Popular History

Since Stan Lee and Marvel introduced Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy 15 in 1962, everyone's favorite webslinger has had a long career in comics, graphic novels, cartoons, movies, and even on Broadway. In this book some of history's most powerful philosophers help us explore the enduring questions and issues surrounding this beloved superhero: Is Peter Parker to blame for the death of his uncle? Does great power really bring great responsibility? Can Spidey champion justice and be with Mary Jane at the same time?

Of all the white American pop music groups that hit the charts before the Beatles, only the Beach Boys continued to thrive throughout the British Invasion to survive into the 1970s and beyond. The Beach Boys helped define both sides of the era we broadly call the sixties, split between their early surf, car, and summer pop and their later hippie, counterculture, and ambitious rock.

Called by Sam Houston at its founding "the most unfortunate site upon Earth for the seat of government", the infant community struggled for three decades against political enemies and competing towns before winning recognition as the permanent capital. The founding of the University of Texas turned the seat of politics into the seat of education, but Austin's 19th-century dreams of becoming a river port and a factory town came to naught.

You mean this place we go to five days a week has a history? Cubed reveals the unexplored yet surprising story of the places where most of the world's work - our work - gets done. From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to The Office, from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, Cubed is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is - and what it might become.

Alan Riding introduces a pageant of 20th-century artists who lived and worked under the Nazis and explores the decisions each made about whether to stay or flee, collaborate or resist. We see Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf singing before French and German audiences; Picasso painting and occasionally selling his work from his Left Bank apartment; and Marcel Carné and Henri-Georges Clouzot, among others, directing movies....

In 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the 'first' dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years - as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures - everything changed.

The influence of the comic book has never been greater, from movies to streaming and beyond, but the journey comics took from little-regarded kids' magazines to literary prize-winning books and global franchises turned on a highly unusual group of writers and artists. Few would have expected a small gathering of British comic book fans and creators in the early 'seventies to be a global cultural pivot-point, but this was the start of a disparate movement of punks, dropouts, and disaffected youths who reinvented a medium and became the imaginative heart of a global success story.

Vietnam - Culture Smart! outlines the history, culture, and traditions of the Vietnamese. It explains certain deep-seated attitudes, describes some of the social and cultural changes now underway, and gives practical advice on what to expect and how to behave in unfamiliar situations. It aims to help you discover for yourself the warmth and vast potential of this fascinating country and its delightful people. They are open and friendly, with senses of humor and irony, and are frankly curious about the outside world.

Más que un libro, este objeto es un carnaval de cincuenta estaciones que desfila tras las bambalinas de la cultura mexicana. En él participan Tin Tan y Pita Amor, María Félix y Monsiváis, Piporro y Tongolele, Nahui Olin y Jorge Ibargüengoitia, los beats y Marilyn Monroe, Vitola y José Revueltas. Entre muchos, muchos otros. Mientras pasan, nos van contando de sus vicios, supersticiones, sus pleitos y apodos, los cuadrángulos amorosos que formaron y los cabarés que visitaron.

From cave walls to digital canvases, discover the story of art as you’ve never seen it before. In Brushstrokes of Time, acclaimed author M.Y. Sard guides readers on a vibrant journey through the history of human creativity. This richly woven narrative moves chronologically across civilizations and centuries, exploring how art has evolved—shaped by religion, politics, innovation, and the unquenchable human need to express. From the awe of ancient temples to the raw emotion of Abstract Expressionism, from the spiritual elegance of medieval icons to the provocative edge of contemporary ...

Taking listeners back to the days of TaB cola, dot matrix printers, and digging through the couch for just one more quarter, Alex Rubens combines his knowledge of the tech industry and experience as a gaming journalist to conjure the wild silicon frontier of the 8-bit ’80s. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command offers the first in-depth, personal history of an era for which fans have a lot of nostalgia.

Americans have long been fascinated with the oddness of the British, but the English, says literary critic Terry Eagleton, find their transatlantic neighbors just as strange. Only an alien race would admiringly refer to a colleague as "aggressive," use superlatives to describe everything from one's pet dog to one's rock collection, or speak frequently of being "empowered."

Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has composed a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave. How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That’s why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful.

A journey into the weird, wonderful and truly astonishing lives of the small but mighty creatures who keep the world turning. Out of sight, underfoot, unseen beyond fleeting scuttles or darting flights, insects occupy a hidden world, yet are essential to sustaining life on earth. Insects influence our ecosystem like a ripple effect on water. They arrived when life first moved to dry land, they preceded – and survived – the dinosaurs, they outnumber the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches, and they will be here long after us.

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.

Although dinosaur fossils were first found in England, a series of dramatic discoveries during the late 1800s turned North America into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. At the same time, the United States emerged as the world’s largest industrial economy, and creatures like tyrannosaurus, brontosaurus, and triceratops became emblems of American capitalism. Large, fierce, and spectacular, American dinosaurs dominated the popular imagination, making front-page headlines and appearing in feature films.

When does a scientific discovery become accepted fact? Why have scientific facts become easy to deny? And what can we do about it? In The Workshop and the World, philosopher and science historian Robert P. Crease answers these questions by describing the origins of our scientific infrastructure - the “workshop” - and the role of 10 of the world’s greatest thinkers in shaping it. As today’s politicians and government officials increasingly accuse scientists of dishonesty, conspiracy, and even hoaxes, engaged citizens wonder how we got to this level of distrust....

The Girl Scouts: The History and Legacy of the Popular Youth Organization Across the World chronicles the history of the organization, the powerful women behind it, the growth of the sisterhood, and its members’ various accomplishments. You will learn about the Girl Scouts like never before.

From coffee beans to extraordinary flavors. Being hundreds of years old, coffee has influenced civilizations and inspired many makers to discover new recipes for millions to enjoy. Yet what if there was a way to experience the best natural coffee flavors in the world by making them yourself? Why We Love Coffee is a visual collection of coffee facts and recipes that not only teach you how to recreate beloved coffee blends, but taste them like a professional coffee enthusiast.

Before The Beatles landed on American shores in February 1964, only two British acts had topped the Billboard singles chart. In the first quarter of 1964, however, the Beatles alone accounted for 60% of all recorded music sold in the United States; in 1964 and 1965 British acts occupied the number one position for 52 of the 104 weeks; and from 1964 through to 1970, the Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, and more placed more than 130 songs on the American Top Forty.