NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Now in paperback--Peggy Orenstein, author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller Girls & Sex, turns her focus to the sexual lives of young men. "Eye-opening.... Every few pages, the boy world cracks open a little bit.... Even in the most anxiety-provoking moments of Boys & Sex, it's clear that Orenstein believes in the goodness of boys and the men they can become, and she believes in us, as parents, to raise them" (New York Times Book Review). Peggy Orenstein's Girls & Sex broke ground, shattered taboos, and launched conversations about young women's right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unexpected effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls--steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity--which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships. In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy. Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word "hilarious" robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys' understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men's experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today's world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.

Okay, who was the first flatterer? If you guessed Satan, you'd be close, but according to You're Too Kind, flattery began with chimpanzees, who groom each other all day long. In fact, flattery is an adaptive behavior that has helped us survive since prehistoric times. Our flattery is strategic praise, and to illustrate its myriad forms, Richard Stengel takes us on a witty, idiosyncratic tour, from chimps to the God of the Old Testament to the troubadour poets of the Middle Ages, all the way through Dale Carnegie and Monica Lewinsky's adoring love letters to her "Big Creep." Flattery thrives in hierarchical settings like royal courts or Fortune 500 boardrooms, and it flows both upward and downward. Downward is usually easier, but studies show it works best on those who already have high opinions of themselves. Stengel sees public flattery as an epidemic in our society, and private praise as being all too scarce. Most often, though, flattery these days is just a harmless deception, a victimless crime that often ends up making both the giver and the receiver feel a little better. In short, flattery works.

The must-read music book of the year—and the first such history bringing together all musical genres to tell the definitive narrative of the birth of Pop from 1900 to the mid-1950s. Pop music didn't begin with the Beatles in 1963, or with Elvis in 1956, or even with the first seven-inch singles in 1949. There was a pre-history that went back to the first recorded music, right back to the turn of the century. Who were these earliest record stars—and were they in any meaningful way "pop stars"? Who was George Gershwin writing songs for? Why did swing, the hit sound for a decade or more, become almost invisible after World War II? The prequel to Bob Stanley’s celebrated Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! , this new volume is the first book to tell the definitive story of the birth of pop, from the invention of the 78 rpm record at the end of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of rock and the modern pop age. Covering superstars such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra, alongside the unheralded songwriters and arrangers behind some of our most enduring songs, Stanley paints an aural portrait of pop music's formative years in stunning clarity, uncovering the silver threads and golden needles that bind the form together. Bringing the eclectic, evolving world of early pop to life—from ragtime, blues, and jazz to Broadway, country, crooning, and beyond— Let's Do It is essential reading for all music lovers. "An encyclopaedic introduction to the fascinating and often forgotten creators of Anglo-American hit music in the first half of the twentieth century."—Neil Tennant (The Pet Shop Boys)