Culture Books - Page 8

Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests

James A. Miller, Tom Shales

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Subjects -> Entertainment -> Television -> Shows -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 140 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Live from New York: An Interesting behind the scenes look 4 out of 5 stars.
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Background:
The authors interview most of the living cast and crew from SNL and gather/mold the various responses into a kind of oral history of what went on behind the scenes of the show from day one. The book also takes a look at what was happening at the network level and the encounters that Michaels and the other producers of the show had when corporate sensibilites clashed with comic creativity. The version I read also has an extra 30 pages or so of what various people think about Lorne Michaels.
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This was a pretty interesting book if your like me and werent even born when the first show came and only really became aware of it in the mid 90's. It does a pretty good job of showing how the show changed (it seems in the casts eye's first) from a show were you did envelope pushing comedy to a place that was more of a spring board to a movie career. The book also does go into detail on most of the famous feuds, deaths, bad hosts/good hosts, and other incidents that have popped up over the years. A great majority of the book deals with how the show comes together, which I think is the most interesting part, and how all the people somehow manage to work together depiste massive pressure and somtimes conflicting personalites. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes SNL and wants some background info on how the show came to be in its current form and perhaps those who might want an idea of what happens on the road to stardom.
m.a.c

Editorial Review:

The New York Times bestselling oral history of Saturday Night Live that finally reveals what really went on backstage, on the set, in the writers' offices, and on the town, is now in paperback!

In their own words, a galaxy of stars--including Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Adam Sandler, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Dana Carvey, Tina Fey, Molly Shannon, Al Franken, and other members of Saturday Night Live's extended family--recall a quarter-century's worth of great backstage stories, behind-the-scenes gossip, feuds, foibles, drugs, sex, struggles, and calamities. The result: a page-turner that reveals how and why SNL has become the longest-running television comedy of all time.

The Girlfriends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood

Vicki Iovine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 209 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A must for New Moms who aren't only Moms but Women too! 5 out of 5 stars.
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I haven't read this book in a while since my kids are 4 and 2, but I will tell you that I did read it both times I had a newborn. I recommend this book to everyone, and buy it for everyone I can!

If you don't have a sense of humor, or if you really are living the dream world with a husband who rubs your feet, gets up with the baby and doesn't want to play "Rock, Paper, Scissor" everytime you ask him to change a diaper DON'T READ THIS!!

If you do live in reality, want the true story from someone who's lived it (4 times, Vicki has 4 kids), and don't won't take the whole thing too seriously then READ THIS BOOK!!!

Enjoy, and Welcome to Motherhood!!!!

Editorial Review:

The author of the enormously successful Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy brings a mother's wisdom and a girlfriend's candor to the first book in a fresh new series of guides to motherhood. Readers will learn about baby euphoria, postpartum mood swings, salvaging one's sex life, and fitting into that favorite pair of jeans.

The Great Transformation

Karl Polanyi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The satanic mill 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 17 people found this review helpful.

Polanyi's great transformation starts in the 19th century with the installation of a self-regulating market system ('the satanic mill') for labor, land and money and by letting the whole society be run by the system without any intervention. It provoked a wholesale destruction of the `traditional fabric of society'.

Attack on the market economy and democracy
In fact, this book is not only an attack against `laissez-faire', but also against a `regulated' market system and against, for Polanyi, the main cause of this great transformation (democracy). His book is not less than a plea for a return to the `Ancien Régime', for Polanyi the Golden Age of mankind, `the traditional unity of the Christian society', `the social fabric of the village under the supremacy of squire and parson', the society of `the benevolent gentlemen of England with their compassion from the heart', when economics where `embedded' in the whole society.

What was this Ancien Régime?
A disaster for 999 out of 1000 individuals. The poor had only one option: 'steal to be hanged' (J. Swift, D. Defoe, E.J. Burford). But for Polanyi, `under the regime of feudalism and the village community, noblesse oblige, clan solidarity, and regulation of the corn market checked famine'.
The kings owned the salt mines and sold (!) as a monopoly their salt (a necessity for survival) dearly: one block of about 5 kg was worth a whole village, population included (the ancient salt mines of Krakow are well worth a visit). For Polanyi, `it is the absence of the threat of individual starvation which makes primitive society more humane.'
Polanyi defends the guild system, feudalism and mercantilism: `Feudalism and landed conservatism were only seemingly contrary to the general interest of the community' and `neither under tribal nor under feudal nor under mercantile conditions was there a separate economic system in society'. But the guild system was an antidemocratic closed shop and mercantilism (F. Colbert) was a system for strengthening the Nation, in other words, the power of one man (`L'Etat, c'est moi').

What is the cause of this great transformation?
`The democratization of the political State which caused the separation of the economic and political sphere', `the transition to a democratic system and representative politics'.

What is Polanyi's solution?
`The passing of the market-economy can become the beginning of an era of unprecedented freedom.' What we need is planning, control, power and compulsion to ensure conformity which is needed for the survival of the group. Contradictio in terminis? Absolutely not: `the individual person should not fear that power and planning will turn against him'.

Of course, submitting the whole society to a pure self-regulating market system (e.g., the gold standard) is asking for disaster. The market system, a must for democracy, should be regulated and parts of the fabric of society should be managed by the State under a democratically elected government (R. Kuttner, J. Stiglitz). Indeed, `The economic order is merely a function of the social order'.

This book is an extraordinary reactionary and naïve defense of a `black' past.
However, the introduction by J. Stiglitz is excellent and justifies a modest outlay.

Editorial Review:

One of the twentieth century's most thorough and discerning historians, Karl Polanyi sheds "new illumination on . . . the social implications of a particular economic system, the market economy that grew into full stature in the nineteenth century." -R. M. MacIver

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century

Paul Krugman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 216 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A galvanizing new work from America's leading economic critic—a book that will set the terms of the political debate for years to come.

No one has more authority to call the shots the way they really are than Paul Krugman, whose provocative New York Times columns are keenly followed by millions. One of the world's most respected economists, Krugman has been named America's most important columnist by the Washington Monthly and columnist of the year by Editor and Publisher magazine.

In this long-awaited work containing Krugman's most influential columns along with new commentary, he chronicles how the boom economy unraveled: how exuberance gave way to pessimism, how the age of corporate heroes gave way to corporate scandals, how fiscal responsibility collapsed. From his account of the secret history of the California energy crisis to his devastating dissections of dishonesty in the Bush administration, Krugman tells the uncomfortable truth about how the United States lost its way. And he gives us the road map we will need to follow if we are to get the country back on track.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions)

Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, R.H. Tawney

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Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The definitive introductory text in Modernization theory 5 out of 5 stars.
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Weber is the definitive introductory text in Modernization theory. Although somewhat western-centric, this book is essential reading for any college student, as it gave rise to many theories in every branch of social science, and still has more influence on theoretical thought than most social scientists would like to admit.

What Made Capitalism Tick? 5 out of 5 stars.
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In my youth I used to believe that Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was the very last word in understanding, sociologically, the driving force behind capitalism in its prime. His premise, at least his expressed narrowly- defined one, that out of the mishmash of feudalism a `new' man and a `new' woman were being created who could subordinate their temporal desires enough to begin the tedious process of primitive capitalist accumulation that got the whole mode started, hit home hard to my young mind. Of course, that was not my conscious take on it at the time, although parts of it certainly were. What interested me the most wa that Weber was using some examples that were close to home, the Massachusetts Bay Colony experiment, and, being from Boston and steeped in Purtian history, that is why I was glad to get a copy of the work.

Strangely, in recently re-reading the work I found that I was drawn by those same examples. Additionally, I was drawn by the huge set of footnotes at the end that I did not remember going through in my youth but offer some very interesting insights into how Weber put his argument together and the sources that he had available at the time and that he used. The re-reading poses this question, though. How does the work itself hold up?

Of course today my class struggle perspective derived from a Marxist world view notes that Weber is clearly a political opponent. Not so much for his argument, which actually has a certain merit, but for his tenacious desire to use a quasi-Marxism materialist approach to sociology without drawing those requisite class struggle conclusions. I might add that the class struggle was fully raging in Germany at the time of the publication of this work as the Social Democratic Party was becoming the voice of the German working class. Weber, thus, really needed to keep his blinders on. Moreover, as a work of scholarship, which I will grant it certainly is, it is an early effort in the very long struggle to divorce sociological observations from any practical use. A militant today in order to benefit from reading this work has to do the equivalent of suspending disbelieve in the plot of a novel to realize that it is important to know what made capitalism tick in the old days and why we have to move on. Here, nevertheless is my very condensed take on the work today.

In some place in 16th and 17th century Europe, the scope of Weber's study, individuals and small communities were breaking from the established churches, Roman Catholic and mainstream Protestant and creating, in some cases 'hit or miss', a culture that we today describe as secular but in the nature of those times had a religious connotation. That breakout, not without opposition and oppression by the constituted authorities, formed the nucleus of an ethic that made accumulation of wealth through hard work and thrift the norm-in short that private accumulation mentioned above. This, dear reader, was a historically progressive series of actions. In the year 2007 those traits have long since failed to be progressive. What is necessary, as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and even someone like Che Guevara recognized is in the interest of social solidarity we need to create `the new socialist man and woman' out of the muck and mire of capitalism. Hell, we need our own version of the Protestant ethic-and if current worldwide economic conditions are any judge- we need it pronto. Read this one at your leisure.

Editorial Review:

This brilliant study opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through the conflict of opposites. Instead, Weber relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately encouraged capitalism.

La frontera / Borderlands

Gloria Anzaldúa

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Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Foreign Language Fiction -> Spanish

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Racist Garbage 1 out of 5 stars.
16 of 55 people found this review helpful.

While most reviewers seem to be bent on lauding Gloria Anzaldúa's "insightful and progressive" writings, I can't help but take a different viewpoint. The vast majority of her essays, while cloaked in a sense of righteous equality, are quite simply racist drivel. She speaks of acceptance and tolerance for foreign cultures in America, and harps on the evils of correcting students when they use improper English, yet instills her writing with a blatant and offensive racism.

I make specific reference to the article "How to Tame A Wild Tongue". In her conclusion, she praises the perseverance and endurance of the mestizo race/culture, making reference to walking by "the crumbling ashes" of American civilization. An eagerness is felt to see the day that "white laws and commerce will rot in the desert". One would be hard pressed to come up with a more hypocritical conclusion. Here is an author preaching tolerance and acceptance of different languages and cultures throughout her entire article. She whines about the troubles she had fitting in with English speaking people. She goes in depth to explain the numerous bastardizations of Spanish that are spoken in various Hispanic cultures and tries to convince us of how each is a viable language, even so-called "Spanglish", just a blend of English and Spanish that you might hear in a high school Spanish I class ("el chairo = chair,la ceilingo = ceiling, etc.) . And after all that talk of acceptance, she ends by completely blasting American culture and expressing her wish to see it crumble to dust, while at the same time presenting the mestizo as the dominant race which will endure this fall. Talk about racist. I understand pride of your country and people, but this goes far beyond simple nationalism, especially in light of the overall message of the article. Tolerance is right out the window here.

Don't be fooled by Anzaldúa's overly wordy diction and pseudo-intellectualism. She is a flat out racist that for some reason is tolerated (forget that, praised to the roof!) in many academic circles. Her educational philosophy is naive, irresponsible, and fundamentally flawed. Hopefully her writings will soon fall out of the limelight.

Editorial Review:

Cultural Writing. Chicana Studies. Women's Studies. "The actual physical borderland that I'm dealing with in this book is the Texas-U.S., Southwest/ Mexican border. The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands, and spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy"--Gloria Anazaldua. Second Edition, with a new introduction by Sonia Saldivar-Hull, author of Feminism on the Border, and an in-depth interview with Gloria Anzaldua. An essential book.

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

Clotaire Rapaille

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Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why are people around the world so very different? What makes us live, buy, even love as we do? The answers are in the codes.

In The Culture Code, internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

Rapaille’s breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What’s more, we can learn to crack the codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do.

Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger’s coffee – one of the longest lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us.

In The Culture Code, Dr. Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging from sex to money to health to America itself—to give us “a new set of glasses” with which to view our actions and motivations. Why are we so often disillusioned by love? Why is fat a solution rather than a problem? Why do we reject the notion of perfection? Why is fast food in our lives to stay? The answers are in the Codes.

Understanding the Codes gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different, and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all.

Marriages and Families: Making Choices in a Diverse Society

Mary Ann Lamanna, Agnes Czerwinski Riedmann

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Interracial relationship data in book is biased 3 out of 5 stars.
11 of 21 people found this review helpful.

I study close relationships of all kinds regardless of race. I have noticed something troubling about books such as yours. I have noticed many texts are off base or one sided when discussing heterogamous or "interracial" relationships involving black men. Rather than present a balanced picture of heterogamous relationships within the black community, the authors of this text deliberately took a stance which casts a negative shadow on black men in heterogamous relationships even going so far as to quote an article in a popular magazine as a source. This is a text book. There's no room for unsupported opinions from popular media. All arguments should be fairly presented and documented with a diversity of academic sources because you're influencing the minds of students who are relying upon your "expertise."

One ludicrous claim in this text was the notion that black men trade successful positions in society for white women of lower status in order to gain status. This is a very old myth that only perpetuates negative stereotypes of black men. Studies have found NO correlation of that type, it's just a pernicious myth! (Golden, 1954; Heer, 1974; and Monahan; 1976). Think about it rationally. When you consider the stares, negative comments and potential social isolation black men who marry outside of their race experience, do you honestly see that as raising status? The reality of the situation renders the "status" argument moot and demonstrates it is a ridiculous assumption.

Please stop printing these damaging unsupported myths about black men!

Other than this grossly distorted section, the book was a good overview of marriage and family issues within our culture.

Editorial Review:

Lamanna and Riedmann use a decision making theme within a framework of sociological research and theory to give students the tools they need to make decisions about their relationships, marriages, and families. This framework helps students understand that their individual actions and choices are influenced by broader social forces, while helping them examine their personal choices and goals. The authors affirm the diversity of families and relationships today, providing a context for any student, whatever his or her age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

Understanding Human Sexuality

Janet Shibley Hyde, John D. Delamater

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

a must read. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

no matter how experienced a person can be in sex, we all must read this book. it not only gives basic understanding of sexual behavior and act, it also goes over other ares like understanding transvestites, fetish, sexual diseases, etc...

Editorial Review:

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN SEXUALITY has always been a leader in the field, from the first edition in 1979 through the fifth edition in 1994. It is the "classic" that new books try to beat. It combines a readable, engaging style that appeals to students from diverse backgrounds, with exceptionally careful scholarship. Most human sexuality courses, especially those in psychology and sociology departments, are multidisciplinary, drawing on biological, psychological and sociological materials, as well as information about sexual health. This text is broad-based and comprehensive to meet this need. The book has always given solid coverage to the social sciences. Its multidisciplinary character has been strengthened with the additon of John DeLamater, a social psychologist and Professor of Sociology, as a co-author.

The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology

Kerry Ferris, Jill Stein

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Editorial Review:

The first "participatory" introduction to sociology textbook, The Real World is the perfect choice for today's students. With a clever mix of popular culture, everyday life, and extensive student activities, The Real World fully realizes sociology's unique ability to stimulate students intellectually as well as resonate with them personally.