Social Science : Anthropology : Cultural

This innovative cultural history investigates an intriguing, thrilling, and often lurid assortment of sensational literature that was extremely popular in the United States in 1848--including dime novels, cheap story paper literature, and journalism for working-class Americans. more...

Price: $15.95

Will the twenty-first century be the next American Century? Will American power and ideas dominate the globe in the coming years? Or is the prestige of the United States likely to crumble beneath the pressure of new international challenges?. This ground-breaking book explores the changing patterns of American thought and culture at the dawn of the new millennium, when the world's richest nation has never been more powerful or more controversial. It brings together some of the most eminent North American and European thinkers to investigate the crucial issues and challenges facing the United States during the early years of our new century. From the subterranean political shifts beneath the electoral landscape to the latest biomedical advances, from the literary response to 9/11 to the rise of reality television, this book explores the political, social and cultural contours of contemporary American life - but it also places the United States within a global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, international diplomacy, ideological conflict and war. These eighteen new essays address such pressing issues as leadership, foreign policy, propaganda, religion, health, technology, immigration, 9/11 culture and digital media. Searching for the roots of our contemporary concerns, the authors look back to the Clinton years and even earlier periods of twentieth-century American life. But they also look forward to the new horizons of the century to come - to the unanticipated dangers of a global future and to the soaring possibilities of American enterprise and imagination. more...

Price: $148.99

This title seeks to provide insights into the American psyche and character. It looks at American values, assumptions and ways of reasoning to help foreigners to understand the enigmatic Americans. This edition features a new chapter on race and ethnic relations. more...

Price: $26.95

It's the stuff of nightmares, the dark inspiration for literature and film. But astonishingly, cannibalism does exist, and in Among the Cannibals travel writer Paul Raffaele journeys to the far corners of the globe to discover participants in this mysterious and disturbing practice. From an obscure New Guinea river village, where Raffaele went in search of one of the last practicing cannibal cultures on Earth; to India, where the Aghori sect still ritualistically eat their dead; to North America, where evidence exists that the Aztecs ate sacrificed victims; to Tonga, where the descendants of fierce warriors still remember how their predecessors preyed upon their foes; and to Uganda, where the unfortunate victims of the Lord's Resistance Army struggle to reenter a society from which they have been violently torn, Raffaele brings this baffling cultural ritual to light in a combination of Indiana Jones-type adventure and gonzo journalism. Illustrated with photographs Raffaele took during his travels, Among the Cannibals is a gripping look at some of the more unsavory aspects of human civilization, guaranteed to satisfy every reader's morbid curiosity. more...

Price: $19.99

Taking as his starting point the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon, Florian Keller explores Andy Kaufman's career within a broader discussion of the ideology of the American Dream, grasping Kaufman's radical agenda beyond avant-garde theories of transgression. Presenting readings of Kaufman's most significant performances, Keller shows how he mounted a critique of America's obsession with celebrity and individualism. more...

Price: $58.50