Culture Books - Page 2

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

Chuck Klosterman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Made me care about Billy Joel 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Contains previously published interviews and essays on personalities and topics as disparate as Britney Spears, Radiohead and the phenomenon of Latino Morrissey fans. Generally speaking, this is a pretty fun read. Klosterman's Advancement Theory is one of the most brilliant hypotheses I've ever encountered and it almost makes sense....kind of. At times, though, his analysis of social issues makes him sound a bit condescending and he has a tendency to over simplify issues (such as his take on international political dynamics). Fortunately, there's more than enough mirth and playful self-deprecation to make up for these slight lapses.

Editorial Review:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN IV

CONSISTS OF THREE PARTS:

THINGS THAT ARE TRUE

Profiles and trend stories: Britney Spears, Radiohead, Billy Joel, Metallica, Val Kilmer, Bono, Wilco, the White Stripes, Steve Nash, Morrissey, Robert Plant -- all with new introductions and footnotes.

THINGS THAT MIGHT BE TRUE

Opinions and theories on everything from monogamy to pirates to robots to super people to guilt, and (of course) Advancement -- all with new hypothetical questions and footnotes.

SOMETHING THAT ISN'T TRUE AT ALL

This is old fiction. There's a new introduction, but no footnotes. Well, there's a footnote in the introduction, but none in the story.

Christ and Culture Revisited

D. A. Carson

Amazon Price: $16.32 List Price: $24.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $8.17

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Called to live in the world, but not to be of it, Christians must maintain a balancing act that becomes more precarious the further our culture departs from its Judeo-Christian roots. How should members of the church interact with such a culture, especially as deeply enmeshed as most of us have become?

D. A. Carson applies his masterful touch to this problem. He begins by exploring the classic typology of H. Richard Niebuhr and his five options for understanding culture. Carson proposes that these disparate options are in reality one still larger vision. Using the Bible's own story line and the categories of biblical theology, he attempts to work out what that unifying vision is. Carson acknowledges the helpfulness of Niebuhr's grid and other similar matrices but warns against giving them canonical force.

More than just theoretical, Christ and Culture Revisited is also designed practically to help Christians untangle current messy debates on living in the world. Carson emphasizes that the relation between Christ and culture is not limited to an either/or cultural paradigm -- Christ against culture or Christ transforming culture. Instead Carson offers his own paradigm in which all the categories of biblical theology must be kept in mind simultaneously to inform the Christian worldview.

Though several other books on culture interact with Niebuhr, none of them takes anything like the biblical-theological approach adopted here. Ground-breaking and challenging, Christ and Culture Revisited is a tour de force.

Rekindling Desire: A Step by Step Program to Help Low-Sex and No-Sex Marriages

Barry W. McCarthy, Emily J. McCarthy

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Routledge Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $10.04

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Is sex more work than play in your marriage? Do you schedule it in like a dentist appointment? Do you make love once a month, twice at the most? If you answered yes to these questions, you are among the forty million Americans trapped in a low-sex or no-sex marriage.

Now there is help from nationally acclaimed sex and marital experts Barry and Emily McCarthy, who for years have helped couples break down the barriers that have developed between them, and rebuild closeness and longing. Their groundbreaking ten-step program is designed to get sex and intimacy back into these marriages and revitalize relationships. Crafted by years of clinical practice, Rekindling Desire first shows couples how to root out the "poisons" that inhibit sexual desire: shame, guilt, anger, passivity, as well as medical side effects and physical dysfunctions. With sensitivity and tact, the McCarthys then lay out concrete techniques and effective strategies that help couples increase sexual awareness, confront inhibitions, revitalize desire, and integrate intimacy and eroticism.

An exciting new way to spark and sustain desire, Rekindling Desire confronts the secrecy and stigma of low-sex and no-sex marriages, teaching couples how to enjoy a fulfilling, life-long sexual partnership.

Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism

Philip Miller, Molly Devon

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mystic Rose Books Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $12.49

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 75 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Philip Miller and Molly Devon think that S/M is fun, and "that reading about it should be fun, too." Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns is definitely fun, not to mention approachable, chatty, and insightful. What makes it truly special, however, is the sheer weight of loving details. There's clear explanations and detailed tutorials for beginners, as general as "safe, sane, and consensual" and as specific as "you will be swinging the whip with your arm pivoting at the shoulder." There's also solid advice, safety measures, steamy suggestions, plenty of black-and-white photographs, useful and humorous drawings, an extensive glossary, and over 900 entries of S/M clothing and equipment vendors, publications, computer bulletin boards, and organizations worldwide. As sadomasochism is a practice that's still taboo for many people, the chapter on finding partners and sharing your fantasies with existing partners can be invaluable.

Screw the Roses enthusiastically covers all the basics and even some of the not-so-basics--bondage, negotiation, sex, endorphins, dominance and submission, toys, safety, S/M community, and beyond. It's written primarily from the point of view of male dominant/female submissive interactions, but it's easily translatable into valuable advice for any relationship configuration. Miller and Devon's explanations of not just the how, but also the why, of sadomasochism are honest, sexy, funny--and a must-have for anyone who wants to learn about sadism, masochism, dominance, submission, or bondage. --Cheryl Trooskin

The Girlfriends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood

Vicki Iovine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 206 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

the girlfriends guide to surviving the first year of motherhood 5 out of 5 stars.
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This book is a must have for all pregnant women and new moms! I bought one copy for myself after the birth of my second son and it kept me laughing and sane through those rough early months. I have bought two other copies of this book since, as gifts. My copy was pretty dog-eared by the end of the first year!

Just a warning: 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is amusing and light to read, but is only useful for BRAND-NEW mothers. I bought it mistakenly thinking there might be some interesting advice on older-baby topics, such as feeding solids, crawling, walking, etc. (I have a 7-month-old daughter). Unfortunately the bulk of the book deals with the newest of new-motherhood issues--losing your baby weight, how to care for your body in the immediate days after delivery, having sex for the first time post-delivery, breast v. bottle, etc. Only buy this if you are still pregnant, seriously.

Editorial Review:

Just had a baby? Lie down, rest your weary womb, and muster up a rousing cheer! (Shh! Don't wake the baby!) Now, from the author of The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy, comes the book all new moms have been waiting for, whether they know it or not. Vicki Iovine talks turkey ... and stitches, and weight loss, and depression, and sex (trying it for the first time after labor and delivery? "Inebriate and Lubricate"). Vicki--yeah, I know I'm calling her by her first name but after reading this book you'll be on a first-name basis with her, too--is funny, informative, and utterly (udderly?) irreverent. New mothers have never had it so good.

The Apron Book: Making, Wearing, and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort

EllynAnne Geisel

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Andrews McMeel Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $6.95

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Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Vintage aprons and modern designs are turning up in movies, magazine spreads, upscale shops, and hip retail venues like Anthropologie, whose trendy line of aprons is selling as fast as they can stock them. The Apron Book is an infectiously enthusiastic guide to aprons, old and new, that are suddenly everywhere.

Aprons take us back to our favorite placeome. Vintage aprons help us remember home and family the way they used to be, while bright and sassy contemporary aprons confirm that nesting is all the rage. Actress and trendsetter Julia Roberts has a closetful of vintage aprons. Celebrity custom-made apron auctions have become an annual event for several popular charities in the past few years.

The Apron Book provides full-color photos of new and vintage aprons from the author's collection, patterns for four basic apron styles and myriad variations, recipes, tips on collecting and preserving vintage aprons, and heart-tugging stories from the author's traveling apron exhibit. The book also explores the heyday of aprons and looks at the various roles aprons still play when worn in the kitchen, around the house, by the backyard grill, on the job, and for special occasions.

Warm and inviting¿but like an apron quite practical!¿this book is a celebration of a great American icon and reminds us of what we loved about the people who wore them.

How to Ruin the United States of America

Ben Stein, Phil DeMuth

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

On the heels of his very successful books, How to Ruin Your Life, How to Ruin Your Love Life, and How to Ruin Your Financial Life, Ben Stein, in collaboration with his pal Phil DeMuth, has tongue firmly in cheek once again as he comes up with surefire ways to ruin the greatest nation in the history of the human race.

Try a few of these on for size:

· Trust the United Nations to protect us and our security.

· Make it unlawful to worship God or even to show images of the Ten Commandments.

· Convert our universities into fortresses of anti-Americanism, hatred of freedom, and centers of confusion and ignorance.

· Encourage contempt for the family and for the community.

· Allow Hollywood to brainwash us into believing that only suckers and criminals fight for their country.

· Treat the military, the police, firefighters, and teachers as losers and pay them starvation wages.

Hey, does any of this sound familiar? Maybe that’s because it’s already happening! Ben and Phil give you all the information you’ll ever need in order to successfully ruin the USA even further! Sardonic, humorous, but also angrily emphatic, this is a book every old-fashioned patriot really needs to read!

Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume III

Danzig Baldaev

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This final volume of previously unpublished drawings and photographs completes the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia trilogy. Danzig Baldaev's unparallelled ethnographic achievement, documenting more than 3,000 tattoo drawings, was made during a lifetime working as a prison guard. His recording of this esoteric world was reported to the KGB, who unexpectedly supported him, realizing the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. A medieval knight is surrounded by the severed heads of his enemies, a naked woman simultaneously services a man and two dwarfs, a crying President Gorbachev grips a human bone between sabre-like fangs, a group of angels drink vodka with God on a cloud--the meanings of these arresting images are explained to the uninitiated eye. Sergei Vasiliev's graphic photographs show the grim reality of the Russian prison system and some of the alarming characters that inhabit it, while the illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society. This last volume in the trilogy includes an introduction by historian Alexander Sidorov exploring the origins of the Russian criminal tattoo and their various meanings today.

How to Save Your Marriage Alone

Ed Wheat

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A recipe for disaster. 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Many years ago I clung to this book while in the middle of a humiliating, searing disintegration of my marriage. My husband had made it clear that he wanted out for almost two years before he finally left. I remained in a church group that told me (ultimately) what I really wanted to hear: I should submit more to my husband (who wanted none of it), pray harder, hold fast and "have faith" while waiting for God to restore my marriage. I had an arsenal of scriptures and prayed on my face nightly, weeping with inconsolable grief and desperation. When he left (as he had wanted to do for so long) I was financially ruined, spiritually bankrupt and physically damaged (two sexually transmitted diseases). I would strongly urge anyone interested in this book to lay down your will (yes, your will) to "save" your marriage and to humbly and earnestly seek the will and heart of Jesus for your personal situation. My life went from the frying pan to the fire to the fires of hell because of my own very religious and ultimately disobedient choices. As Evangelicals, we have turned marriage into an idol of monstrous proportions. We have similar cult-like views of family and marriage as the Mormons...which will hopefully give you sobering pause for prayer and reflection.

Editorial Review:

Help for troubled marriages, especially for the person whose spouse is seeking a divorce, is here at last. Dealing with emotions, planning, decision-making, and the need to love, this book also contains two chapters excerpted from Love Life for Every Married Couple.

Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love

Robert Karen

Amazon Price: $14.93 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $9.42

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The struggle to understand the infant-parent bond ranks as one of the great quests of modern psychology, one that touches us deeply because it holds so many clues to how we become who we are. How are our personalities formed? How do our early struggles with our parents reappear in the way we relate to others as adults? Why do we repeat with our own children--seemingly against our will--the very behaviors we most disliked about our parents? In Becoming Attached, psychologist and noted journalist Robert Karen offers fresh insight into some of the most fundamental and fascinating questions of emotional life.
Karen begins by tracing the history of attachment theory through the controversial work of John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst, and Mary Ainsworth, an American developmental psychologist, who together launched a revolution in child psychology. Karen tells about their personal and professional struggles, their groundbreaking discoveries, and the recent flowering of attachment theory research in universities all over the world, making it one of the century's most enduring ideas in developmental psychology.
In a world of working parents and makeshift day care, the need to assess the impact of parenting styles and the bond between child and caregiver is more urgent than ever. Karen addresses such issues as: What do children need to feel that the world is a positive place and that they have value? Is day care harmful for children under one year? What experiences in infancy will enable a person to develop healthy relationships as an adult?, and he demonstrates how different approaches to mothering are associated with specific infant behaviors, such as clinginess, avoidance, or secure exploration. He shows how these patterns become ingrained and how they reveal themselves at age two, in the preschool years, in middle childhood, and in adulthood. And, with thought-provoking insights, he gives us a new understanding of how negative patterns and insecure attachment can be changed and resolved throughout a person's life.
The infant is in many ways a great mystery to us. Every one of us has been one; many of us have lived with or raised them. Becoming Attached is not just a voyage of discovery in child emotional development and its pertinence to adult life but a voyage of personal discovery as well, for it is impossible to read this book without reflecting on one's own life as a child, a parent, and an intimate partner in love or marriage.