Popular Culture Books - Page 13

Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities

Alexandra Robbins

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> College & University -> Student Life
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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> College & University -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 306 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Good, but a memoir would be better. 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

I was in a sorority and Pledged brought many good memories for me. I'm still best friends with three of my sisters, so I think it's important for the reader not to believe all the stereotypes this book reveals. My major complaint with Pledged is that it's too long and the storyline seems to be all over the place. Instead of chronologically following the different lives of the girl, I think the author should have just focused on one girl or one group of girls at a time. This would have made it easier for me to remember who did what and this also would have made it easier to see how the individual girls changed in reaction to the various problems they encountered. My other criticism is that I had a hard time accepting the truth value of some of the stories because the author herself was not a member of these sororities nor was she ever actually in a sorority. That's kind of like a journalist explaining to you what it "feels" like to be a doctor. She can tag along and watch things from a distance, but she's never really going to understand what it means to be something she's not. I wish someone would write another book about sorority life in the memoir form kind of like Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood. There are two good fraternity memoirs called COLLEGE LIFE EXTREME: Lies, Sex, Drugs and Violenceand Goat: A Memoir that really give you a sense of what Greek Life can be like from the perspective of fratboys. A memoir written by a real sorority girl would be much more engrossing than the work of a journalist, but even if someone does write a book like this, I think it's silly to believe that there is some uniform type of Greek experience. The reality is every college is different and their Greek systems will be different too.

Editorial Review:

Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller-with over 91,000 copies in print-that takes you behind closed doors to see what really goes on in America's sororities ver wonder what sorority life is really like? In Pledged, bestselling author Alexandra Robbins goes undercover to expose the dark side of collegiate sisterhood-the psychological abuse, hazing rituals, and widespread body image disorders-while at the same time introducing us to many of the intelligent, successful women within its ranks. The result is a compelling sociological exploration of the powerful influence that these organizations wield over young women today. With its fly-on-the-wall voyeurism and remarkable insight, Pledged paints a sharp-eyed portrait of the intriguing and paradoxical world of modern-day sororities.

100 Years of Harley Davidson

Willie G. Davidson

Amazon Price: $40.95 List Price: $65.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bulfinch Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $24.53

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Biography & History -> Company Profiles
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The name Harley-Davidson is recognized the world over as an icon of the American lifestyle and the American Dream. In 2002, the legendary motorcycle manufacturer celebrates the 100th anniversary with a travelling exhibition, an array of television programming and online events, and this publication. The author is the grandson of the founder and the man who has personally styled some of their most popular bikes. "Willie G." - a god among Harley fanatics and the spirtual and stylistic life blood of the the company - tells the inside story of the family business. The book contains over 500 illustrations including rare and unseen photographs from the Harley Davidson archives which feature races, rallies, famous faces and more. Willie G's narrative includes family reminiscences about the company's origins; insight into the making of Harley's classic models; personal views about custom bike styles and the freewheeling biker life; and behind-the-scenes accounts of the company's dark days and stunning revival.

Grow Great Marijuana: An Uncomplicated Guide to Growing the World's Finest Cannabis

Logan Edwards

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sweetleaf Publishing, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $15.65

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Literally for Dummies 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I was reviewing this book for my friends headshop to see if it was worth selling. Most of the other reviews talk about this book being a "for dummies" book. I've read a couple of those and considered this book to be just as informative. Unfortunately the topics it covers is not broad enough and very specific as to how you should grow. FYI: Its all about Hydro. If you have ever grown any sort of plant, this book is NOT for you. It is far too simple and uninformative.

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is a great resource with great pictures - it is well worth your money!

Editorial Review:

Grow Great Marijuana includes the simplest, quickest methods for getting your grow room started and keeping it packed with buds all year round. No complicated charts, graphs, or scientific explanations. You get all the essential information you need in one easy-to-use guide. Brimming with illustrations, advice, and photos, this easy to read guide shows you step-by-step how to create the indoor garden of your dreams. From hydroponic basics to a bountiful harvest, it's just what you need to start growing great marijuana!

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things

Barry Glassner

Amazon Price: $11.65 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Basic Books Amazon Marketplace: 208 new & used starting at $1.60

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 163 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

There has never been another era in modern history, even during wartime or the Great Depression, when so many people have feared so much. Three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today then they did twenty years ago. The Culture of Fear describes the high costs of living in a fear-ridden environment where realism has become rarer than doors without deadbolts.Why do we have so many fears these days? Are we living in exceptionally dangerous times? To watch the news, you’d certainly think so, but Glassner demonstrates that it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk. The Culture of Fear is an expose of the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our fears: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as rates for both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV newsmagazines that monger a new scare every week to garner ratings.Glassner spells out the prices we pay for social panics: the huge sums of money that go to waste on unnecessary programs and products as well as time and energy spent worrying about our fears.

WALT DISNEY IMAGINEERING: A BEHIND THE DREAMS LOOK AT MAKING THE MAGIC REAL

Imagineers

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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Arts & Music -> Architecture

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 61 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great for Disney and Imagineering Fans 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I added this book to my collection several years ago, and it is a great addition to any Disney or Imagineering fan's collection. I personally am a huge fan of Walt Disney the man, and all the projects he was involved in. This book gives more images than anything else, but some of the images and the little bit of information it gives is definitely interesting and fun to have. If you are looking for something more in depth about Imagineering I don't know if you will really find it here - it is similar to what you might get in watching a behind the scenes special feature on a DVD, it just glosses over some of the projects and plans throughout Disney Imagineering history.

wonderful book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Wonderful book full of information! Definitely recommend this for any Disney behind the scene facts!

Editorial Review:

Replete with drawings, models, and original artwork, a detailed profile of Walt Disney's Imagineers traces how the company's engineers combined science and imagination to create Walt Disney World and the rest of the Disney empire.

Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats

Steve Ettlinger

Amazon Price: $16.29 List Price: $23.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hudson Street Press Amazon Marketplace: 90 new & used starting at $1.80

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A pop-science journey into the surprising ingredients found in dozens of common packaged foods, using the Twinkie label as a guide

Like most Americans, Steve Ettlinger eats processed foods. And, like most consumers, he often reads the ingredients label—without a clue as to what most of it means. So when his young daughter asked, "Daddy, what’s polysorbate 60?" he was at a loss—and determined to find out.

From the phosphate mines in Idaho to the corn fields in Iowa, from gypsum mines in Oklahoma to the vanilla harvest in Madagascar, Twinkie, Deconstructed is a fascinating, thoroughly researched romp of a narrative that demystifies some of the most common processed food ingredients—where they come from, how they are made, how they are used—and why. Beginning at the source (hint: they’re often more closely linked to rock and petroleum than any of the four food groups), we follow each Twinkie ingredient through the process of being crushed, baked, fermented, refined, and/or reacted into a totally unrecognizable goo or powder with a strange name—all for the sake of creating a simple snack cake.

An insightful exploration into the food industry, if you’ve ever wondered what you’re eating when you consume foods containing mono- and diglycerides or calcium sulfate (the latter, a food-grade equivalent) this book is for you.

Lost and Philosophy: The Island Has Its Reasons (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sometimes it feels like you need a Ph.D. to follow the show. But you don't. You just need this book in which twenty-one philosophers explore the deep questions we all face as survivors on this planet: Does "everything happen for a reason"? Is torture ever justified? Who are the Others? How do we know we're not patients in Hurley's psych ward? What if the Dharma Intitiative is experimenting on us? Desmond may not be able to save Charlie, but this book could save you.

• A provocative study of the hit television show, Lost, currently in its third season and set to reach its climax in 2010
  
• Highlights the sense in which Lost is a genuinely philosophical show
  
• Helps fans understand and navigate some of Lost’s deeper meanings
  
• Connects episodes and events in the show to core philosophical issues such as truth, identity, and morality
  
• Shows that it’s no accident that there are Lost characters names Locke, Rousseau, and Hume

Polio: An American Story

David M. Oshinsky

Amazon Price: $23.82 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 65 new & used starting at $3.14

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

Editorial Review:

All who lived in the early 1950s remember the fear of polio and the elation felt when a successful vaccine was found. Now David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond. Here is a remarkable portrait of America in the early 1950s, using the widespread panic over polio to shed light on our national obsessions and fears. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. Indeed, the competition was marked by a deep-seated ill will among the researchers that remained with them until their deaths. The author also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a family. As backdrop to this feverish research, Oshinsky offers an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil O'Connor. The National Foundation revolutionized fundraising and the perception of disease in America, using "poster children" and the famous March of Dimes to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast army of contributors (instead of a few well-heeled benefactors), creating the largest research and rehabilitation network in the history of medicine. The polio experience also revolutionized the way in which the government licensed and tested new drugs before allowing them on the market, and the way in which the legal system dealt with manufacturers' liability for unsafe products. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Oshinsky reveals that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. But in baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over daily life. Both a gripping scientific suspense story and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.

Hello, Everybody!: The Dawn of American Radio

Anthony Rudel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Long before the internet, another young technology was transformed--with help from a colorful collection of eccentrics and visionaries--into a mass medium with the power to connect millions of people.

When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born. Sensing the medium's potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers took to the air, at once setting early standards for radio programming and making bedlam of the airwaves. Into the chaos stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization guided the technology's growth. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallee created the first on-air variety show and America elected its first true radio president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, radio had arrived.

With clarity, humor, and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by polite history, Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation's living room and forever changed American politics, journalism, and entertainment.

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

Ariel Levy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 104 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Girls in Reserve 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Whenever I read essays like Ariel Levy's "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of the Raunch Culture" I only regret that the author could not see into the future. Joe Francis, the creator of Girls Gone Wild videos, went to prison for tax evasion and drug trafficking charges related to prostitution. He was also a hero in prison. I've written a book of poems called "Atlantis", about the modern world's resemblance to the society of the lost continent of Atlantis. Big deal. I also read a book called, "On Blondes", in which the author, Joanna Pitman, relates how in ancient Rome, women used to dye their hair blonde with horse's urine. I think we are battling human nature. The Women's Movement brought us a long way, baby, and we still have a way to go. When I see the girls in GGW commercials hiking up their shirts, I recall the line in Altered States, "We spend most of every day just trying to prove we're alive." I hear the girls, "Here I am! I exist in this moment in time, this is my chance to show everyone how beautiful I am!" I also remember, because I'm old enough, when Johnny Carson used to cover a female guest's cleavage with a handkerchief. Now, we have news anchorwomen in push-up bras. We need to teach little boys right away, and I'm not the first to say that! They will never NOT love the female body, but we can teach them to respect it - and I actually know a few mothers who have taught their children well. Some girls are in reserve for the future. They keep their shirts on, even in searing New Orleans' heat while they spend their Spring break helping to build homes with Habitat for Humanity.

Editorial Review:

Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig -- the new brand of "empowered woman" who embraces "raunch culture" wherever she finds it. In her groundbreaking book, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy argues that, if male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women -- and of themselves. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, Female Chauvinist Pigs makes the case that the rise of raunch does not represent how far women have come; it only proves how far they have left to go.