Popular History

Her life began as a gutsy tomboy from a hardscrabble Arizona mining town — she was also a literary prodigy who published her first story at the age of ten. But then, in 1930, fifteen-year-old Jane Hall became an orphan; she soon found herself on Park Avenue, swept up in the surprising world of Depression-era debutantes, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthday balls, and the dazzling nightlife of Manhattan’s Café Society. Once her clever romances about life among the smart set began selling to national magazines, Hollywood’s top agent got her contract as a screenwriter with Metro-Goldwyn-...

From USA Today bestselling Author Liz Gavin comes a fantasy like no other. Caught in a centuries-old war between Christians and Druids, a young High Priestess is Avalon’s last chance. Wise and powerful, Rowen is faithful to the Old Religion, but how can she obey the Goddess without betraying Caddaric? Can she trust Eochaid when he embodies everything she despises? Caddaric has been Rowen’s companion for countless lifetimes. Now she lives in the mortal plane, while he remains in mystic Avalon. Can Caddaric witness a flesh-and-blood man become Rowen’s protector? Will he risk losing ...

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries and even millennia become virtually meaningless. The first four billion years of its development are known as the Precambrian period. For the first billion years or so, there was no life in Earth. Then the first single-celled life-forms, early bacteria and algae, began to emerge. We don’t know where they came from or even if they originated on this planet at all.

Medieval Conspiracy Theories: The History of the Most Popular Conspiracy Theories about the Middle Ages looks at some of the most important and intriguing conspiracy theories about the medieval world, from their origins to their potential veracity.

Splatter Capital shows how a subgenre of cinematic horror has developed a unique perspective on the cycles of capitalism. It argues that the messy brand of horror mobilized in gore or "splatter" films is extremely responsive to the internal contradictions that threaten the future sustainability of capitalist accumulation. And, while responding to the prospect of that end, splatter promotes an extant truth: capitalist accumulation is and always has been a nightmare of systematized bloodshed.

La contracultura en México se desplaza entre varios géneros, cubriendo los grandes movimientos y las manifestaciones contraculturales más importantes que ha tenido nuestro país, tales como los pachucos, los existencialistas, las pandillas juveniles o el rockanroll. En esta obra alucinante, el autor también da cuenta de las expresiones juveniles que han incidido en la música, la literatura, el teatro, el cine, la gráfica, la televisión y las publicaciones.

Manuel Álvarez Tardío y Roberto Villa García, dos historiadores españoles de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, son los autores de un libro que cambiará nuestra perspectiva de las elecciones de febrero de 1936, que dieron la victoria al Frente Popular, describiendo y demostrando la existencia de fraude electoral y el ambiente de extrema violencia que imperó en los meses anteriores y posteriores.

Gay bars have been closing by the hundreds. The story goes that increasing mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, plus dating apps, have rendered these spaces obsolete. Beyond that, rampant gentrification in big cities has pushed gay bars out of the neighborhoods they helped make hip. Who Needs Gay Bars? considers these narratives, accepting that the answer for some might be: maybe nobody. Greggor Mattson embarks on a journey across the country to paint a much more complex picture of the cultural significance of these spaces, inside "big four" gay cities, but also beyond them.

Ace Collins has dug deep to uncover the true stories behind your favorite Christmas songs. Explore how these songs came into being, and discover a deeper appreciation for these melodic messages of peace, hope, and joy that celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Bloomberg tech journalist Mark Bergen delivers the definitive account on YouTube, detailing how it started, how it works and ultimately how it drives Google's success. It can be seen as the story of a technical marvel that has upended traditional media and created stars out of everyday people, or the story of the rise of a ruthless advertising conglomerate with little regard for its impact on the world beyond the bottom line—but in reality, it's the story of both.

"Don't you forget about me", lautet das Motto dieser Folge, die sich "The Breakfast Club", dem legendären Jugendfilm von John Hughes aus dem Jahr 1985 widmet.

In today's digitally driven world, disaster is only a click away. A rogue tweet can bring down a business; an army of trolls can run a celebrity off-line; and virtual harassment might cause real psychological damage. Shame Nation is the first book to both explore the fascinating phenomenon of online shaming and offer practical guidance and inspiring advice on how to prevent and protect against cyber blunders and faceless bullies. Author and acclaimed Internet safety expert Sue Scheff unveils all sides of an issue that is only becoming more relevant day.

En un trabajo monumental escrito como ensayo histórico, Gabriel Salazar recorre la historia del ejército de Chile y su rol en los acontecimientos políticos y sociales ocurridos durante los últimos doscientos años. Desde sus distintas mutaciones ocurridas durante el siglo XIX (del ejército libertador de O'Higgins hasta el ejército privado que derrocó al gobierno de Balmaceda), pasando por el caudillismo ibañista, las sublevaciones del general Viaux al «frustrado caudillismo del capitán general Augusto Pinochet».

Humor is the most celebrated of all Jewish responses to modernity. In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking - as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. At the same time, Wisse draws attention to the precarious conditions that call Jewish humor into being - and the price it may exact from its practitioners and audience.

During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and glasnost. This music uncovers aspects of the world-changing events that documentaries and history books cannot. In Atomic Tunes, Tim and Joanna Smolko explore everything from the serious to the comical, the morbid to the crude, showing the widespread concern among musicians who were trying to cope with the effect of communism on American society.

What would it be like to live the life of a popular song? "My Life as a Song" is the story of a popular song, which takes readers on a journey that began near the end of the 19th Century, 1892 to be exact. The journey takes a reader through the history of recorded music by continuing up to the present with a determined reach into the future. The main character of the story, as the title suggests, is a song. The song was much more than a century old when “My Life as a Song” was written. It was older than any living human being. While the song has witnessed many historical changes via the...

Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience....

Food consumption is a significant and complex social activity - and what a society chooses to feed its children reveals much about its tastes and ideas regarding health. In this groundbreaking historical work, Amy Bentley explores how the invention of commercial baby food shaped American notions of infancy and influenced the evolution of parental and pediatric care. Until the late 19th century, infants were almost exclusively fed breast milk. But over the course of a few short decades, Americans began feeding their babies formula and solid foods....

Christmas is the most important holiday of the year. After the corresponding days that exalt the national pride of each country, such as Independence Day in the United States, Victory Day in Russia, or Bastille Day in France, it's December 25 that articulates the life, the work, and the economy in much of the world, including many non-Christian countries. Since ancient times, the beginning of winter has been the occasion for most people to eat, drink, dance, and get together to beat the drum and take a break.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award winning PBS-TV series Meeting of the Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history of conversation and conflict. In this, the sixth assemblage, the focus is on heroic figures from civil disobedience to the validity of the scientific method.