Roger N. Lancaster provides the definitive rebuttal of evolutionary just-so stories about men, women, and the nature of desire in this spirited exposé of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene. Lancaster links the recent resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general with the current pitched battles over sexual politics. Ideas about a "hardwired" and immutable human nature are circulating at a pivotal moment in human history, he argues, one in which dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented normalization of lesbian and gay relationships are challenging received notions and commonly held convictions on every front.
The Trouble with Nature takes on major media sources--the New York Times, Newsweek--and widely ballyhooed scientific studies and ideas to show how journalists, scientists, and others invoke the rhetoric of science to support political positions in the absence of any real evidence. Lancaster also provides a novel and dramatic analysis of the social, historical, and political backdrop for changing discourses on "nature," including an incisive critique of the failures of queer theory to understand the social conflicts of the moment. By showing how reductivist explanations for sexual orientation lean on essentialist ideas about gender, Lancaster invites us to think more deeply and creatively about human acts and social relations.

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Roger N. Lancaster - The Trouble with Nature, Sex in Science and Popular Culture (2003) [PDF].rar

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Kathy Davis - Dubious Equalities and Embodied Diff erences, Cultural Studies on Cosmetic Surgery (200 3).jpg

Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences considers how cosmetic surgery is taken up in representations of cosmetic surgery in medical discourse and in popular culture, drawing on a wide range of cultural manifestations including televised 'infotainment,' popular music, performance art, surgeon biographies, stories of patients, public debates, and medical texts. Davis critically engages with the notion of cosmetic surgery as a neutral technology and shows how it is implicated in the surgical erasure of embodied difference.

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Kathy Davis - Dubious Equalities and Embodied Diff erences, Cultural Studies on Cosmetic Surgery (200 3).pdf

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Rachel Rubin, Jeffrey Melnick - Immigration and Am erican Popular Culture, An Introduction (2006).jpg

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Rachel Rubin and Jeff Melnick show us the skinny on pop's melting pot. The cauldron does not burn off immigrant character, creating American sameness, but intensifies its many tastes. Ladle after ladle of ethnic infusions go into the pot—Scarface to Gypsy Punks, pachuco zoot suiters to Ravi Shankar, Jimmy Cliff to West Side Story. They compound the terms of race and place until they reform the mainstream. And, suddenly, that old wasp canon has become just another ethnic style."
—W. T. Lhamon, Jr., author, most recently, of Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture

"A sprawling and uniquely synthetic account of the role immigrants have played as performers, entrepreneurs, and as the subjects of the mass culture industry. Brings a stunning, transnational array of immigrant cultural forms, immigration policies, and cohorts together in new and important ways."
—Rachel Ida Buff, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

How does a 'national' popular culture form and grow over time in a nation comprised of immigrants? How have immigrants used popular culture in America, and how has it used them?

Immigration and American Popular Culture looks at the relationship between American immigrants and the popular culture industry in the twentieth century. Through a series of case studies, Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnick uncover how specific trends in popular culture—such as portrayals of European immigrants as gangsters in 1930s cinema, the zoot suits of the 1940s, the influence of Jamaican Americans on rap in the 1970s, and cyberpunk and Asian American zines in the1990s—have their roots in the complex socio-political nature of immigration in America.

Supplemented by a timeline of key events and extensive suggestions for further reading, Immigration and American Popular Culture offers at once a unique history of twentieth century U.S. immigration and an essential introduction to the major approaches to the study of popular culture. Melnick and Rubin go further to demonstrate how completely and complexly the processes of immigration and cultural production have been intertwined, and how we cannot understand one without the other.

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Rachel Rubin, Jeffrey Melnick - Immigration and Am erican Popular Culture, An Introduction (2006).pdf

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Deborah Digges - The Stardust Lounge, Stories from a Boy's Adolescence (2002).jpeg

"Thanks for a wonderful childhood!" Stephen Digges tells his mother as he hugs her goodbye in front of his New York City college dorm, and it's a measure of just how persuasive and potent her account of his difficult adolescence is that we know exactly what he means. At 13, Stephen was running away, stealing his mother's car, carrying guns, doing drugs, and getting into trouble with the law and in school. Already divorced from Stephen's father, Digges saw her son's problems break up her second marriage and heard society, her family, and her neighbors tell her she was too easy on her son, that fatherless boys needed "tough love" and discipline. But Digges had the courage to listen to a highly unconventional therapist who urged her, "Join him in his anger at life.... Don't educate him about what he should have done. Let him figure it out." Together with Digges's foster son (an African American teen thrown out of his home after a stint in juvenile detention), they create a bohemian household. Three dogs (one of them epileptic) "sleep on the beds no questions asked"; Stephen does his homework with a pet mouse named Frederick in his pocket; there are swarms of kittens "leaping in and out of the windows"; and the pizza delivery for dinner may be interrupted by "phone calls from teachers, more often the cops." Go figure: creative, anti-authoritarian Stephen acquires a sense of responsibility and ambition in this offbeat atmosphere. His mother's surprisingly funny, unsentimentally tender memoir reminds us that there are no rules about raising children, just countless perils and boundless possibilities.

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E.B. Sledge - With the Old Breed, At Peleliu and O kinawa (2007).jpg

In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.

An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division–3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.

Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill–and came to love–his fellow man.

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E.B. Sledge - With the Old Breed, At Peleliu and O kinawa (2007).epub

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Jeffrey A. Brown - Black Superheroes, Milestone Co mics, and Their Fans (2000).jpg

Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans gives an answer that goes far beyond "tights and capes," an answer that lies within the mission Milestone Media, Inc., assumed in comic book culture. Milestone was the brainchild of four young black creators who wanted to part from the mainstream and do their stories their own way. This history of Milestone, a "creator-owned" publishing company, tells how success came to these mavericks in the 1990s and how comics culture was expanded and enriched as fans were captivated by this new genre.

Milestone focused on the African American heroes in a town called Dakota. Quite soon these black action comics took a firm position in the controversies of race, gender, and corporate identity in contemporary America. Characters battled supervillains and sometimes even clashed with more widely known superheroes. Front covers of Milestone comics often bore confrontational slogans like "Hardware: A Cog in the Corporate Machine is About to Strip Some Gears."

Milestone's creators aimed for exceptional stories that addressed racial issues without alienating readers. Some competitors, however, accused their comics of not being black enough or of merely marketing Superman in black face. Some felt that the stories were too black, but a large cluster of readers applauded these new superheroes for fostering African American pride and identity. Milestone came to represent an alternative model of black heroism and, for a host of admirers, the ideal of masculinity.

Black Superheroes gives details about the founding of Milestone and reports on the secure niche its work and its image achieved in the marketplace. Tracing the company's history and discussing its creators, their works, and the fans, this book gauges Milestone alongside other black comic book publishers, mainstream publishers, and the history of costumed characters.

Jeffrey A. Brown is an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University. He has been published in Screen, Cinema Journal, African American Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Discourse, and Journal of Popular Film and Television.

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Jeffrey A. Brown - Black Superheroes, Milestone Co mics, and Their Fans (2000).pdf

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Roger E. Hartley - Alternative Dispute Resolution in Civil Justice Systems (2002).jpg

Hartley examines the introduction of alternative dispute resolution (e.g., mediation) in a court system in Georgia. Attorneys supported the introduction of mediation to consolidate control of the legal process and to add it to their practices. They also used mediation to settle some cases more quickly. Mediation gave judges flexibility to weed out minor cases and process others more quickly. However, these changes were not so great as to put a dent in settlement or trial rates, and Hartley concludes that while changes in court procedures have effects, researchers need to examine the behavior of actors in depth in order to discover these effects.

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Roger E. Hartley - Alternative Dispute Resolution in Civil Justice Systems (2002).pdf

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Nicki Giles - Marilyn Monroe, Fotograficzna biogra fia (1991).jpg

Prawdziwa perełka wśród książek o Marilyn Monroe. Tytuł nie wprowadza w błąd: "Fotograficzna biografia" zawiera ponad 600 kolorowych i czarnobiałych fotografii doskonałej jakości od dzieciństwa, przez pierwsze zdjęcia pełnej wdzieku młodej Normy Jean, fotografie największej gwiazdy Hollywood aż po przygnebiające ujęcia grobu Marilyn. Fotografie, krótkie rozdziały i podpisy do zdjęć układają sie w swego rodzaju życiorys, ukazujacy Marilyn przede wszystkim przez setki z setek tysięcy jakie jej wykonano.

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Kel Kelly - Case for Legalizing Capitalism (2010).jpg

What's the American system of economics? Most people would say it is capitalism, which thereby deserves all fault when anything goes wrong. Well, Kel Kelly responds to this myth in this fast-paced and darn-near comprehensive treatment of the truth about the free market and intervention.

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Kel Kelly - Case for Legalizing Capitalism (2010).pdf

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Orison Swett Marden - How They Succeeded (2011).jpg

The Gilded Age produced not only some of the richest men and women of all time; its freedom and opportunities built a nation of people of superlative character. This fantastic book from 1901 provides an in-depth look at the lives and choices of some of the most famous among them. The idea is to document the traits that make for great entrepreneurs.

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Orison Swett Marden - How They Succeeded (2011).pdf

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Nolan Porterfield - Jimmie Rodgers, The Life and T imes of America’s Blue Yodeler (2007).jpg

Jimmie Rodgers, the first performer elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, was a folk hero in his own lifetime and has been idolized by fans and emulated by performers ever since. His life story has been particularly susceptible to romanticizing, marked as it was by humble origins, sudden success and fame, and an early death from tuberculosis.

Nolan Porterfield's biography banishes the rumors and myths that have long shrouded the Blue Yodeler's life story. Unlike previous writings about Rodgers, Porterfield's book derives from extensive and detailed research into original sources: private letters, personal interviews, court records, and newspaper accounts. Jimmie Rodgers significantly expands and alters our knowledge of the entertainer's life and career, explaining the nature of his role in American culture of the Depression era and providing insightful background on the milieu in which he worked. Porterfield writes a new preface for this edition.

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Nolan Porterfield - Jimmie Rodgers, The Life and T imes of America’s Blue Yodeler (2007).pdf

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Frances Moore Lappe - Democracy's Edge, Choosing t o Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life ( 2005).jpg

Three out of five Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, feel our country is headed in the wrong direction. America is at the edge, a critical place at which we can either renew and revitalize or give in and lose that most precious American ideal democracy and along with it the freedom, fairness, and opportunities it assures. Democracy Edge is a rousing battle cry that we can and must act now. From Jefferson to Eisenhower, presidents from both parties have warned us of the danger of letting a closed, narrow group of business and government officials concentrate power over our lives. Yet today, a small and unrepresentative group of people is making vital decisions for all of us.
But this crisis is only a symptom, Lapp argues. It a symptom of thin democracy, something done to us or for us, not by or with us. Such democracy is always at risk of being stolen by private interests or extremist groups, left and right. But there is a solution. The answer, says Lapp, is Living Democracy, a powerful yet often invisible citizens revolution surging in communities across America. It not random, disjointed activism but the emergence of a new historical stage of democracy in which Americans realize that democracy isn something we have but something we do. Either we live it or lose it, says Lapp.

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Frances Moore Lappe - Democracy's Edge, Choosing t o Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life ( 2005).pdf

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Ian Patrick Finseth - American Civil War (2006).jpg

This anthology brings together a wide variety of both well-known and more obscure writing from and about the Civil War, along with supplementary appendices to facilitate its use in courses.

The selections include short fiction, poetry, public addresses, diary entries, song lyrics, and essays from such figures as Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, and Louisa May Alcott, as well as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. The writing not only includes those directly involved in the war, but also those writing about the war afterward, to include the perspective of historical memory.

This collection makes a perfect addition to any course on Civil War history or literature as well as courses on popular memory.

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Ian Patrick Finseth - American Civil War (2006).pdf

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Robert W. Peterson - Pigskin, The Early Years of P ro Football (1997).jpg

If the National Football League is now a mammoth billion-dollar enterprise, it was certainly born into more humble circumstances. Indeed, it began in 1920 in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, when a car dealer called together some owners of teams, mostly in the Midwest, to form a league. Unlike the lavish boardrooms in which NFL owners meet today, on this occasion the owners sat on the running boards of cars in the showroom and drank beer from buckets. A membership fee of $100 was set, but no one came up with any money. (As one of those present, George Halas, the legendary owner of the Chicago Bears, said, "I doubt that there was a hundred bucks in the room.") From such modest beginnings, pro football became far and away the most popular spectator sport in America.
In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football--from the late 1880s to the beginning of the television era. Peterson describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and its outstanding teams (the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, the Baltimore Colts), and the great games they played. Profiles of the most famous players of the era--including Pudge Heffelfinger (the first certifiable professional), Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, and Fritz Pollard (the NFL's first black star)--bring the history of the game to life. Peterson also takes us back to the roots of the pro game, showing how professionalism began when some stars for Yale, Harvard, and Princeton took money--under the table, of course--for their services to alma mater. By 1895, the money makers--still unacknowledged--had moved to amateur athletic associations in western Pennsylvania and subsequently into Ohio.
After the NFL formed in 1920, pro football's popularity grew gradually but steadily. It burst into national prominence with the Bears-Redskins championship game of 1940. As one sportswriter put it: "The weather was perfect. So were the Bears." The final score was 73-0. Peterson shows how, after World War II, the newly-created All America Football Conference challenged the NFL. Though dominated by a gritty Cleveland team, the AAFC was never viewed by NFL teams as much of a threat. That is, not until 1950 when the two leagues merged, bringing about the Cleveland Browns-Philadelphia Eagles game in which the Browns buried the Eagles 35-10.
An elegy to a time when, for many players, the game was at least as important as the money it brought them (which wasn't much), Pigskin takes readers up to the 1958 championship game when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime. By that time, the great popularity of the game had moved from newspapers and radio to television, and pro football had finally arrived as a major sport.

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Robert W. Peterson - Pigskin, The Early Years of P ro Football (1997).pdf

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Beth Roy - 41 Shots . . . and Counting, What Amado u Diallo's Story Teaches Us About Policing, Race, and Justice (2009).jpg

USA Books - Beth Roy - 41 Shots . . . and Counting, What Amadou Di...tory Teaches Us About Policing, Race, and Justice 2009.jpg

When four New York City police officers killed Amadou Diallo in 1999, the forty-one shots they fired echoed loudly across the nation. In death, Diallo joined a long list of young men of color killed by police fire in cities and towns all across America. Through innuendos of criminality, many of these victims could be discredited and, by implication, held responsible for their own deaths. But Diallo was an innocent, a young West African immigrant doing nothing more suspicious than returning home to his Bronx apartment after working hard all day in the city. Protesters took to the streets, successfully demanding that the four white officers be brought to trial. When the officers were acquitted, however, horrified onlookers of all races and ethnicities despaired of justice.
In 41 Shots . . . and Counting, Beth Roy offers an oral history of Diallo's death. Through interviews with members of the community, with police officers and lawyers, with government officials and mothers of young men in jeopardy, the book traces the political and racial dynamics that placed the officers outside Diallo's house that night, their fingers on symbolic as well as actual triggers. With lucid analysis, Roy explores events in the courtroom, in city hall, in the streets, and in the police precinct, revealing the interlacing conflict dynamics. 41 Shots . . . and Counting allows the reader to consider the implications of the Diallo case for our national discourses on politics, race, class, crime, and social justice.

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Beth Roy - 41 Shots . . . and Counting, What Amado u Diallo's Story Teaches Us About Policing, Race, and Justice (2009).pdf

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Harvey Blatt - America's Food, What You Don't Know About What You Eat (2008).jpg

Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2009. and Winning entry, General Trade Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2009 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston.

We don't think much about how food gets to our tables, or what had to happen to fill our supermarket's produce section with perfectly round red tomatoes and its meat counter with slabs of beautifully marbled steak. We don't realize that the meat in one fast-food hamburger may come from many different cattle raised in several different countries. In fact, most of us have a fairly abstract understanding of what happens on a farm. In America's Food, Harvey Blatt gives us the specifics. He tells us, for example, that a third of the fruits and vegetables grown are discarded for purely aesthetic reasons; that the artificial fertilizers used to enrich our depleted soil contain poisonous heavy metals; that chickens who stand all day on wire in cages choose feed with pain-killing drugs over feed without them; and that the average American eats his or her body weight in food additives each year.

Blatt also asks us to think about the consequences of eating food so far removed from agriculture; why unhealthy food is cheap; why there is an International Federation of Competitive Eating; what we don't want to know about how animals raised for meat live, die, and are butchered; whether people are even designed to be carnivorous; and why there is hunger when food production has increased so dramatically. America's Food describes the production of all types of food in the United States and the environmental and health problems associated with each.

After taking us on a tour of the American food system—not only the basic food groups but soil, grain farming, organic food, genetically modified food, food processing, and diet—Blatt reminds us that we aren't powerless. Once we know the facts about food in America, we can change things by the choices we make as consumers, as voters, and as ethical human beings.

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