New Books In Popular Culture

What is the role of the deejay in shaping hip-hop? Did deejays shape the technology that is used to create the music or were they simply consumers of mixers, faders, and microphones? What is the relationship between deejays and the manufacturers that produced the technology that made hip-hop possible? Andre Sirois explores these questions in his book, Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization (which can be downloaded for free here). Sirois is both a scholar and a deejay, and his book brings academic discourse into dialogue with working deejays. Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology (Peter Lang, 2016) draws on extensive interviews with the deejays that have shaped hip-hop and the technology manufacturers who made the products behind the deejays. The podcast covers the history of deejays, examining the three legends that are considered the founders of hip-hop: DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. He looks at how they transformed the r

The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the devoted band he called the “Arkestra,” Sun Ra took jazz from the inner city to outer space, infusing traditional swing with far-out harmonies, rhythms, and sounds. Described as the father of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra created “space music” as a means of building a better future for American blacks here on earth. A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism (University of Texas Press, 2016) offers a spirited introduction to the life and works of this legendary but underappreciated musician, composer, and poet. The book explores and assesses Sun R’as wide-ranging creative output–music, public preaching, graphic design, film and stage performance, and poetry–and connects his diverse undertakings to the culture and politics of his times, including the space race, the rise o

David M. Ewalt‘s book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and The People Who Play It (Scribner, 2013) is at once a love letter, cultural history, and succinct analysis of the roleplaying game phenomenon that started it all. Of Dice and Men was the first of a recent cluster of excellent commentary on D and D’s scope and impact, including Empire of Imagination and the recent Rise of the Dungeon Master. An engaging, entertaining, and informative read, Of Dice and Men is sure to interest gamers who may or may not quite realize the extent to which present popular culture owes its shape to this wondrous invention of E. Gary Gygax.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vision of the teeming drug trade and the vitality of life in the abandoned spaces of the postindustrial United States. With a sprawling narrative that dramatizes the intersections of race, urban history, and the neoliberal moment, The Wire offers an intricate critique of a society ravaged by racism and inequality. In Connecting The Wire: Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore (University of Texas Press, 2017), The author presents the first comprehensive, season-by-season analysis of the entire series. Focusing on the show’s depictions of the built environment of the city of Baltimore and the geographic dimensions of race and class, he analyzes how The Wire’s creator and showrunner, David Simon, uses the show to develop a social vision of its historical moment, as well as a device for critiquing many soc

When the film was released in 1987, critic Roger Ebert famously panned Dirty Dancing. Yet the movie continues to be the favorite of millions of fans. In Deconstructing Dirty Dancing (Zero Books, 2017), Stephen Lee Naish reviews the movie scene-by-scene, parsing the reasons why it remains such a popular film. He returns to the NBN to chat with Joel Tscherne.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), historian Jennifer Le Zotte examines the movement of selling secondhand goods for profit and charity. Focusing on thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales, Le Zotte traces the history of selling used goods and clothing, from its questionable start to becoming a multimillion dollar business. In From Goodwill to Grunge, Le Zotte traces the origins of secondhand style as a political, economic, and social act. She explores the ways in which both conservative and progressive activists used secondhand clothing for political and economic gains. Starting in the early 1900s and progressing through the 1990s grunge rock scene, Le Zotte shows how buying secondhand clothing was an act of rebellion and empowerment for drag queens and war protestors as well as the use of rummage sales for religious and political activism for church groups and civil rights organizations. Extensively researche

Growing up in a geodesic dome is not a claim everyone can make, but author Kate Daloz can. Her book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America (PublicAffairs, 2016) traces the path taken by many children of suburbia in the 1960s across the country who, like her parents, wanted to return to the land. Her subjects are Judy and Larry (her parents), the place they moved to, and the community they helped found. One of many interesting discoveries in this book is the fact that the back to the land movement took place around the country, within the same demographic, and during the same two-to three-year period in the 1970s. The causes? One was the growing concern with pollution described in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). Another, which deserves fuller examination, is the apocalyptic mood stemming from the atomic threat of the 1960s. Baby boomers remember, with no small amount of incredulity, schoolroom bomb practice (“How would going under my desk protect me?”

This episode of New Books in Jewish Studies features Maya Barzilai, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture at the University of Michigan and the author of Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters (New York University Press, 2016). This timely book traces the evolution of the golem, a clay monster animated by a rabbi to serve and protect his community, from its presence in literature, drama, and cinema in the 1920s to its use as a reference in Israeli and American cultures during the second half of the 20th century. Barzilai has also published a short article in The Forward last November, in which she has shown how the golem was used as a metaphor in the recent US presidential elections to describe Donald Trump as well as the media that “created” him. Danielle Drori is a doctoral student at New York University. Her research focuses on the politicization of translation in early 20th century Hebrew literature.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her book, Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Kathleen Collins presents an extensive history of the woman who is arguably the most famous television psychologist. Starting with Brothers’ appearance as a boxing expert on the $64,000 Question in the 1950s, and bringing readers through her decades-long career in television and radio, Collins argues that Brothers created the personal approach to psychology that became the norm for television other popular media. Collins examines the different ways that Brothers created a career for herself for over 50 years, looking at her role as psychologist, as well as her roles as guest star, actor, and media celebrity. She looks at the ways Brothers used her savvy business sense to create a multilayered career that made vital contributions to psychology, television, and U.S. cultural history. Collins uses Brothers’ personal papers and her published interviews as well as her own interviews with Brothers’

Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song, watched American Bandstand, or spent any hours viewing music videos on MTV? It has been said that music can truly bring people together. Rock music today is universal and its popular history is well known. Yet few know how and why it really came about. Taking a fresh look at events long overlooked or misunderstood, Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll (McFarland, 2016) tells how some of the most disenfranchised people in a free and prosperous nation strove to make themselves heard and changed the world. So where did it all begin? Not where you may think. Describing the genesis of rock and roll, author James A. Cosby covers everything from its deep roots in the Mississippi Delta and The Blues to key early figures, like deejay “Daddy-O” Dewey Phillips and gospel music star Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Also discusse

In her new book, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Anna Harwell Celenza examines the arrival of jazz in Italy after World War I and the role of Mussolini in promoting jazz throughout Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. With the technology of the radio and gramophone, jazz became part of the local music culture and ethnic and national identities were not viewed across the new mediums. In Jazz Italian Style Celenza explores how Italians made jazz their own, creating a genre distinguishable from American varieties and influencing Italian-American musicians. Well researched and documented, Celenza’s work presents a narrative of jazz that is seldom heard and must be remembered. In addition, Celenza uses @JazzItalianStyl to promote Italian Jazz and share some of the music she recovers in her book. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both

Five charismatic women navigate uneven terrain of racial gender and class stereotypes: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Halle Berry. The quintet charisma, as explored by Dr. Mia Mask in Divas on The Screen: Black Women in American Film (University of Illinois Press, 2009), range from erotic and a phallic idol of perversity and sexuality to comedic, cathartic and capitalistic to beauty in the multicultural age. Dr. Mask, associate professor of film at Vassar College, says they are the building blocks of our black women stars today. And the building blocks focus on what can we learn from the complex and contradictory careers of successful black women? Where do we find African-Americans in the performative, other-directed, narcissistic culture? What does African-American stardom as a social phenomenon reveal about the aspirations of black folks in the 21st Century? How have African-Americans-in their struggle for inclusion in commercial entertainment-complied with dominant cultur

Who’s the black private dick That’s a sex machine to all the chicks? (Shaft) Ya damn right Who is the man that would risk his neck For his brother man? (Shaft) Can you dig it? Who’s the cat that won’t cop out When there’s danger all about? (Shaft) Right on They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother – (Shut your mouth) But I’m talkin’ ’bout Shaft – (Then we can dig it) He’s a complicated man But no one understands him but his woman (John Shaft) –Theme from Shaft by Isaac Hayes Mention Shaft and most people think of Gordon Park’s seminal 1971 film starring Richard Roundtree in a leather coat, walking the streets of Manhattan to Isaac Hayes’ iconic theme music. But the black private dick that inspired the black action cinema/blaxploitation film genre actually made his debut on the printed page as the creation of white novelist Ernest Tidyman, who was a seasoned journalist down on his luck when he decided to try his hand at fiction.

The Americans by Car is Karl Baden’s latest book. An homage to Robert Frank’s The Americans and Lee Friedlander’s America by Car, Baden’s book “is a personal, more specific answer to the vague question of ‘how are we influenced,'” according to the artist. The photographs in the book were taken by Baden from his car and offer a snapshot of American life. Karl Baden, a New York City native, he received his B.A. in Fine Arts at Syracuse University in 1974 and an M.F.A. in photography at University of Illinois at Chicago in 1979. Baden has taught at Boston College, Harvard, Clark University, and Rhode Island School of Design. He was Director of Photography at the Project Art Center, Cambridge, in the early 1980s, and served on the board and programming committee for the Photographic Resource Center, Boston. Baden has had numerous one person and group exhibitions and has received noteworthy fellowships. Baden’s probably best known work is called “Every Day̶

Reading Laurence Rickels‘ The Psycho Records (Wallflower Press, 2016) gave me the urge to ask random strangers questions like: Are you haunted by Alfred Hitchcock’s famous shower scene? How do you feel about Norman Bates and other cinematic killers pathologically attached to their mothers? Does the thought of Anthony Perkins impersonating his dead mother and stabbing Janet Leigh make you uncomfortable and scared? Induce an uncanny sensation? Or does it seem dated, campy, even comical? Rickels is interested precisely in these vicissitudes of the primal shower scene–what he calls the “Psycho Effect”–as it is taken up and therapeutically transformed by subsequent slasher and splatter films. It is not an accident that Hitchcock chose the shower stall as the site for his most famous moment of Schauer, the German cognate meaning “horror.” Traumatized American soldiers returning from World War II, dubbed “psychos,” were transposed into filmic psycho murdere

There’s a common myth about the history of comic books and strips. It’s the idea that the medium languished for decades as a sort of time-wasting hobby for children, but now has redeemed itself and can be appreciated even by the literary. University of Georgia professor and comics scholar Christopher Pizzino argues that this history is as false as Clark Kent’s eyeglass prescription. Comics, he says, are still burdened by their early stigma, their status in modern culture tenuous at best. In Arresting Development: Comics at the Boundaries of Literature (University of Texas Press, 2016), Pizzino offers up an educated and entertaining history of the comics medium, then devotes a chapter to each of four groundbreaking comic artists. In one, he looks at the film noir and manga-influenced work of Frank Miller, creator of The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City. Another chapter examines the work of Alison Bechdel, whose famed lesbian-centered comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, led to pop cultureR

Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945-1970 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) offers a compelling investigation of Soviet leisure culture. Gleb Tsipursky undertakes an unexpected approach to illuminate some aspects of the USSR history, which have been previously disregarded. Describing leisure activities that were popular in the Soviet Union, Tsipursky contributes to the discussion concerning the shaping of Soviet mentality and consciousness. Briefly describing traditions that the Soviet Union was referring to when devising cultural programs, Socialist Fun focuses on the post-War period and offers a detailed analysis of leisure time activities during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras. Considering the developments of cultural programs devised and maintained by Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, Tsipursky outlines his theory regarding the development of the Soviet society. Sponsored by the state, the cultural sphere in the USSR appears a part of garde

How can we challenge the way film and television represents the world around us? In Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Rutgers University Press, 2017) Nancy Wan Yuen, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Biola University, offers a comprehensive guide to the problem of racism in Hollywood, along with possible solutions for organisations, governments and audiences. The book draws on a wealth of interview data, along with almost 10 years of fieldwork in the Hollywood system, interviewing on- and off-screen talent, agents, and decision makers. The book shows the high levels of exclusion of people of colour from Hollywood, along with the malign impacts of this on contemporary culture. Moreover, the book shows how actors of colour face a ‘double bind’ in trying to get work and negotiate the expectations and biases of a white system. By exposing the problem, and offering practical guidance for change, the book represents an important intervention. The engaging style and clear, academically

Mark Braude’s Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle (Simon and Schuster, 2016) tells the captivating story of the rise of Monte Carlo as Europe’s most famous casino-resort from the second half of the nineteenth century to the end of the 1920s. In a series of fascinating chapters, Braude takes readers through the history of this modern, luxury playground, from the legalization of gambling in Monaco in 1855, through a rise of the site in the decades that followed, a period of decline after the First World War, and a revival during the Jazz Age of the interwar years. Throughout, Making Monte Carlo follows the lives of individuals, families, companies, and a larger network of player-consumers, workers, and witnesses. Center-stage are the members of the Blanc family who first opened Le Grand Casino de Monte Carlo in 1858 and controlled the Societe des bains de mers (SBM). The SBM is Braude’s main archival source for the inside story of casino plans, management, and operations

In his new book The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing (Crown, 2017), Damion Searls presents the first biography of Hermann Rorschach and the history of the Rorschach Test. A story that is largely untold, Searls starts with the childhood of Rorschach and brings readers through his growth as a psychiatrist as he created an experiment to probe the mind using a set of ten inkblots. As a visual artist, Rorschach incorporated his ability to think about visuals and his belief that what is seen is more important than what we say. After his early death, Rorschach’s Test found its way to America being used by the military, to test job applicants, to evaluate defendants and parents in custody battles and people suffering from mental illness. In addition, it has been used throughout advertising and incorporated in Hollywood and popular culture. A tragic figure, and one of the most influential psychiatrists in the twentieth century, The Inkblots allows readers to better understand