separate himself from his stage personality--or personalities. Was This Man a Genius? is the culmination of a series of bizarre, frequently hilarious meetings; In describing them Hecht, herself a master of wit and observation, illuminates the enigma of Andy Kaufman's work and life.

    What most people don't know is that Barris allegedly spent close to two decades as a decorated covert assassin for the CIA.Barris, who achieved tremendous success as the creator and producer of hit TV game shows such as The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, claims to have joined the CIA as an agent in the early 1960s, infiltrated the Civil Rights movement, met with militant Muslims in Harlem, and traveled abroad in order to kill enemies of the United States.Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is now a movie directed by and starring George Clooney, with Sam Rockwell as the author, but the original story is wild and gripping, spiced with intrigue, sex, bad behavior and plenty of great one-liners. It is destined to become a classic.

    In the meantime, if you'd like to read something that alternates between laugh-out-loud-funny and apocalyptically angry, keep holding this book. Steal it if necessary. In his latest collection of rants, raves, hastily spluttered articles and scarcely literate scrawl, Charlie Brooker proves that there is almost nothing in this universe, big or small, that can't reduce a human being to a state of pure blind hatred. It won't help you lose weight, feel smarter, sleep more soundly, or feel happier about yourself. It will provide you with literally hours of distraction and merriment. It can also be used to stun an intruder, if you hit him with it correctly (hint: strike hard, using the spine, on the bridge of the nose). Only a prick wouldn't buy this book. Don't be that prick.

    Written with a candid and amusing authority that comes from over 25 years of sports commentary with Eurosport, Carlton Kirby gives an insider's view of competitive cycling delivered in the inimitable, humorous, and at times outspoken style for which he has become globally famous.Peppered with hilarious anecdotes of life on the road with Tour legend Sean Kelly, Kirby indulges in some soap-box moments to lambast his various bugbears, from crazy spectators in mankinis and lazy Italian monks to the more serious issues of rider safety, team strategies and questionable ethics.With his mix of expert opinion and trademark wit, Carlton covers the funny, the serious, the heartbreaking, and the more bizarre moments of professional cycling.

    Draper's history is an intelligent and witty behind-the-scenes look at this cultural icon and its course from its hippie beginnings to a high-profile magazine. 16 pages of photographs.

    When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way, too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving. From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-size pieces. The original edition of Not Quite What I Was Planning spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and thanks to massive media attention—from NPR to the The New Yorker—the six-word memoir concept spread to classrooms, dinner tables, churches, synagogues, and tens of thousands of blogs. This deluxe edition has been revised and expanded to include more than sixty never-before-seen memoirs. From authors Elizabeth Gilbert, Richard Ford, and Joyce Carol Oates to celebrities Stephen Colbert, Mario Batali, and Joan Rivers to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.

    With hundreds of new examples pulled from everyday life, Junk English 2 shows how our language has become so pliable and flabby that the more we read and hear, the less we know.