Performance Culture

Halloween in Isla Vista, an un-sponsored annual street party, attracts an estimated average of 20,000 revelers into a minuscule, 1.5 square mile area each year. Yet it has been consistently dismissed by UCSB administrators, the police, and local press as a dangerous frivolity, unworthy of critical inquiry. Until now, this complex cultural performance has remained buried under three decades’ worth of rumor, assumption, and enforced silence. This book breaks that silence, exploring the event’s history through archival sources and oral histories, providing an in-depth reading of the ...

Struggling to Lead Effectively? Discover How to Transform Your Leadership with "How to Lead with Conviction" Are you finding it challenging to inspire your team, overcome leadership obstacles, or achieve career fulfillment? How to Lead with Conviction is your comprehensive guide to mastering leadership skills that fuel your passion and persistence, leading across generations, and improving employee well-being. Dive deep into effective leadership strategies, inspirational leadership techniques, and transformational leadership principles that will elevate your career and drive organizational ...

Shooting Midnight Cowboy is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema but also the story of a country (and an industry) beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.

For 15 years and 35 seasons, the Bachelor franchise has been a mainstay in American TV viewers' lives. Since it premiered in 2002, the show's popularity and relevance has only grown - more than eight million viewers tuned in to see the conclusion of the most recent season of The Bachelor. The iconic reality television show's reach and influence into the cultural zeitgeist is undeniable. Bachelor Nation is the first behind-the-scenes, unauthorized look into the reality television phenomenon.

In Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means - or doesn’t - to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected president of the United States purely on showmanship.

There is a common belief that we live in unprecedented times, that people are too sensitive today, that nobody objected to the actions of actors, comedians, and filmmakers in the past. Modern pundits would have us believe that Americans of a previous generation had tougher skin and seldom complained. But does this argument hold up to scrutiny? In Outrageous, celebrated cultural historian Kliph Nesteroff demonstrates that Americans have been objecting to entertainment for nearly two hundred years, sometimes rationally, often irrationally.

Noir emerged as a prominent American film genre in the early 1940s, distinguishable by its use of unusual lighting, sinister plots, mysterious characters, and dark themes. From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), films from this classic period reflect an atmosphere of corruption and social decay that attracted such accomplished directors as John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles.

In 1991, Thelma & Louise, the story of two outlaw women on the run from their disenchanted lives, was a revelation. Suddenly, a film in which women were, in every sense, behind the wheel. It turned the tables on Hollywood, instantly becoming a classic, and continues to electrify audiences as a cultural statement of defiance. But if the film's place in history now seems certain, at the time its creation was a long shot.

Movies (And Other Things) is a book about, quite frankly, movies (and other things). One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day? Another of the chapters creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all.

From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions.

Why are you so tired—even after a full night’s sleep? Why does life feel like an endless to-do list, even when you're technically “free”? This incisive and darkly insightful book uncovers the root cause behind modern exhaustion: a culture that masks coercion as choice and self-worth as productivity. Why You're Exhausted dismantles the illusions of motivation culture, toxic positivity, and relentless self-optimization. Drawing from philosophy, social psychology, and cultural critique, it reveals how we've become both boss and worker in our own lives—chained not by others, but by ...

In Westworld and Philosophy, philosophers, filmmakers, scientists, activists, and ethicists ask the questions you're not supposed to ask and suggest the answers you're not supposed to know. There's a deeper level to this game, and this book charts a course through the maze of the mind, examining how we think about humans, hosts, and the world around us on a journey toward self-actualization.

Do you need your team or organization to be more engaged, innovative, competitive, agile, collaborative and productive?Can you contribute anything to a positive culture at work? Well, you can do more than you might think, as shown both by research and practice! Whether you are a leader, a consultant, or an employee… That’s what Marcella Bremer shows in her book “Developing a Positive Culture where People and Performance Thrive”. Positive organizations are better at change, more innovative, competitive, profitable, and also contributing more to the world. We can thrive at work, ...

In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells - for the first time - the story of a place both mythic and real: Black Hollywood. Spanning 60 years, this deliciously entertaining history uncovers the audacious manner in which many Blacks made a place for themselves in an industry that originally had no place for them. Through interviews and the personal recollections of Hollywood luminaries, Bogle pieces together a remarkable history that remains largely obscure to this day.

The Horror of It All is a memoir from the front lines of the industry that dissects (and occasionally defends) the hugely popular phenomenon of scary movies. Author Adam Rockoff traces the highs and lows of the horror genre through the lens of his own obsessive fandom, born in the aisles of his local video store and nurtured with a steady diet of cable trash.

Seth Grahame-Smith delivers the definitive, essential guide to making it through a horror movie in one piece. As hilarious as it is useful (if you’re trapped in a scary flick, that is), How to Survive a Horror Movie covers all the bases. Trapped in a haunted house? Check. Stalked by an evil doll? Check. Wandering aimlessly through the remains of the old world as a plague of zombies sweeps over the planet? Check.

Alternating between personal anecdote, hilarious insight, and smart analysis, Luke Skywalker Can't Read contends that Barbarella is good for you, that monster movies are just romantic comedies with commitment issues, and that Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are total hipsters and, most shockingly, shows how virtually everyone in the Star Wars universe is functionally illiterate.

Green Goldfish 2.0 is based on the simple premise that employees are the key drivers of customer experience and that “Happy Employees Create Happy Customers.” The book focuses on 15 different ways to drive employee engagement and reinforce a strong corporate culture. It's the second color in the goldfish series. The first book was Purple Goldfish which focused on customers, whereby Green focuses on employees. The book is based on the findings of the Green Goldfish Project, an effort which crowdsourced over 1,001 examples of signature added value for employees. Key themes emerged from ...

Introducing "Leading with Excellence," your pivotal companion on the journey to optimal project management and team leadership. This eBook dives deep to provide invaluable insights into how successful teams function and how you, as a leader, can uplift your team's performance to new heights. "Leading with Excellence" handily breaks down the fundamentals of project management before seguing seamlessly into the premise of fostering high-performance teams. Savor the chance to explore varied aspects of team dynamics, understand their nuances, and master how to bring out the best in your team ...

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world.