Pop Culture Books - Page 5

House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series)

Henry Jacoby

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $9.63

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Editorial Review:

An unauthorized look at the philosophical issues raised by one of today's most popular television shows: House

House is one of the top three television dramas on the air, pulling in more than 19 million viewers for each episode. This latest book in the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series takes a deeper look at the characters and issues raised in this Emmy Award-winning medical drama, offering entertaining answers to the fascinating ethical questions viewers have about Dr. Gregory House and his medical team.

Henry Jacoby (Goldsboro, NC) teaches philosophy at East Carolina University. He has published articles primarily on the philosophy of mind and was a contributor to South Park and Philosophy
(978-1-4051-6160-2).

Sex and the City

Amy Sohn

Amazon Price: $15.11 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Collins Living Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $11.44

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the team who brought you Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell comes this must-have companion to the movie millions have been waiting for. This sleek hardcover volume gives reader exclusive entrée into the world of Sex and the City: The Movie.

In addition to a storybook-style telling of the film, the book includes mouth-watering bonus features not available anywhere else: behind-the-scenes stories from Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, star and producer Sarah Jessica Parker, writer and director Michael Patrick King, as well as producers and other key cast and crew members; a guide to the movie's multi-million—dollar fashion closet, including insight from costume designer Patricia Field; and an insider's tour of the movie's many locations, some of which have never before appeared on film.

All of this behind-the-scenes information is accompanied by more than three hundred stunning, luscious, full-color images. This beautiful keepsake is sure to bring some big-screen glitz and glamour to every reader's bookshelf.

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Robert D. Putnam

List Price: $26.00 By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 60 new & used starting at $3.29

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Bawling Alone: Fundamental Flaws 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Putnam accurately articulates that odd malaise many boomers deeply feel; loss of "community" (whatever one may take that to mean). He then tangentially reasons that the culprit is "diversity". The fact is that this particular boomer angst is far more the product of population density. In the '50s and '60s (his "Golden Age") solitude was far more easily acquired. Even in urbania, a short walk or a brief drive could deliver the needed dose of peace and quiet that reknits the "ravell'd sleeve of care". No more. Today, we can't get away from the crowd. It is overpopulation that drives us to seek relative social isolation. And whether the crowd looks like we do or not, it is still the crowd.

Putnam commits the endemic error of improperly linking cause and effect. Because the America he bemoans the loss of was whiter and far more insular, he attributes its unfortunate transformation to diversity. Anyone who has studied mammalian behavior will know that once a certain population density is reached, the behaviors that Putnam collectively refers to as "community" drastically decline.

Editorial Review:

Like such classics as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, Robert Putnam's seminal work brings to life a central crisis in American life: our increasing isolation from our communities and each other. Drawing on twenty-five years of data collected in the Roper Reports and DDB Life Style surveys, Putnam provides incontrovertible evidence that social bonds and interpersonal trust are rapidly diminishing in our society, threatening both our civic and personal well-being. He articulates the causes of this disengagement and provides viable solutions for re-forging community connections. His groundbreaking work demonstrates that bonds with other individuals are the most powerful predictors of life satisfaction and that they are essential to ensuring the stability and health of our nation.

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Don Thompson

List Price: $29.95 By: Doubleday Canada Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $29.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark delves into the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world – artists, dealers, auction houses, and wealthy collectors. If it’s true – as so often said – that 85 percent of new contemporary art is bad, why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? The $12 Million Stuffed Shark explores money, lust, and the self-aggrandizement of possession in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work of art valuable while others are ignored.

In the style of the bestselling Freakonomics, Thompson uses economic concepts to explain the unique practices employed, to great success, in the international contemporary art market. He discusses branding and marketing and how various strategies are tailored to a wealthy clientele, driving a "must-have" culture. Drawing on exclusive interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a surprising journey of discovery.

Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Open Court Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $2.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not Even Close 1 out of 5 stars.
17 of 22 people found this review helpful.

If you don't know much about Seinfeld or philosophy you might enjoy this book, but if you're a Seinfeld nut then avoid it at all costs. The show is incorrectly quoted several times and "facts" are also made up at times. The summarization of Socrates' allegory of the cave on page nine misstates some pretty major details. I suffered through the book until page 47 when the writer talks about how Kramer and Mickey embrace communism in the episode "The Race." Anyone who has seen that show even once knows that Mickey is trying to talk Kramer out of communism throughout the show. And even though Kramer definitely shows interest in communism it is quite a stretch to say is becomes an "ardent" communist. Rather than being an enjoyable read this book frustrated me enough that i quit on page 51. In all fairness the rest of the book may be excellent, but i'll probably never know.

Editorial Review:

Designed for philosophers as well as readers with no particular philosophical background, the essays in this lively book are grouped into four amusing acts. Act One looks at the four Seinfeld characters through a philosophical lens and includes Jerry and Socrates: The Examined Life? Act Two examines historical philosophers from a Seinfeldian standpoint and offers Plato or Nietzsche? Time, Essence, and Eternal Recurrence in Seinfeld. Act Three, Untimely Meditations by the Water Cooler, explores philosophical issues raised by the show, such as, Is it rational for George to do the opposite? And Act Four, Is There Anything Wrong with That?, discusses ethical problems of everyday life using Seinfeld as a basis. Seinfeld and Philosophy also provides a guide to Seinfeld episodes and a chronological list of the philosophers cited in this book.

Take the Cannoli

Sarah Vowell

List Price: $16.50 By: Penguin Books Ltd Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $12.15

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Take the Cannoli is a moving and wickedly funny collection of personal stories stretching across the immense landscape of the American scene. Hailed by Newsweek as a "cranky stylist with talent to burn," Vowell has an irresistible voice -- caustic and sympathetic, insightful and double-edged -- that has attracted a loyal following for her magazine writing and radio monologues on This American Life.

While tackling subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history, these autobiographical tales are written with a biting humor, placing Vowell solidly in the tradition of Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker. Vowell searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears.

Take the Cannoli is an eclectic tour of the New World, a collection of alternately hilarious and heartbreaking essays and autobiographical yarns.

Sex and the City

Candace Bushnell

List Price: $10.00 By: Little Brown UK Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 205 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Not a story 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Beware!! This is not a novel!! If you want an engrossing read and you want the girls from sex and the city, do not let this fool you. This book is more of an essay. Paragraph after paragraph of what appears to be the newspaper column maybe. Not novel format at all. I was real disapointed because I enjoyed Lipstick Jungle and Trading Up and Four Blondes. This book is nothing like them.

Carrie Fever 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I'm an absolute Sex and the City nut. Been addicted to the show for years. Happy to finaly have the book it all come from.

extremely disaponted 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I was very disaponted with the book. It seemed like the characters were hopping around so much that I couldnt figure out what was going on. I love the movie and I own every season, the book was just disapointing.

Lacks Zsa Zsa Zsou 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Okay, so I bought the book because I'm a fan of the show, and the movie was fun, if not as sexy and smart as the series. I just found this book really boring - it seemed as though Bushnell couldn't really be bothered writing it... maybe that was to convey the superficiality and heartlessness of the people, but how can you care about people like that?
Give me the show over this any day - in the end it was the friendships between Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha that gave it its zsa zsa zsou - and the superb acting.
Some chapters are insightful but overall, it's bland. I'm just glad that it spawned the series though!

Editorial Review:

Bushnell, a columnist and social critic, trips on her Manolo Blahnik kitten heels on a drunken cocktail trail through New York, from the Baby Doll Lounge to the Bowery Bar. On her travels, she assembles a cast of freaks, wonders, wannabes and gossip-peddlars.

E Pluribus Venom

Shepard Fairey

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Gingko Press Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $19.57

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

E Pluribus Venom collects a large body of work produced by Shepard Fairey and presented at the Jonathan Levine gallery during his massive exhibition in the summer of 2007. Serving as more than just an exhibition catalog, this book expounds upon themes presented in the show. The title E Pluribus Venom which translates Out of many, poison is derived from E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) an early motto adopted by the U.S. Government which appears on U.S. currency. The artist s thesis is that many becoming one, or a loss of power and influence of the individual in favor of homogeny is a symptom of a society in decline. E Pluribus Venom is comprised of artworks designed to question the symbols and methods of the American machine and American dream and also celebrate those who oppose blind nationalism and war. Some of Fairey s works use currency motifs or a Norman Rockwell aesthetic to employ the graphic language of the subjects they critique. Other works use a blend of Art Nouveau, hippie, and revolutionary propaganda styles to celebrate subjects advocating peace.

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

Chuck Klosterman

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 60 new & used starting at $7.25

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Creative insights 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Klosterman's work reflects creativity and interesting insights into American culture. His major frame of reference is modern-pop music. Interesting read with fascinating "what if" scenarios. Good basis for discussion with friends. Worth the quick read.

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.

What Would Wonder Woman Do?: An Amazon's Guide to the Working World

Jennifer Traig, Suzan Colon

Amazon Price: $12.76 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chronicle Books Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $8.87

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Only For Wonder Woman Fans... 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The WHAT WOULD WONDER WOMAN DO?... book gets 4-stars only because it's a clever idea and the two authors did a nice job weaving job hunting info within a Wonder Woman story line.

There are fun juxtapositions of WW comic strips along with real-world scenearios, i.e. "The Job Interview" and "Co-Workers Friend or Foe," that give readers a sense of what WW would do, and because the reader too can be a WW, she can do the same.

But as fun and clever as it is, the book does fall short on in-depth info. Most of the advice is simple and common-sense and the chapters are very short. There's some pratical advice in it, but for the most part this WW book is better suited as a novelty/humor item for a WW fan.

Editorial Review:

Beyond saving the planet, let's not forget that Wonder Woman also holds down a full-time job. In this hilarious and empowering handbook, the most popular female comic book character unveils her secrets for being a super hero in the office and finding your inner Wonder Woman. Ace a job interview, combat a tyrannical supervisor, move up the corporate ladder, handle office romance, and more. Pairing original comic book art with wry text, this colorful hardcover is perfect for the working girl looking to unleash her inner superpowers onto the daily grind.