Regarding the Popular

Regarding the Popular
Author: Sascha Bru
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110274698

Regarding the Popular charts the complex relationship between the avant-gardes and modernisms on the one hand and popular culture on the other. Covering (neo-)avant-gardists and modernists from various European countries, this second volume in the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies explores the nature of so-called “low” culture, dealing with aspects as diverse as the everyday and the folkloric. Regarding the Popular charts the many ways in which the allegedly “high” modernists and avant-gardists looked at and represented the “low”. As such, this book will appeal to all those with an interest in the dynamic of modern experimental arts and literatures.

Popular a Memoir

Popular a Memoir
Author: Maya Van Wagenen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2014
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0525426817

Documents a high school student's year-long attempt to change her social status from that of a misfit to a member of the "in" crowd by following advice in a 1950s popularity guide, an experiment that triggered embarrassment, humor and unexpected surprises.

Paradoxes of the Popular

Paradoxes of the Popular
Author: Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-08-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1503609480

Few places are as politically precarious as Bangladesh, even fewer as crowded. Its 57,000 or so square miles are some of the world's most inhabited. Often described as a definitive case of the bankruptcy of postcolonial governance, it is also one of the poorest among the most densely populated nations. In spite of an overriding anxiety of exhaustion, there are a few important caveats to the familiar feelings of despair—a growing economy, and an uneven, yet robust, nationalist sentiment—which, together, generate revealing paradoxes. In this book, Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury offers insight into what she calls "the paradoxes of the popular," or the constitutive contradictions of popular politics. The focus here is on mass protests, long considered the primary medium of meaningful change in this part of the world. Chowdhury writes provocatively about political life in Bangladesh in a rich ethnography that studies some of the most consequential protests of the last decade, spanning both rural and urban Bangladesh. By making the crowd its starting point and analytical locus, this book tacks between multiple sites of public political gatherings and pays attention to the ephemeral and often accidental configurations of the crowd. Ultimately, Chowdhury makes an original case for the crowd as a defining feature and a foundational force of democratic practices in South Asia and beyond.

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?
Author: Alexander Keyssar
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2020-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 067497414X

A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement

Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Author: Bronnie Ware
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-08-13
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1401956009

Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.

The Big Book of Hacks

The Big Book of Hacks
Author: Doug Cantor
Publisher: Weldon Owen International
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1616289465

Ingenious (and hilarious) projects that aspiring makers will love, brought to you by the tinkerers at Popular Science magazine. From useful, doable gadgets to outlandish contraptions that you’d likely be wise to avoid, this showcase of ingenuity is an entertaining tribute to the inventive spirit. In this book from the science and technology magazine that’s been inspiring everyday people for nearly 150 years, you’ll discover: Geek Toys: Be the life of any party with rad gaming hacks, amazing pyrotechnics, quirky DIY robots, wow-inducing projectiles, and lots of ways to make beer even better. Home Improvements: Pimp out your pad with a laser-security system, an improvised sous-vide cooker, and a life-sized cardboard display of anyone you want. Gadget Upgrades: Want to stash a flash drive in an old cassette? Use a DIY stylus on a touchscreen? Improvise a fisheye lens for your camera? With this book, you can. Things That Go: Give your motorbike a Tron vibe, deck out your car with an action-figure hood ornament, and keep gadgets charged on the go with a solar-powered backpack. …and much more!

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology
Author: Scott O. Lilienfeld
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1444360744

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology uses popular myths as a vehicle for helping students and laypersons to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Uses common myths as a vehicle for exploring how to distinguish factual from fictional claims in popular psychology Explores topics that readers will relate to, but often misunderstand, such as 'opposites attract', 'people use only 10% of their brains', and 'handwriting reveals your personality' Provides a 'mythbusting kit' for evaluating folk psychology claims in everyday life Teaches essential critical thinking skills through detailed discussions of each myth Includes over 200 additional psychological myths for readers to explore Contains an Appendix of useful Web Sites for examining psychological myths Features a postscript of remarkable psychological findings that sound like myths but that are true Engaging and accessible writing style that appeals to students and lay readers alike

Bring on the Books for Everybody

Bring on the Books for Everybody
Author: Jim Collins
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2010-06-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 082239197X

Bring on the Books for Everybody is an engaging assessment of the robust popular literary culture that has developed in the United States during the past two decades. Jim Collins describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on the screen as on the page. Fueled by Oprah’s Book Club, Miramax film adaptations, superstore bookshops, and new technologies such as the Kindle digital reader, literary fiction has been transformed into best-selling, high-concept entertainment. Collins highlights the infrastructural and cultural changes that have given rise to a flourishing reading public at a time when the future of the book has been called into question. Book reading, he claims, has not become obsolete; it has become integrated into popular visual media. Collins explores how digital technologies and the convergence of literary, visual, and consumer cultures have changed what counts as a “literary experience” in phenomena ranging from lush film adaptations such as The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love to the customer communities at Amazon. Central to Collins’s analysis and, he argues, to contemporary literary culture, is the notion that refined taste is now easily acquired; it is just a matter of knowing where to access it and whose advice to trust. Using recent novels, he shows that the redefined literary landscape has affected not just how books are being read, but also what sort of novels are being written for these passionate readers. Collins connects literary bestsellers from The Jane Austen Book Club and Literacy and Longing in L.A. to Saturday and The Line of Beauty, highlighting their depictions of fictional worlds filled with avid readers and their equations of reading with cultivated consumer taste.

Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture

Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture
Author: Dudley Andrew
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

The authors highlight the new symbolic forces put in play by technologies of the illustrated press and the sound film - technologies that converged with efforts among writers, artists, and other intellectuals to respond to the crises of the decade.

Tooning in : Essays on Popular Culture and Education

Tooning in : Essays on Popular Culture and Education
Author: Cameron White
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780742559707

A collection of eloquent essays, Tooning In critically examines and interprets the concept of 'popular culture.' Many interesting works have addressed this subject, but few have provided a critical perspective regarding the possibilities of popular culture as a tool for teaching and learning. White and Walker suggest that popular culture is a vital aspect of contemporary life and can be wielded as a tool for efficacy and empowerment, particularly among youth. The book addresses such important questions as: What is the role of popular culture in students' lives? What are the possibilities for popular culture in schooling and education? What are the differences between traditional and transformative approaches to popular culture? With essays specifically devoted to film, music, television, games, and other alternative popular culture texts, Tooning In invites readers to re-examine the fundamental aspects of popular culture as a societal force.