54 results for "History"

Fuck, Now There Are Two of You (Go the Fuck to Sleep #3)

Mansbach, Adam
The third installment in Adam Mansbach's international best-selling Go the Fuck to Sleep series addresses, with radical honesty, the family implosion that occurs when a second child arrives “If you’re a fan of both Larry David and profane children’s book parodies, don’t even try to curb your f*cking enthusiasm.” ―Kirkus Reviews Adam Mansbach famously gave voice to two of parenting’s primal struggles in Go the Fuck to Sleep and You Have to Fucking Eat―the often-imitated, never-duplicated pair of New York Times best sellers that ushered in a new era of radical honesty in humor books for parents. But what could possibly be left? Parents―new, old, expectant, and grand―of multiple children already knew the answer. Adam discovered it for himself by having two more kids, less than two years apart. Fuck, Now There Are Two of You is a loving monologue about the new addition to the family, addressed to a big sibling and shot through with Adam’s trademark profane truth-telling. Gorgeously illustrated and chock-full of unspoken sentiments channeled directly from the brains of parents worldwide, Fuck, Now There Are Two of You articulates all the fears and frustrations attendant to the simple, math-defying fact that two is a million more kids than one. As you probably know by now, you shouldn’t read it to a child. Full color illustrations throughout
Akashic Books 2019-10-01 32 pages

Logical chess: move by move : every move explained

Chernev, Irving
Learn the secrets behind some of the most classic moves in chess in this timeless best seller. In this refreshed version of a much loved classic, Irving Chernev explains 33 complete games in detail, telling the reader the reason for every single move. Playing through these games and explanations gives a real insight into the power of the pieces and how to post them most effectively. Chernev thoughtfully explains the decision-making process and contextual meaning behind each move as it's made. This makes it easy to follow along and reap the rewards of his wisdom, assimilating what makes a bad move, a good move, or a winning move. Whether you've been playing chess for years or you've recently been introduced to the game through its newfound resurgence in popularity through chess clubs and popular media, this book can help you learn how to strengthen your abilities through the power of positional play, and how to appreciate the consequences of actions made or not made on the board, with this enduring bestseller from one of history's most highly regarded chess writers, passed down from generation to generation of players as one of the greatest chess texts of all time.
Batsford 2026-06-30 256 pages

Marilyn: The Lost Photographs, the Last Interview

Meryman, Richard,Monroe, Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe’s final formal photo session and last interview have never been released in their entirety—until now. Completed in July 1962, just a month before her passing, the interview conducted by Richard Meryman was Marilyn at her most open and honest, and the photos by Allan Grant were the only ones ever taken in her home. Now, for the first time, you can read Marilyn in her own words and see her as the world has never seen her before. "A beautifully understated look at an American icon, as she probably wished she could have been seen.” --Library Journal In July 1962, Marilyn Monroe was at a crossroads. At thirty-six years old and embroiled in legal battles with the studio of her current picture, Something’s Gotta Give, she was struggling with fame, age, and a studio system in which she no longer fit. When she sat down to give Richard Meryman an interview, she had a lot to say. Originally intended to be an interview about fame, over the course of four hours Marilyn talked about her entire life. Only a small portion of the interview was published in LIFE Magazine. When she died, just two days after the article was published, Meryman put the full transcript and the original tapes in his files, never to see the light of day. Documenting this landmark interview was iconic photojournalist Allan Grant. His images of Marilyn would be her last formal photo shoot—in her home, in casual clothes, being the glorious, free spirit she was. Grant captured every emotion of the interview in these exquisite images, only eight of which were published alongside the LIFE interview excerpt. Most of the remainder of the images were stored in Allan’s safe, waiting to be rediscovered. Marilyn: The Lost Photographs • The Last Interview is Marilyn Monroe in her own words—words that haven’t been published, until now. In this recently restored and complete transcript, Marilyn candidly talks about her childhood and life, fame, the studio system, her approach to work, celebrity, being a sex symbol, and more. At times joyous, silly, serious, philosophical and pensive, it is a Marilyn that the world has never experienced. Accompanying the interview are more than 400 of Grant’s extraordinary images, most never published until now. This beautifully produced book offers readers a glimpse into Marilyn’s mindset during her final month as she began to assert control of her career and address her relationship with celebrity. Deepening the understanding of Marilyn’s talents, humanity, and true legacy, and the appreciation of her true beauty, this is a fitting tribute to one of the most iconic figures in history.
Weldon Owen 2026-05-12 256 pages

The Year of Living Constitutionally One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning

A.J. Jacobs
The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically chronicles his hilarious adventures in attempting to follow the original meaning of the Constitution, as he searches for answers to one of the most pressing issues of our time: How should we interpret America’s foundational document? “I don’t know how I learned so much while laughing so hard.”—Andy Borowitz A.J. Jacobs learned the hard way that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket will earn you a lot of strange looks. In the wake of several controversial rulings by the Supreme Court and the on-going debate about how the Constitution should be interpreted, Jacobs set out to understand what it means to live by the Constitution. In The Year of Living Constitutionally , A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts— feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations. The book blends unforgettable adventures—delivering a handwritten petition to Congress, applying for a Letter of Marque to become a legal pirate for the government, and battling redcoats as part of a Revolutionary War reenactment group—with dozens of interviews from constitutional experts from both sides. Jacobs dives deep into originalism and living constitutionalism, the two rival ways of interpreting the document. Much like he did with the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically , Jacobs provides a crash course on our Constitution as he experiences the benefits and perils of living like it’s the 1790s. He relishes, for instance, the slow thinking of the era, free from social media alerts. But also discovers the progress we’ve made since 1789 when married women couldn’t own property. Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As politicians and Supreme Court Justices wage a high-stakes battle over how literally we should interpret the Constitution, A.J. Jacobs provides an entertaining yet illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.
Random House 2025-05-06 304 pages

The jazzmen: how Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie transformed America

Tye, Larry
"This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America. Duke Ellington [...], Louis Daniel Armstrong [...], William James Basie [...]. What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America's eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Based on more than 250 interviews, this exhaustively researched book brings alive the history of Black America in the early- to mid-1900s through the singular lens of the country's most gifted, engaging, and enduring African American musicians." -Från bokens baksida.
Mariner Books 2025-05-13 393 pages

Sandy Koufax: a lefty's legacy

Leavy, Jane
In an era when too many heroes have been toppled from too many pedestals, Sandy Koufax stands apart and alone, a legend who declined his own celebrity. As a pitcher, he was sublime, the ace of baseball lore. As a human being, he aspired to be the one thing his talent and his fame wouldn't allow: a regular guy. A Brooklyn kid, he was the product of the sedate and modest fifties who came to define and dominate baseball in the sixties. In Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, former award-winning Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy delivers an uncommon baseball book, vividly re-creating the Koufax era, when presidents were believed and pitchers aspired to go the distance. He was only a teenager when Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley proclaimed him "the Great Jewish Hope" of the franchise. But it wasn't until long after the team had abandoned Brooklyn that the man became the myth. Old-fashioned in his willingness to play when he was injured and in his acute sense of responsibility to his team, Koutax answered to an authority higher than manager Walter Alston. When he refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, he inadvertently made himself a religious icon and an irrevocably public figure. A year later, he was gone -- done with baseball at age thirty. No other sports hero had retired so young, so well, or so completely. Despite Sandy Koufax's best efforts to protect his privacy, his legend has grown larger ever since. Part biography, part cultural history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy gets as close to that legend as he will allow. Through meticulous reporting and interviews with five hundred of his friends, teammates, and opponents, Leavy penetrates the mythology to discover a man more than worthy of myth.
HarperCollins 2002-09-17 282 pages

What this comedian said will shock you

Maher, Bill
The hilarious and controversial host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher has written his funniest, most opinionated, and most necessary book ever—a brilliantly astute and acerbically funny vivisection of American life, politics, and culture. Some of the smartest commentary about what’s happening in America is coming from a comedian—this comedian being Bill Maher. If you want to understand what’s wrong with this country, it turns out that one of the best informed and most thought-provoking analysts is this very funny pothead. The book was inspired by the “editorial” Bill delivers at the end of each episode of Real Time. These editorials are direct-to-camera sermons about culture, politics, and what’s happening in the world. To put this book together, Maher reviewed more than a decade of his editorials, rewriting, reimagining, and updating them, and adding new material to speak exactly to the moment we’re in. Free speech, cops, drugs, race, religion, the generations, cancel culture, the parties, the media, show biz, romance, health—Maher covers it all. The result is a hugely entertaining work of commentary about American culture in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and H. L. Mencken.
Simon & Schuster 2024-05-21 378 pages

The magic book

Caveney, Mike,Steinmeyer, Jim,Jay, Ricky
Magic has enchanted humankind for millennia, evoking terror, laughter, shock, and amazement. Once persecuted as heretics and sorcerers, magicians have always been conduits to a parallel universe of limitless possibility—whether invoking spirits, reading minds, or inverting the laws of nature by sleight of hand. Long before science fiction, virtual realities, video games, and the Internet, the craft of magic was the most powerful fantasy world man had ever known. As the pioneers of special effects throughout history, magicians have never ceased to mystify us by making the impossible possible. This book celebrates more than 500 years of the stunning visual culture of the world’s greatest magicians. Featuring more than 750 rarely seen vintage posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings as well as paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and Bruegel among others, The Magic Book traces the history of magic as a performing art from the 1400s to the 1950s. Combining sensational images with incisive text, the book explores the evolution of the magicians’ craft, from medieval street performers to the brilliant stage magicians who gave rise to cinematic special effects; from the 19th century’s golden age of magic to groundbreaking daredevils like Houdini and the early 20th century’s vaudevillians. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program—now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.
Taschen 2021 512 pages

50 Years of Happy Days A Visual History of an American Television Classic

Brian Levant,Fred Fox
Peek behind the curtain into the making of Happy Days , the ultimate American sitcom, in this detailed season-by-season history written by two of the show’s longest-serving writer-producers . One of the most successful TV shows of all time, Happy Days drew in 30 million viewers weekly at its peak and launched the careers of stars like Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, and Robin Williams. Now, just in time for its 50th anniversary, tune in for exclusive access, as writers Brian Levant and Fred Fox Jr. chronicle life on set and examine the evolution of a television show that made history. Featuring new interviews with the creators, cast, and crew of the show and a foreword by The Fonz himself, explore rarely-seen photographs and personal anecdotes on a season-by-season journey behind the scenes. A PHOTOGRAPHIC TREASURE TROVE: This coffee-table art book includes stunning, full-color photos of candid moments between cast and crew, lovingly preserved scenes from the show, exclusive shots that capture the energetic set, and a look at some of the vintage collectibles that brought the sitcom into fans’ homes. REVELATIONS ABOUT THE CREATIVE TALENT BEHIND THE SCENES: Explore the strategies and big gambles that fueled one of the most successful shows of all time, as told by the individuals who made it happen. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS: Gather anecdotes straight from Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Anson Williams, Marion Ross, Ted McGinley, and a host of Hollywood royalty who worked as a team to change the landscape of television forever. NOSTALGIC GUIDE TO A SPECIAL PLACE AND TIME: Take a deep dive into the in-world lore that will bring to life the 1950s Milwaukee of Richie and Joanie Cunningham, Potsie Weber, Ralph Malph, and, of course, Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli.
Simon and Schuster 2024-11-19 264 pages

The Fractured Mirror - Nathan Rabin's Happy Place's Definitive Guide to American Movies About Filmmaking

Nathan Rabin
From Nathan Rabin, former staff writer for The A.V. Club and The Dissolve and the author of Weird Al: The Book, You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me, and The Weird Accordion to Al, comes The Fractured Mirror, an exhaustively researched exploration of American movies about filmmaking. This loving deep dive chronicles, with humor, wit, and affection, a solid century of cinema about cinema, with illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro ( The Return of the Blues Brothers ) and a foreword from legendary filmmaker Joe Dante ( Gremlins, Matinee ). As an homage to The Golden Turkey Awards, which included a fake movie along with a plethora of real-life stinkers, Rabin got bad movie luminaries like How Did This Get Made's Paul Scheer, Dan McCoy of The Flop House, Andrew Jupin of We Hate Movies and Author/Humorist Mike Sacks to create blurbs for movies that exist only in their imaginations. The Fractured Mirror covers over 500 movies, from internationally beloved classics to notorious flops. It documents Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star and Burden of Dreams, and everything in between. Movie history has never been so much fun! Praise for The Fractured Mirror "Nathan Rabin doesn't just write about Hollywood, he rewires how you watch it. The Fractured Mirror channels the same brilliance he brought to My Year of Flops and points it straight at showbiz itself. Every chapter left me itching to rewatch movies I'd written off, this time with brand-new eyes."- Paul Scheer "In this sparkling and essential compendium, one of America's all-time greatest cultural critics turns his keen eye and full heart to movies about American filmmaking, and thank goodness. This "casual epic," to paraphrase Rabin on Tarantino, deserves a spot on your shelf between Kael's FOR KEEPS and Peary's CULT MOVIES." - Julie Klausner, " The Fractured Mirror is an absolute feast for movie lovers, especially movie lovers who enjoy movies about making movies. And man, is it comprehensive! Possibly obsessive. But so much fun. Rabin's writing is smart, witty, and lively throughout."- Bill Corbett " The Fractured Mirror is such a fun, engaging read. Nathan's work always has a certifiable uniqueness and introspection that delivers laughs and deeper ways to rethink our views on film and pop culture."- Greg Sestero "Nathan Rabin's "The Fractured Mirror" sent me down a Proustian memory hole, bringing to mind not only how many of these titles our Tenna-Rotor (tm) brought in from distant New York, but of how films about filmmaking planted the absurd dream in my mind that I could someday join that crazy circus, myself. Hats off to Nathan - and to the next generation of filmmakers, his lovingly curated list will inspire!"- Steven E. DeSouza, screenwriter, 48 Hours, Commando, Die Hard
Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp 2025-11-19 550 pages

Cinema of outsiders: the rise of American independent film

Levy, Emanuel
A deep dive into the emergence and success of independent filmmaking in America A Los Angeles Times Bestseller The most important development in American culture of the last two decades is the emergence of independent cinema as a viable alternative to Hollywood. Indeed, while Hollywood's studios devote much of their time and energy to churning out big-budget, star-studded event movies, a renegade independent cinema that challenges mainstream fare continues to flourish with strong critical support and loyal audiences. Cinema of Outsiders is the first and only comprehensive chronicle of contemporary independent movies from the late 1970s up to the present. From the hip, audacious early works of maverick David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Spike Lee, to the contemporary Oscar-winning success of indie dynamos, such as the Coen brothers ( Fargo ), Quentin Tarentino ( Pulp Fiction ), and Billy Bob Thornton ( Sling Blade ), Levy describes in a lucid and accessible manner the innovation and diversity of American indies in theme, sensibility, and style. Documenting the socio-economic, political and artistic forces that led to the rise of American independent film, Cinema of Outsiders depicts the pivotal role of indie guru Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival in creating a showcase for indies, the function of film schools in supplying talent, and the continuous tension between indies and Hollywood as two distinct industries with their own structure, finance, talent and audience. Levy describes the major cycles in the indie film movement: regional cinema, the New York school of film, African-American, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and movies made by women. Based on exhaustive research of over 1,000 movies made between 1977 and 1999, Levy evaluates some 200 quintessential indies, including Choose Me , Stranger Than Paradise , Blood Simple , Blue Velvet , Desperately Seeking Susan , Slacker , Poison , Reservoir Dogs , Gas Food Lodging , Menace II Society , Clerks , In the Company of Men , Chasing Amy , The Apostle , The Opposite of Sex , and Happiness . Cinema of Outsiders reveals the artistic and political impact of bold and provocative independent movies in displaying the cinema of "outsiders"-the cinema of the "other America."
New York University Press 1999-09-01 601 pages

G.

Berger, John
"In this Booker Prize-winning classic, a Casanova-esque young man searches for philosophical and sexual fulfillment as he seduces his way across Europe on the eve of World War I. John Berger's picaresque work, one of the author's best novels, is an inspired exploration of intimacy and loneliness set at the turn of the 20th century. In this luminous novel about a modern Don Juan, John Berger relates the story of G., a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the last century as Europe teeters on the brink of war. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the libertine's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their liaisons with him. Set against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi's attempt to unite Italy, the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the dramatic first flight across the Alps, G. is a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in the turmoil of history"-- Provided by publisher.
New York Review Books 2026-06-16 366 pages

Max

Fast, Howard
Max Britsky rises, by the time he is thirty, from the tumultuous streets of turn-of-the-century New York to control of the first great Hollywood studio--through brawls, loves, triumphs, and betrayals Max Britsky rises, by the time he is thirty, from the tumultuous streets of turn-of-the-century New York to control of the first great Hollywood studio--through brawls, loves, triumphs, and betrayals
Houghton Mifflin Company 1982-09 395 pages

Amazing Words

Lederer, Richard
With fascinating etymologies and letter patterns for more than 1,000 everyday words, best-selling language writer Richard Lederer shines light on the most bedazzling, beguiling, and bewitching words in the English language. Chock-full of transfixing word histories, magical letter play, and hilarious puns, Amazing Words is an essential book for word lovers and verbivores. Dr. Lederer is the author of 60 books on language, history, and humor.
Waterside Productions 2022 241 pages

The Immediate Experience Movies, Comics, Theatre and Other Aspects of Popular Culture

Robert Warshow
More thon forty years ago, Robert Warshow wrote that "the unresolved problem of 'popular culture' . . . has come to be a kind of nagging embarrassment to criticism." Despite the rise of academic trends like cultural studies, we don't have a criticism that speaks to the actual, immediate experience of seeing and responding to popular culture. Warshow argued that the evasion of the popular arts in his time was due to a "disastrous vulgarization of intellectual life" that corrupted American liberalism from the 1930s to the 1950s. Political correctness then, like political correctness since the 1960s, had led to "organized mass disingenuousness" on the part of intellectuals who turned away from developing a vocabulary for describing the immediate, aesthetic experience and used irony instead, even about their own experiences. But, says Warshow, "a whole literature cannot be built on irony." Warshaw died a young man of 37 in 1955, but he left as his legacy a series of essays for The Partisan Review, Commentary, The Nation, and other journals. These writings, the cornerstone of a major account of the role of mass culture in our lives, were first gathered and published as a book in 1962. A number of essays have been anthologized frequently, and the book as a whole has achieved cult status for a number of discerning critics. "A legendary little book, partly because its author died at the age of 37, but mostly because it stands as a virtually unique representative from its period of a consistently open-minded, moral, aesthetic, and political engagement with commercial culture." -Louis Menand
Chosho Publishing 2023-06-05 242 pages

Who by Fire War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen

Matti Friedman
"An expedition into the troubled soul of one of the world's greatest songwriters."-- Haaretz "A fascinating and intense account of Leonard Cohen's time in Israel during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973. A must for any Leonard Cohen completist."--Suzanne Vega A Vanity Fair Best Book of 2022 * Mosaic Magazine Best Book of 2022 The untold story of Leonard Cohen's concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen--thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end--traveled to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a group of local musicians, Cohen sang for hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen, reigniting his creativity and inspiring him to compose some of his most memorable songs. Who by Fire provides a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen's previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, existential moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.
Spiegel & Grau 2024-09-03 224 pages

PRESIDENTIAL TRIVIA.

RICHARD. LEDERER
From the beloved Richard Lederer comes another kind of trivia book-Presidential Trivia. In it you'll find all the details about the lives of the United States presidents. It answers such questions as: who was the first president to be assassinated; who was the first president to be born an American citizen; and, who was the first to be impeached. It also answers less important but certainly interesting questions such as: who was our fattest president; our tallest; who played golf; and, who played poker. Filled with games, anagrams, poems, speeches, and an abundance of tidbits, details, and fascinating facts, this book is perfect for the novice to the history buff. From politics and policy to presidential nicknames and White House pets, ''Presidential Trivia'' has everything you ever wanted to know about our presidents, and then some.
READHOWYOUWANT 2024 172 pages