Arts and Culture
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Books
- Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy -- "The picture that Levy paints is more than a little grim: raunch culture, which is essentially misogynist, callow, simplistic and ubiquitous, breeds women-hating-women who angle for power with men and propagate more raunch under the deceitful guise of feminist empowerment." Christine Smallwood, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)
- Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge-And Why We Must, by Kalle Lasn -- "aims to stop the branding of America by changing the way information flows; the way institutions wield power; the way television stations are run; and the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music, and culture industries set agendas. With a courageous and compelling voice, Lasn deconstructs the advertising culture and our fixation on icons and brand names. And he shows how to organize resistance against the power trust that manages the brands by "uncooling" consumer items, by 'dermarketing' fashions and celebrities, and by breaking the "media trance" of our TV-addicted age."
- The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, by Barry Glassner -- "reveals why Americans are burdened with overblown fears.... exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our anxieties: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV newsmagazines that monger a new scare every week to garner ratings."
- The Culture Struggle, by Michael Parenti -- "One of America’s most astute and engaging political analysts, Michael Parenti shows us that culture is a changing process and the product of a dynamic interplay between a wide range of social and political interests. It is not enough to study the prevailing political realm. We also must grasp developments throughout the entire civil society. In short, to understand a society we need to understand the problem of culture as well as that of power."
ANATOMY OF CRITICISM by Northrup Frye, 1957. Still a revelatory set of essays on symbol, myth, modes and genres in literature. "A brilliant but bristling book..."
CONVERGENCES: ESSAYS ON ART AND LITERATURE by Octavio Paz,1987. Nobel Laureate from Mexico on world literature and art.
HIGHBROW LOWBROW by Lawrence W. Levine, 1986. Challenges belief that culture in America was always elitist.
POETIC JUSTICE:THE LITERARY IMAGINATION AND PUBLIC LIFE by Martha C. Nussbaum,1995. "One of [America's] most prominent philosophers explores how the literary imagination is an essential ingredient of just public discourse and a democratic society." Passionate, down-to-earth and literate simultaneously.
READING AMERICA; ESSAYS ON AMERICAN LITERATURE by Denis Donoghue, 1988. From Emerson to Plath, "varied, judicious, consistently interesting.."--Marjorie Perloff, Stanford U.
SIX MEMOS FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM by Italo Calvino, 1988. "one of the world's best storytellers" last and uncompleted work on "universal [literary] values he pinpoints for future generations to cherish..."
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN; TECHNOLOGY AND THE PASTORAL IDEAL IN AMERICA by Leo Marx,1964. It remains a major work on the affect of technology on American literature and thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
THE NATURE OF ORDER: AN ESSAY ON THE ART OF BUILDING AND THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE by Chistopher Alexander, 2004. "Theorizing that order is inherent in both nature and manmade spaces, Alexander attempts to define and understand the essence of a 'living' structure." All Things Considered, 1/29/2005.
THE USES OF LITERATURE by Italo Calvino, 1982. "In these essays, Calvino is able to make the world alive and comprehensible for us--and magical."--SF Chronicle.
WHY READ THE CLASSICS? by Italo Calvino, 1990. Posthumous collection of essays on the wonder of great literary works, "free of academic jargon and journalistic glibness."
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