INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER " My Body offers a lucid examination of the mirrors in which its author has seen herself, and her indoctrination into the cult of beauty as defined by powerful men. In its more transcendent passages . . . the author steps beyond the reach of any 'Pygmalion' and becomes a more dangerous kind of beautiful. She becomes a kind of god in her own right: an artist." —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review A deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity from Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book. My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.

"Im Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air . . ." Now available in paperback -- a selection of revealing interviews from the award-winning National Public Radio show Originating from WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and heard on more than 450 NPR stations, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has become a daily habit with millions of listeners nationwide -- a must for anyone hoping to keep up with what's happening in the arts. Over the last twenty years, Terry's guests have included our most significant writers, actors, musicians, comics, and visual artists. For her first collection, Terry has chosen more than three dozen timeless interviews that prove to be as lively on the page as they were on the radio. Her questions -- probing yet sensitive -- encourage revelations from figures as diverse as John Updike, Isabella Rossellini, Conan OBrien, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Cash, and Nicolas Cage. And in her introduction, the generally self-effacing host of Fresh Air does something she wouldnt dream of doing on the air -- she reveals a thing or two about herself.

When the Beatles touched down in New York on February 7, 1964 for their first visit to America, they brought with them a sound that hadn't been heard before. By the time they returned to England two weeks later, major changes in music, fashion, the record industry, and the image of an entire generation had been set into motion. Coming less than three months after the assassination of President Kennedy, the Beatles' visit helped rouse the country out of mourning. A breathless and condescending media concentrated on the band's hairstyles and their adoring fans, but their enduring importance lay in their music, their wit, and style, a disconnect that signaled the beginning of the generation gap. In this intriguing cultural history, Martin Goldsmith examines how and why the Beatles struck such a lasting chord.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that "the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he's the patriot or the tyrant, he's definitely full of manure. The wildly popular Fox News host with three million daily viewers perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concentration camps, an Obama security force like Hitler's SS. But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just that--the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his over-the-top daily outrages and for weeping on the air. Milbank describes, with lacerating wit, just how the former shock jock without a college degree has managed to become the most recognizable leader of antigovernment conservatives and exposes him as the guy who is single-handedly giving patriotism a bad name.

It’s the summer of 1966... The fundamental old ways: chastity, rationality, harmony, sobriety, even democracy: blasted to nothing or crumbling under siege. The city glows. It echoes. It pulses. It bleeds pastel and fuzzy, spicy, paisley and soft. This is how it's always going to be: smashing clothes, brilliant music, easy sex, eternal youth, the eyes of everybody, everyone's first thought, the top of the world, right here, right now: Swinging London. Shawn Levy has a genius for unearthing the secret history of popular culture. The Los Angeles Times called King of Comedy , his biography of Jerry Lewis, "a model of what a celebrity bio ought to be–smart, knowing, insightful, often funny, full of fascinating insiders' stories," and the Boston Globe declared that Rat Pack Confidential "evokes the time in question with the power of a novel, as well as James Ellroy's American Tabloid and better by far than Don DeLillo's Underworld. " In Ready, Steady, Go! Levy captures the spirit of the sixties in all its exuberance. A portrait of London from roughly 1961 to 1969, it chronicles the explosion of creativity–in art, music and fashion–and the revolutions–sexual, social and political–that reshaped the world. Levy deftly blends the enthusiasm of a fan, the discerning eye of a social critic and a historian's objectivity as he re-creates the hectic pace and daring experimentation of the times–from the utter transformation of rock 'n' roll by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the new aesthetics introduced by fashion designers like Mary Quant, haircutters like Vidal Sassoon, photographers like David Bailey, actors like Michael Caine and Terence Stamp and filmmakers like Richard Lester and Nicolas Roeg to the wild clothing shops and cutting-edge clubs that made Carnaby Street and King's Road the hippest thoroughfares in the world. Spiced with the reminiscences of some of the leading icons of that period, their fans and followers, and featuring a photographic gallery of well-known faces and far-out fashions, Ready, Steady, Go! is an irresistible re-creation of a time and place that seemed almost impossibly fun.

Nathan Rabin viewed pop culture as a life-affirming form of escape throughout his childhood and adolescence. As an adult, pop culture became his life. Head writer for A.V. Club for more than a decade, Rabin uses specific books, songs, albums, films, and television shows as springboards for dissecting his Dickensian life story in his acclaimed memoir The Big Rewind . Rabin writes movingly and hilariously about how pop culture helped save him from suicidal despair, institutionalization, and parental abandonment during a childhood that sent him ricocheting from a mental hospital to a foster home to a group home for emotionally disturbed adolescents. A fun book about depression, The Big Rewind is ultimately a touching narrative of a motherless child’s search for family and acceptance, and a darkly comic valentine to Rabin’s lovable, hard-luck dad. With comic dissertations on everything from The Simpsons to The Great Gatsby, and from Grey Gardens to Dr. Dre, The Big Rewind chronicles Rabin’s improbable yet all-too-true journey through life, and its fortuitous intersections with the dizzyingly wonderful world of entertainment.

A hilarious book by Richard M. Cohen, the New York Times bestselling author of Blindsided and Strong at the Broken Places , about living with his wife, Meredith Vieira, and her band of difficult dogs. “Has a couple ever gone to war or a spouse moved to another country because a pet came between them? Have two people other than my wife and me ever had such opposing feelings when it comes to domestic animals?” So wonders Richard M. Cohen, who has endured the beasts his wife, Meredith Vieira, has brought into the house to enrich their lives. Despite her unshakable affection for these furry creatures, the various animals have destroyed the serenity of a once calm household. Friends watch in stunned silence as the family frantically struggles to keep peace in this lawless land. Delivery people have fled in fear. Guests have cowered or simply laughed at the hideous shrieks, the current mutt’s stab at intimidation. Then there are the cats that think they are ferocious jungle creatures. Weary of having animals run the show, Richard is fed up. These animals are destroying a home, and the life of one simple soul who seeks only peace and quiet. The King has been overthrown. The Queen and her court have taken over. That would be Meredith and her minions. I Want to Kill the Dog is more than a countercultural ode to those weary of the pet pedestal. It is a portrait of a marriage and of the redemptive power of humor and family when banishing the beast is not an option.

As Times Square turns 100, New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub tells the story of how this mercurial district became one of the most famous and exciting places in the world. The Devil’s Playground is classic and colorful American history, from the first years of the twentieth century through the Runyonesque heyday of nightclubs and theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, to the district’s decline in the 1960s and its glittering corporate revival in the 1990s. First, Traub gives us the great impresarios, wits, tunesmiths, newspaper columnists, and nocturnal creatures who shaped Times Square over the century since the place first got its name: Oscar Hammerstein, Florenz Ziegfeld, George S. Kaufman, Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, and “the Queen of the Nightclubs,” Texas Guinan; bards like A. J. Liebling, Joe Mitchell, and the Beats, who celebrated the drug dealers and pimps of 42nd Street. He describes Times Square’s notorious collapse into pathology and the fierce debates over how best to restore it to life. Traub then goes on to scrutinize today’s Times Square as no author has yet done. He writes about the new 42nd Street, the giant Toys “R” Us store with its flashing Ferris wheel, the new world of corporate theater, and the sex shops trying to leave their history behind. More than sixty years ago, Liebling called Times Square “the heart of the world”—not just the center of the world, though this crossroads in Midtown Manhattan was indeed that, but its heart. From the dawn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, Times Square was the whirling dynamo of American popular culture and, increasingly, an urban sanctuary for the eccentric and the untamed. The name itself became emblematic of the tremendous life force of cities everywhere. Today, Times Square is once again an awe-inspiring place, but the dark and strange corners have been filled with blazing light. The most famous street character on Broadway, “the Naked Cowboy,” has his own website, and Toys “R” Us calls its flagship store in Times Square “the toy center of the universe.” For the giant entertainment corporations that have moved to this safe, clean, and self-consciously gaudy spot, Times Square is still very much the center of the world. But is it still the heart?

An unlikely journalist, a murder case in Mississippi, and a fascinating literary true crime story in the style of Jon Ronson. A notorious white supremacist named Richard Barrett was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 2010 by a young black man named Vincent McGee. At first the murder seemed a twist on old Deep South race crimes. But then new revelations and complications came to light. Maybe it was a dispute over money rather than race—or, maybe and intriguingly, over sex. John Safran, a young white Jewish Australian documentarian, had been in Mississippi and interviewed Barrett for a film on race. When he learned of Barrett’s murder, he returned to find out what happened and became caught up in the twists and turns of the case. During his time in Mississippi, Safran got deeper and deeper into this gothic southern world, becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder — white separatist frenemies, black lawyers, police investigators, oddball neighbors, the stunned families, even the killer himself. And the more he talked with them, the less simple the crime — and the people involved — seemed to be. In the end, he discovered how profoundly and indelibly complex the truth about someone’s life — and death — can be. This is a brilliant, haunting, hilarious, unsettling story about race, money, sex, and power in the modern American South from an outsider’s point of view.

Drawing on more than 200 interviews with such consorts and courtiers as Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Andrew Oldham, Chris Jagger, and Ian Stewart, this spellbinding tour of the dark underside of the 1960s brings to life the Stones' world of wealth, power, and privilege. Enhanced with 16 pages of photographs, this fast-moving, revelatory look at the rock group is also a fascinating portrait of an era.

On the motion-picture front, no other publication of our age has achieved the stature, vitality, or magic of Vanity Fair. In its coverage of the film industry, the magazine prides itself on assigning the world's top photographers, writers, and illustrators to explore the brightest stars in the Hollywood firmament. Now, for the first time, the most memorable renderings of this illustrious pantheon have been assembled in one volume: Garbo and Swanson, Fairbanks and Pickford, Gable and Grant, Tracy and Hepburn, Taylor and Burton -- along with today's cinematic giants, including Cruise and Kidman, Nicholson and Streep, De Niro and DiCaprio, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and scores more. As this sweeping, lavish book makes clear, Vanity Fair's stable of photographers (Cecil Beaton, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Edward Steichen, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber, and many others represented here) have helped define modern portraiture. Likewise, Vanity Fair's Hollywood includes Vanity Fair contributors of the past (D.H. Lawrence, Clare Boothe Luce, Dorothy Parker, Carl Sandburg, Walter Winchell, and P.G. Wodehouse) and of the present.

These interviews with Henry Rollins conducted by RE/Search (and Search & Destroy) founder V. Vale focus on Henry's travels -- often to countries considered dangerous and off-limits. There are references to Punk Rock history, the Occupy movement, and numerous personal adventures and experiences over the past 30-plus years of combing the planet giving musical and Spoken Word performances, and generally being as creative and humorous as possible no matter what the situation may be . Whatever Henry wants to do, he does it while giving his full attention, like a kind of Zen master. RE/Search tries to reveal the full scope of his creativity, achievements and darkly sardonic perceptiveness and contempt for cliche. This book is full of both humor and inspiration.

Adler was a young woman determined to be taken seriously and to be an agent of change - on her own terms, free from dogma and authoritarian constraints. From campus activism at the University of California at Berkeley to civil-rights work in Mississippi, from antiwar protests to observing the socialist revolution in Cuba, she found those chances in the 1960s. Heretic's Heart illuminates the events, ideas, passions, and ecstatic commitments of the decade like no other memoir.

Creativity and play erupt in the most solemn of everyday worlds as individuals reshape traditional forms in the light of changing historical circumstances. In this lively volume, fourteen distinguished anthropologists explore the life of creativity in social life across the globe and within the study of ethnography itself. Contributors include Barbara A. Babcock, Edward M. Bruner, James W. Fernandez, Don Handelman, Smadar Lavie, José E. Limon, Barbara Myerhoff, Kirin Narayan, Renato Rosaldo, Richard Schechner, Edward L. Schieffelin, Marjorie Shostak, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Edith Turner.

It was 1994: post-Liz Phair, mid-Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin took a hard look at herself and gave "making it" one last shot. It worked. Suddenly Trynin became the spark that set off one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vied for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamored for her attention. Billboard put her on the cover. Everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. But then she wasn't. In a series of dizzying, hilarious, heartbreaking snapshots, Trynin captures what it's like to be catapulted to the edge of rock stardom, only to plummet back down to earth. Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be is the story of a girl who got what she wished for--and lived happily ever after anyway.

Two companion pieces released in one volume, containing selected writing and tour journal entries from 1988-1992.

"Ja, No, Man is an eerily familiar portrayal of the life of an ordinary white South African growing up during Apartheid-era South Africa. Told with extraordinary humour and self-awareness, Poplak's story brings his gradual understanding of the difference between his country and the rest of the world vividly to life. A startlingly original memoir that veers sharply from the quotidian to the bizarre and back again, Ja, No, Man is an enlightening, darkly hilarious, and, at times, disturbing read." From book cover