Full AspenCat Catalog

The cake in kitchen, the house in the suburbs, Mamie in her mink stole, Elvis in his pink Cadillac. It was America in the 1950s, and the world was not so much a stage as a setpiece for TV, the new national phenomenon. It was a time when how things looked - and how we looked - mattered, a decade of design that comes to vibrant life in As Seen on TV. This book captures a visual culture reflecting and reflected in the powerful new medium of television. Looking...

The culture wars at home and the global war on terror are usually viewed as separate problems. Author D'Souza makes the claim that terrorist acts around the world can be directly traced to the ideas and attitudes perpetrated by America's cultural left. D'Souza shows that American liberals are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslims but also traditional and religious societies around the world. He argues that it...

"As a child and teenager, Nathan Rabin viewed pop culture as a life-affirming form of escape. Today, pop culture is his life. For more than a decade, he's served as head writer for A.V. Club, the entertainment section of The Onion. In The Big Rewind, Rabin shares his too-strange-for-fiction life story. From a psilocybin-addled trip to the Anne Frank House to having focus groups for his movie-review panel show opine that all the male critics seemed...

A companion book to the groundbreaking PBS and BBC documentary series celebrates the pioneers and artists of American roots music--blues, gospel, folk, Cajun, Appalachian, Hawaiian, and Native American--without which there would be no jazz, rock, country, R & B, or hip hop today. "American Epic, a historic music project ... explores the pivotal recording journeys at the height of the Roaring Twenties, when music scouts armed with cutting-edge portable...

"Restoring three-dimensionality to more than fifty of these American sayings, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too turns cliches back into history by telling the life stories of the words that have served as our most powerful battle cries, rallying points, laments, and inspirations." "In individual entries on slogans and catchphrases from the early seventeenth to the late twentieth century, Jan R. Van Meter reveals that each one is a living, malleable entity...

"The American story can be told in many ways and from many points of view. Accounts of military conflicts, political debates, economic developments, and the achievement of great national leaders are all staples of our history education. But we know that there are other faces we show to the world. The popular heroes and heroines, entertainers and teachers, role models and cultural entrepreneurs who have embodied the life of the nation and represented...

An illustrated guide to twentieth-century popular culture in America, featuring a year-by-year look at music, television, fashion, food, and other trends and events of the 1980s.

A cultural critic and investigative journalist uncovers the full history of the Barbie doll, from her introduction in 1959 through countless transformations, makeovers and career changes to its emergence as an international pop culture icon.

"New York Times-bestselling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman compiles and contextualizes the best of his articles and essays from the past decade. Chuck Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, newspapers, and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped...

An examination of the remarkable objects for sale in the fifties and sixties and some of the designers of these objects: Barbie dolls, appliances, automobiles, furniture, Levittown, PA, Eero Saarinen, George Nelson, Harley Earl and Raymond Loewy.