Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

Doing Nothing

039b8774-4a76-4690-98e9-9be265f1c6ff-0

Pennsylvania

Essays on culture literature and feminism

Taking a long look

Chris Hedges

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

The author navigates America's divided culture--where a minority embraces film, theater, and books, while the majority cling to a world of fantasy and false certainty--to expose what he sees as an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

Empire of Illusion

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Eric Marcus

The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights

Covering the years from 1945 through 1990, this critically acclaimed book weaves together the personal stories of individuals from a variety of backgrounds to provide a richly rewarding history of the dramatic campaign for gay and lesbian rights. "Both inspiring and heart-wrenching".--New York Times Book Review. 30 photographs.

Making History

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Vijay Prashad

Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity

Selected as One of the Village Voice's Favorite 25 Books of 2001 In this landmark work, historian Vijay Prashad refuses to engage the typical racial discussion that matches people of color against each other while institutionalizing the primacy of the white majority. Instead he examines more than five centuries of remarkable historical evidence of cultural and political interaction between Blacks and Asians around the world, in which they have exchanged cultural and religious symbols, appropriated personas and lifestyles, and worked together to achieve political change.

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

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Susan Lederer

Florida

Penetrating the Secrets of Nature

As science penetrates the secrets of nature, with each discovery generating new questions, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will sound its note of warning. Many scientific developments have provoked references to Frankenstein, a story that, for nearly two centuries, has gripped our imaginations and haunted our nightmares. How can society balance the benefits of medical discoveries against the ethical or spiritual questions posed?

Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature accompanies a traveling exhibit of the same name. This lavishly illustrated volume begins by highlighting Shelley's novel and the context in which she conceived it. It next focuses on the redefinition of the Frankenstein myth in popular culture. Here, the fate of the monster becomes a moral lesson illustrating the punishment for ambitious scientists who seek to usurp the place of God by creating life. The final section examines the continuing power of the Frankenstein story to articulate present-day concerns raised by new developments in biomedicine such as cloning and xenografting (the use of animal organs in human bodies), and the role scientists and citizens play in determining acceptable limits of scientific and medical advances.

Frankenstein

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Margret Grebowicz

New Hampshire

Uses the whale song to explore how environmental problems like noise pollution and climate change affect social relations between animals as well as humans.

Whale Song

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John Hooper

Explores the history, culture, and religion of the Italian people, shedding new light on many aspects of Italian life.

The Italians

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#paperback #textbook #culturalstudies #american #ethnology #folklore #nonfiction

Utah

The American West is a region, perhaps more than any other in the United States, that comes to us in visual terms. The grand landscapes, open vistas, and magisterial views have made the act of looking a defining feature of how we experience the West as an actual place. In Looking West, John D. Dorst examines a largely neglected pattern of seeing that stands in contrast to the universally familiar iconography.
When we engage in the act of looking, contends Dorst, we inevitably do so according to historically determined patterns--"discourses of seeing." It is a central premise of Looking West that over roughly the last one hundred years the American West, both as a physical location and as an imagined place, has been an important laboratory for the production of modern visual discourses.
Through a series of Western texts--folkloric, photographic, literary, and historical--Dorst outlines another pattern of looking West, one characterized by optical distortion, faulty vision, and the ambiguous intersection of spectatorship, display, and covert observation. He applies the insights gained from this analysis of discursive patterns to various cultural displays located in the contemporary West. In a series of ethnographic case studies--two folk art displays, a Western heritage theme park, and Devils Tower National Monument--he shows how this other discourse plays out at actual sites and institutions.
Dorst offers an account of visual practices that, though dressed in the images and narratives of the American West, are in fact characteristic of our modern consumer culture in general. This interdisciplinary combination of discursive analysis with ethnographic observation and material culture interpretation makes Looking West an original contribution to the fields of visual culture studies, American studies, and Western studies.

Looking West

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Keith H. Basso

1988 Cambridge University Press. Some wrinkles and creasing on the cover. Highlights found in contents, as well.

New Mexico

Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache

Drawing on current theory in symbolic anthropology and sociolinguistics, this interpretive essay investigates a complex form of joking based on material collected in a Western Apache community wherein Apaches stage carefully crafted imitations of Anglo-Americans.

Portraits of the Whiteman

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#romance #love #family #relationships #culturalstudies

A Polemic

A polemic against love that is "engagingly acerbic ... extremely funny.... A deft indictment of the marital ideal, as well as a celebration of the dissent that constitutes adultery, delivered in pointed daggers of prose" (The New Yorker).

Who would dream of being against love? No one. Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions.

But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love.

Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won't injure you (well not severely); it's just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.

Against Love

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Fadwa El Guindi

Only minor typical paperback cover wear and shelf wear. No annotations 

Religion in Culture

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Michael Pollan

Light shelf wear and slight crease in spine (see photos). 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Minnesota

A Natural History of Transformation

Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules, and How to Change Your Mind, explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen in Cooked. "Having described what's wrong with American food in his best-selling The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), New York Times contributor Pollan delivers a more optimistic but equally fascinating account of how to do it right. . . . A delightful chronicle of the education of a cook who steps back frequently to extol the scientific and philosophical basis of this deeply satisfying human activity." —Kirkus (starred review) Cooked is now a Netflix docuseries based on the book that focuses on the four kinds of "transformations" that occur in cooking. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney and starring Michael Pollan, Cooked teases out the links between science, culture and the flavors we love. In Cooked, Pollan discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth—to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer. Each section of Cooked tracks Pollan’s effort to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue pit master tutors him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez Panisse–trained cook schools him in the art of braising; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius “fermentos” (a tribe that includes brewers, cheese makers, and all kinds of picklers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most amazing alchemies of all. The reader learns alongside Pollan, but the lessons move beyond the practical to become an investigation of how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships. Cooking, above all, connects us. The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching. Relying upon corporations to process our food means we consume large quantities of fat, sugar, and salt; disrupt an essential link to the natural world; and weaken our relationships with family and friends. In fact, Cooked argues, taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make the American food system healthier and more sustainable. Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self-reliance, learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.

Cooked

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This is the 1968 deluxe collectible Cromwell edition of the text. It has many great descriptions, illustrations, and photographs of Siam. 

The sleeve and the book are like new, no damage. The book is woven coarse pink cloth on a hardback underside. The binding is pretty ornate in floral patterns.

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Visit to Modern Siam

Thailand Today 

#paperback #CulturalStudies #teaching #literature #sociology #context #theory #essays

Iowa

Cultural and Cross-Cultural Studies and the Teaching of Literature

This book of essays offers perspectives for college teachers facing the perplexities of today's focus on cultural issues in literature programs. The book presents ideas from 19 scholars and teachers relating to theories of culture-oriented criticism and teaching, contexts for these activities, and specific, culture-focused texts significant for college courses. The articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "Cultural Criticism: Past and Present" (Mary Poovey); (2) "Genre as a Social Institution" (James F. Slevin); (3) "Teaching Multicultural Literature" (Reed Way Dasenbrock); (4) "Translation as a Method for Cross-Cultural Teaching" (Anuradha Dingwaney and Carol Maier); (5) "Teaching in the Television Culture" (Judith Scot-Smith Girgus and Cecelia Tichi); (6) "Multicultural Teaching: It's an Inside Job" (Mary C. Savage); (7) "Chicana Feminism: In the Tracks of 'the' Native Woman" (Norma Alarcon); (8) "Current African American Literary Theory: Review and Projections" (Reginald Martin); (9) "Talking across Cultures" (Robert S. Burton); (10) "Walter Mitty in China: Teaching American Fiction in an Alien Culture" (H. W. Matalene); (11) "Text, Context, and Teaching Literature by African American Women" (Sandra Jamieson); (12) "Sethe's 'Big, Bad' Love" (Chauncey A. Ridley); (13) "Baldwin, Bebop, and 'Sonny's Blues'" (Pancho Savery); (14) "Filiative and Affiliative Textualization in Chinese American Literature" (David Leiwei Li); (15) "The Unheard: Vietnamese Voices in the Literature Curriculum" (Renny Christopher); (16) "Narrative Theory in Naguib Mahfouz's 'The Children of Gebelawi'" (Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist); and (17) "The Mixed Blood Writer as Interpreter and Mythmaker" (Patricia Riley). (SR)

Understanding Others

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From Founding Mothers to Feminists-How Women Shaped the Life and Culture of America

From colonial to modern-day times this narrative history, incorporating first-person accounts, traces the development of women's roles in America. Against the backdrop of major historical events and movements, the authors examine the issues that changed the roles and lives of women in our society. Includes photographs.

A History of Women in America

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Julia Alvarez

South Carolina

Coming of Age in the USA

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a “phenomenal, indispensable” (USA Today) exploration of the Latina “sweet fifteen” celebration, by the bestselling author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. The quinceañera, a celebration of a Latina girl’s fifteenth birthday, has become a uniquely American trend. This lavish party with ball gowns, multi-tiered cakes, limousines, and extravagant meals is often as costly as a prom or a wedding. But many Latina girls feel entitled to this rite of passage, marking a girl’s entrance into womanhood, and expect no expense to be spared, even in working-class families. Acclaimed author Julia Alvarez explores the history and cultural significance of the “quince” in the United States, and the consequences of treating teens like princesses. Through her observations of a quince in Queens, interviews with other quince girls, and the memories of her own experience as a young immigrant, Alvarez presents a thoughtful and entertaining portrait of a rapidly growing multicultural phenomenon, and passionately emphasizes the importance of celebrating Latina womanhood.

Once upon a Quinceanera

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In a story that travels beyond borders and between families, acclaimed Dominican novelist and poet Julia Alvarez reflects on the joys and burdens of love—for her parents, for her husband, and for a young Haitian boy known as Piti. In this intimate true account of a promise kept, Alvarez takes us on a journey into experiences that challenge our way of thinking about history and how it can be reimagined when people from two countries—traditional enemies and strangers—become friends.

A Wedding in Haiti

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#urbanlegend #culturalstudies gift inscription on front flyleaf otherwise clean.

Connecticut

The Colossal Book of Urban Legends

A collection of oft-repeated urban legends brings together the best of modern myths, from the stoned baby sitter who mistook a baby for a turkey to the fabulously expensive recipe for chocolate chip cookies

Too Good to be True

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Anne Fadiman

Like new softcover, from fsg classics. With new afterword by the author. Winner of national book classic circle award for nonfiction. Book is from 2012. Reading group guide avialable from book website printed on book. 

Alaska

A Among child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures

A study in the collision between Western medicine and the beliefs of a traditional culture focuses on a hospitalized child of Laotian immigrants whose belief that illness is a spiritual matter comes into conflict with doctors' methods.

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

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Mark Greif

Massachusetts

Essays

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award The essays in Against Everything are learned, original, highly entertaining, and, from start to finish, dead serious, reinventing and reinvigorating what intellectuals can be and say and do. Key topics are the tyranny of exercise, the folly of food snobbery, the sexualization of childhood (and everything else), the philosophical meaning of pop music, the rise and fall of the hipster, the uses of reality TV, the impact of protest movements, and the crisis of policing. Four of the selections address, directly and unironically, the meaning of life—how to find a philosophical stance to adopt toward one’s self and the world. Mark Greif manages to revivify the thought and spirit of the greatest of American dissenters, Henry David Thoreau, for our time and historical situation. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The Guardian • The Atlantic • New York Magazine • San Francisco Chronicle • Paris Review • National Post (Canada) Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Diamonson-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Against Everything

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Doris Ching

Wisconsin

Social Studies

Research and Perspectives on Identity, Leadership, and Success

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Higher Education

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#paperback #culturalstudies #sociology #essays #ideology #academic #research #critical

Social Experience and Cultural Studies

The aim of this book is to extend the political and the intellectual concerns of cultural studies to include the realm of social experience. From rap to rave, from menswear to 'Marie Claire', from rock to sex tourism, each essay tackles issues of ideology, bodies, power and gender in contemporary popular culture.

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Tom Lutz

Doing Nothing

Vivian Gornick

Taking a long look

Chris Hedges

Empire of Illusion

Eric Marcus

Making History

Vijay Prashad

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

Susan Lederer

Frankenstein

Margret Grebowicz

Whale Song

John Hooper

The Italians

John D. Dorst

Looking West

Keith H. Basso

Portraits of the Whiteman

Laura Kipnis

Against Love

Fadwa El Guindi

Religion in Culture

Michael Pollan

Cooked

Valentin Chu

Thailand Today

Joseph F. Trimmer (Introduction by); Tilly Warnock (Editor)

Understanding Others

Carol Hymowitz; Michaele Weissman

A History of Women in America

Julia Alvarez

Once upon a Quinceanera

Julia Alvarez

A Wedding in Haiti

Jan Harold Brunvand

Too Good to be True

Anne Fadiman

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Mark Greif

Against Everything

Doris Ching

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Higher Education

Angela McRobbie

Back to Reality

Chris Hedges

Empire of Illusion