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› Find signed collectible books: '13: The Story Of The World's Most Popular Superstition'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All over the World and Other Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Star Comics'
In 1940, DC Comics created the concept of the super-team by bringing together Green Lantern, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and many others to battle powers that threatened the entire world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Star Comics Archives'
Re-presented in their entirety from the gold en age of comics - issues 3-6 of All Star Comics - this volu me showcases the early adventures of The Justice Society of America. ' [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Star Comics Archives'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'As Seen on TV: Provocations'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Batman'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Batman : The Dark Knight Returns'
If any comic has a claim to have truly reinvigorated the genre then The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller--known recently for his excellent Sin City series and, previously, for his superb rendering of the blind superhero Daredevil--is probably the supreme contender. Batman represented all that was wrong in comics and Miller set himself a tough task taking on the camp crusader and turning this laughable, innocuous children's cartoon character into a hero for our times. In his introduction the great Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, the arguably peerless Watchmen) argues that only someone of Miller's stature could have done this. Batman is a character known well beyond the confines of the comic world (as are his retinue) and so reinventing him, while keeping his limiting core essentials intact, was a huge task.
Miller went far beyond the call of duty. The Dark Knight is a success on every level. Firstly it does keep the core elements of the Batman myth intact, with Robin, Alfred the butler, Commissioner Gordon and the old roster of villains, present yet brilliantly subverted. Secondly the artwork is fantastic--detailed, sometimes claustrophobic, psychotic. Lastly it's a great story: Gotham City is a hell on earth, streetgangs roam but there are no heroes. Decay is ubiquitous. Where is a hero to save Gotham? It is 10 years since the last recorded sighting of the Batman. And things have got worse than ever. Bruce Wayne is close to being a broken man but something is keeping him sane: the need to see change and the belief that he can orchestrate some of that change. Batman is back. The Dark Knight has returned. Awesome. --Mark Thwaite [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again'
If any comic has a claim to have truly reinvigorated the genre then The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller--known recently for his excellent Sin City series and, previously, for his superb rendering of the blind superhero Daredevil--is probably the supreme contender. Batman represented all that was wrong in comics and Miller set himself a tough task taking on the camp crusader and turning this laughable, innocuous children's cartoon character into a hero for our times. In his introduction the great Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, the arguably peerless Watchmen) argues that only someone of Miller's stature could have done this. Batman is a character known well beyond the confines of the comic world (as are his retinue) and so reinventing him, while keeping his limiting core essentials intact, was a huge task.
Miller went far beyond the call of duty. The Dark Knight is a success on every level. Firstly it does keep the core elements of the Batman myth intact, with Robin, Alfred the butler, Commissioner Gordon and the old roster of villains, present yet brilliantly subverted. Secondly the artwork is fantastic--detailed, sometimes claustrophobic, psychotic. Lastly it's a great story: Gotham City is a hell on earth, streetgangs roam but there are no heroes. Decay is ubiquitous. Where is a hero to save Gotham? It is 10 years since the last recorded sighting of the Batman. And things have got worse than ever. Bruce Wayne is close to being a broken man but something is keeping him sane: the need to see change and the belief that he can orchestrate some of that change. Batman is back. The Dark Knight has returned. Awesome. --Mark Thwaite [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Better Dead Than Red: A Nostalgic Look at the Golden Years of Russiaphobia, Red-Baiting, and Other Commie Madness'
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![[???]: Black Canary Archives [???]: Black Canary Archives](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1563897342.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blast Off'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Boundaries Of Her Body: The Troubling History Of Women's Rights In America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brief History of American Culture'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Christian Manifesto'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Customs in Common'
Customs in Common is the remarkable companion to E. P. Thompson's landmark volume of social history The Making of the English Working Class. The product of years of research and debate, Customs in Common describes the complex culture from which working-class institutions emerged in England--a panoply of traditions and customs that the new working class fought to preserve well into Victorian times. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Customs in Common : Studies in Traditional Popular Culture'
Customs in Common is the remarkable companion to E. P. Thompson's landmark volume of social history The Making of the English Working Class. The product of years of research and debate, Customs in Common describes the complex culture from which working-class institutions emerged in England--a panoply of traditions and customs that the new working class fought to preserve well into Victorian times. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dark Knight Strikes Again'
The Dark Knight Strikes Again is Frank Miller's follow-up to his hugely successful Batman: the Dark Knight Returns, one of the few comics that is widely recognised as not only reinventing the genre but also bringing it to a wider audience.
Set three years after the events of The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again follows a similar structure: once again, Batman hauls himself out of his self-imposed retirement in order to set things right. However, where DKR was about him cleaning up his home city, Gotham, DKSA has him casting his net much wider: he's out to save the world.
The thing is, most of the world doesn't realise that it needs to be saved--least of all Superman and Wonder Woman, who have become little more than superpowered enforcers of the status quo. So, the notoriously solitary Batman is forced to recruit some different superpowered allies. He also has his ever-present trusty sidekick, Robin, except that he is a she, and she is calling herself Catwoman. Together, these super-friends uncover a vast and far-reaching conspiracy that leads to the President of the United States (Lex Luthor) and beyond.
The Dark Knight Strikes Again is largely an entertaining comic, but much of what made The Dark Knight Returns so good just doesn't work here. Miller's gritty, untidy artwork was perfect for DKR's grim depiction of the dark and seedy Gotham City, but it jars a bit for DKSA, which is meant to depict an ultra-glossy, futuristic technocracy. Lynn Varley's garish colouring attempts to add a slicker sheen, but the artwork is ultimately let down by that which worked so well for DKR--this time around, it just feels sloppy and rushed. The same is true of the book's denouement, which happens so quickly that it leaves the reader reeling and looking for more of an explanation. Moreover, DKSA is packed full of characters who will mean little to those unfamiliar with the DC Comics universe (eg, The Atom, The Elongated Man, The Question).
Perhaps the book's biggest failing is that where The Dark Knight Returns gave comic book fans a base from which to evangelise to the uninitiated, The Dark Knight Strikes Again is just preaching to the converted. Comic book superhero fans will find much to enjoy here, but others would be better off sticking with the original. --Robert Burrow [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Seuss Goes to War : The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel'
Before Yertle, before the Cat in the Hat, before Little Cindy-Lou Who (but after Mulberry Street), Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) made his living as a political cartoonist for New York newspaper PM. Seuss drew over 400 cartoons in just under two years for the paper, reflecting the daily's New Deal liberal slant. Starting in early 1941, when PM advocated American involvement in World War II, Seuss savaged the fascists with cunning caricatures. He also turned his pen against America's internal enemies--isolationists, hoarders, complainers, anti-Semites, and anti-black racists--and urged Americans to work together to win the war. The cartoons are often funny, peopled with bowler-hatted "everymen" and what author Art Spiegelman calls "Seussian fauna" in his preface. They are also often very disturbing--Seuss draws brutally racist images of the Japanese and even attacks Japanese Americans on numerous occasions. Perhaps most disturbing is the realization that Seuss was just reflecting the wartime zeitgeist.
Dr. Seuss Goes to War marks the first time most of these illustrations have appeared in print since they were first published. Richard H. Minear's introduction and explanatory chapters contextualize the 200 editorial cartoons (some of whose nuances might otherwise be lost on the modern reader). Those who grew up on Seuss will enjoy early glimpses of his later work; history buffs will enjoy this new--if playful and contorted--angle on World War II. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dukes of Hazzard: The Unofficial Companion'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Encyclopedia of Urban Legends'
Other entries discuss the relationship of urban legends to literature, film, comic books, music, and many other areas of popular culture. Coverage includes academic legends, earthquake stories, Internet resources, tabloids in urban legends, and more. All entries are cross referenced and feature brief bibliographies. A general bibliography suggests further readings on the subject. The volume is richly illustrated and is based on the latest scholarship, including materials available on the Internet.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Flintstones: A Modern Stone Age Phenomenon'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Forever Lounge: A Laid-Back Guide to Languid Sounds'
This can't-miss collection captures the spirit of lounge music and delivers the goods on a musical genre that's enjoying a huge resurgence. Compiled by writers and editors who themselves are lounge music aficionados, this one-of-a-kind volume features interviews with performers, fascinating sidebars, and two impressionistic visits to the "Land of Lounge" -- a literary trip to Mother's, the archetypal jazz lounge from the classic television series Peter Gunn; and a journey to one of today's retro lounges, full of hip Gen-X patrons who've embraced the scene as their own. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ghost World/ Mundo fantasmal'
Dan Clowes described the story in Ghost World as the examination of "the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish." From this perch comes a revelation about adolescence that is both subtle and coolly beautiful. Critics have pointed out Clowes's cynicism and vicious social commentary, but if you concentrate on those aspects, you'll miss the exquisite whole that Clowes has captured. Each chapter ends with melancholia that builds towards the amazing, detached, ghostlike ending. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Golden Age'
After finding a mystical lantern and carving a ring out of its material, Alan Scott was transformed from a simple engineer into the legendary hero Green Lantern. The iconic predecessor to the many heroes that bore his name after him, Scott wielded magic-based powers and suffered from a vulnerability to wood. This hardcover archive edition, which collects Scott's earliest adventures from the 1930's, includes Green Lantern's first appearance, his origin, and the debut of his friend and confidant Doiby Dickles. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Golden Age Flash'
Another in DCs high-quality Archives series, this hardcover reprints the original stories of the Flash! Jay Garrick was just a normal Joe until an accident turned him into the Flash! This reprint of 1940s-era classics follows the success of the All Star Comics Archives series, and is the first to feature the solo adventures of this iconic character. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Golden Age Starman Archives'
Written by Gardner Fox and others; Art by Jack Burnley and others
A scientific genius and millionaire, Ted Knight developed an amazing Cosmic Rod which channeled the power of stars. Looking to make a difference in a world caught in the middle of a global war, Knight took the identity of Starman and joined the Justice Society of America, becoming a super-powered protector of the nation. THE GOLDEN AGE STARMAN ARCHIVES VOL. 1 reprints Starman's classic adventures from the 1940s as he uses his abilities to fire energy blasts and generate energy fields against an assortment of powerful enemies, such as his archnemesis, the intangible Mist. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Morning Captain: 50 Wonderful Years With Bob Keeshan Tv's Captain Kangaroo'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Goodnight, John Boy: A Celebration of an American Family and the Values That Have Sustained Us Through Good Times and Bad'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Comic Book Heroes: Jules Feiffer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Happy Mutant Handbook'
In the wrong hands, this book would receive a dousing of gasoline and a quick flick of the Bic. In the right hands, this is a delightfully subversive manual for a lifetime of fun.
This is the do-it-yourself handbook for enjoying our media-saturated world by tinkering with how it works. Pulls together the kookiest and most engaging ideas from the Internet, great suggestions on "culture jamming" (a practice of co-opting the resources, messages, and brain-washing machinery of existing media, pioneered by Adbusters magazine), and generally jam-packed with loads of fun ideas and funny material.
Notable contributors include Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius, Richard Kadrey, and that most prolific of all authors, Anonymous.
(Editor's note: In some ways, the Happy Mutant philosophy is the cyberspawn of the behavioral shenanigans of the Dadaists, Surrealists, or the lesser-known but more interesting Situationists. ) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harlan Ellison's the City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay That Became the Classic Star Trek Episode'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hollywood Lesbians'

› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Live a Sitcom Life: A Guide to TV Etiquette'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby: A Colorful History of Tabloids and Their Cultural Impact'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Isaac Asimov Presents the Best Science Fiction of the 19th Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Japan Edge: The Insider's Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture'
This lively, idiosyncratic survey of Japanese film, music, animation, and comics showcases the experiences of five avid American fans: journalist Carl Gustav Horn, who writes about anime; critic and musician Mason Jones, who releases Japanese alternative music on his Charnel Music record label; Patrick Macias, a writer on Asian film for the San Francisco Bay Guardian; Matt Thorn, a translator and expert on sh<@244>jo (girls') manga; and Yuji Oniki, a student of Japanese mass media. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Joey Green's Amazing Kitchen Cures: 1,150 Ways to Prevent and Cure Common Ailments With Brand-Name Products'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly'
Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kon-Tiki'
Six men on a small raft sail four thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean, from Peru to the Polynesian Islands. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Land Where the Blues Began'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Look of Love: The Art of the Romance Novel'
Swashbuckling sailors, dashing dukes, naughty nurses, and sexy steward-esses caught in webs of love, passion, betrayal, and intrigue: these are the raw materials of the romance novel--and the lusty covers that advertise them. In The Look of Love, Jennifer McKnight-Trontz provides a rollicking history of the covers and stories that have captivated millions of readers worldwide. More than 150 of the most sensational covers from this venerable if venal literary form are shown in glorious color, focusing on the period from 1940 to 1970, romance design's most fertile era. The Look of Love features artwork and excerpts from titles such as Passion Flower, Kept Woman, Rendezvous in Lisbon, and Jungle Nurse. Along the way, it brings attention to the pioneers of the romance novel: cover artists such as Barye Phillips and Robert Maguire, who helped define the look of paperbacks in general, and Harlequin, the grand dame of romance publishers, with more than 100 million novels sold each year. McKnight-Trontz reveals the themes that typify both the story lines and the covers--hospital romance, the rich and raunchy, royalty, tropical paradises, Westerns, "taboo" relationships, pirates and warriors, and love triangles--resulting in this definitive compendium of camp. A book for romance lovers everywhere. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory'
This text considers why history matters. It shows how popularised historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past. Americans, who think they have shed their past, are also, paradoxically, avid tourists of their own heritage. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Naked'
Hip radio comedy fans and theater folks who belong to the cult of Obie-winning playwright/performer David Sedaris must kill to get this book. These would be fans of the scaldingly snide Sedaris's hilariously described personal misadventures like The Santaland Diaries (a monologue about his work as an elf to a department store Santa) seen off-Broadway in 1997. In a series of similarly textured essays, Sedaris takes us along on his catastrophic detours through a nudist colony, a fruit-packing plant, his own childhood, and a dozen more of the world's little purgatories. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Neither Here nor There'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Offbeat Museums : A Guided Tour of America's Weirdest and Wackiest Museums'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pet Sematary'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Photobooth'
In 1925 the Siberian immigrant Anatol Josepho had an idea for a small curtain-enclosed booth where people could take affordable portraits anonymously and automatically. The photobooth was born. Within 20 years there were more than 30,000 in the United States alone, an explosive growth due largely to World War II, as soldiers and loved ones exchanged photos, hoping to cling to memories or moments in a world turned upside down. But by the 1960s the advent of Polaroid photography spelled the doom of the "four strip" that had become a fixture at arcades and drugstores everywhere.
The recent resurgence of photo sticker machines has recaptured the fun and intimacy of the photobooth. With no photographer to please, people are at liberty to be whoever they like: brave or sexy, cocksure or wise, without fear of censure or ridicule. Free in the certainty of their solitude, families, couples young and old, best friends, and individual after individual have presented to the camera both real and imagined selves for three-quarters of a century.
Photobooth presents over 700 such photographs from the last 75 years, images at turns spontaneous and uninhibited, often goofy, and occasionally touching. It is a fascinating portrait of everyday people and a testament to the ongoing fascination with both the process and the result. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Planetary'
Layers of mystery wrap Planetary: All over the World like rice candy. Follow the enigmatic heroes Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow, and the Drummer as they excavate the secret history of the world from its wealth of bizarre happenings. Though the characterization isn't sparklingly brilliant--the "insane" Drummer behaves more like the A-Team's Murdock than a believable madman--the stories are both broad and deep, exploring a web of conspiracies and shadowy superheroes that manipulate and "protect" our world. Clever retellings of primal comics myths are interlaced with X-Files-esque secret government tales, and they drive the reader back and forth to collate evidence; the characters can't do all the work. Illustrator John Cassaday mirrors Warren Ellis's script from circumspect to sublime, befitting the best successor yet to the pulp comics of the 1940s. --Rob Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prozac Nation'
Elizabeth Wertzel writes with her finger in the faint pulse of a generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. A memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation still manages to be a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Rattlesnake: Portrait of a Predator'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Real World Adventures'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Right Stuff'
Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff at a time when it was unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero."
Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne.
Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'She's a Rebel : The History of Women in Rock and Roll'
An encyclopedic narrative of the role of women in rock and pop over the last four decades, from Big Mama Thornton, who topped the R&B charts with "Hound Dog" three years before Elvis, to the female musical powerhouses of the '90s. Compulsively readable and thoroughly entertaining, this is a spirited and much-needed retelling of rock history which has tended to treat women peripherally at best. And unlike most rock journalists, Gaar knows how to do research, and how to both tell a long story with attention to detail and keep readers' attention for a long time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Spiritual Tourist: A Personal Odyssey Through the Outer Reaches of Belief'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition'
In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookstores and beg them not to buy it.
The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.
"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."
There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Steering Through Chaos: Vice and Virtue in an Age of Moral Confusion'
In this thoughtful, probing study, Os Guinness leads readers in an in-depth examination of the deadly vices. The reader will better understand the classic notion of virtue and vice and how these ideas connect to the Beatitudes. Presenting the truth of the Bible in the context of modern society, other faiths, and 3,000 years of history, Guinness analyzes the corruption of ethics in academia and popular culture to reestablish the deadly seriousness of vice in an age of moral confusion. This is the second in a series of six Trinity Forum studies which combine classical and current readings with provocative discussion questions. The Trinity Forum has been successfully using this material for over eight years in their private leadership forums. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strange Case of Edward Gorey'
The Firecracker Alternative Book Award-winning look back at the life of the late artist Edward Gorey. Combining artistic analysis, a personal reminiscence of the artist Theroux knew for over 25 years, and an intimate familiarity with Gorey's oeuvre while drawing on exclusive interviews with the artist (the book was begun before Gorey's passing in 2000 at the age of 75 but completed just after), this book stands as the most comprehensive bio yet written about the beloved but reclusive and enigmatic artist. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stuck in the Seventies: 113 Things from the 1970's That Screwed Up the Twentysomething Generation'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Studs Terkel's Working: A Teaching Guide'
An invaluable educational resource for introducing Studs Terkel's classic work of oral history to today's students. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer/journalist Studs Terkel is world famous for his oral histories, considered an innovator in modern ethnographic research. Working, Terkel's most popular book, provides a powerful and original perspective on one of the most basic components of human experience: work. The farmer, receptionist, college professor, mail carrier, stockbroker, athlete, and many others share their daily routines and dreams in their own words. Working has long been recognized as an ideal teaching tool, presenting provocative material certain to engage students, ignite classroom discussion, and inspire thoughtful writing. Now, helping educators discover a variety of approaches for using Working in the classroom, Rick Ayers presents a comprehensive teaching guide to this celebrated classic. With its 200 pages of classroom materials--including questions, topics for discussion, tips for taking oral histories, and a bibliography of related resources--Ayers' teaching guide is certain to be welcomed by educators everywhere. As an added bonus, it includes a new interview with Terkel himself, offering insight into the making of Working. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tiki Drinks'
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![[???]: A Treasury of American Folklore: Our Customs, Beliefs, and Traditions [???]: A Treasury of American Folklore: Our Customs, Beliefs, and Traditions](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1566193702.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Videohound's Cult Flicks & Trash Pics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever'
As short a time ago as 1994, Leonard Maltin's movie guide could boast of "more than 19,000 entries, with 300 new titles!" But with 500-plus movies jostling into theaters every year, the pocket-size, curl-up-with-it film guide has become a relic. Nowadays, film books are faintly scholarly word-hoards with three OED-style columns, a trade-size format, and a heft that calls for your sitting pants. Videohound's 1,700-page edition sasses the new millennium ("Covering 1,000 years of Movie Making Magic!" the cover says), but its girth heralds the day when all such guides will be swallowed up by some vast digital database. Until then, there's this bright book, with its uncalculated number (a hasty guess would be 26,000) of reviews of movies on video, Laserdisc, DVD, and TV, and its massive cross-listings by star, director, writer, and cinematographer (cinematographer!). Retailing itself as an irreverent tour for movie lovers, the book has surprising range, with an equal appetite for difficult, small, and foreign films and Hollywood fare. Some inconsistencies? Yep, and that's what makes guides like this fun. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is hailed as a "masterpiece" and rewarded an admiring four bones (out of four), while the superbly Heideggerian Wings of Desire, also a "masterpiece," is equivocated to three and a half. The woof-worthy The Wedding Singer gets the same two and a half bones that they give Wes Anderson's estimably giggly debut, Bottle Rocket. Terry Zwigoff's lovely Crumb is M.I.A., and there's a tendency to eschew analysis for plot summary, but Videohound has encyclopedic breadth and does the undeclared job it sets out to accomplish: entertain, inform, and give readers a giant list of movies to watch next year. --Lyall Bush [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Way We Are: The Astonishing Anthropology of Everyday Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'What Not to Wear'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'What'd I Say: The Atlantic Story 50 Years of Music'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Why People Believe Weird Things'
Few can talk with more personal authority about the range of human beliefs than Michael Shermer. At various times in the past, Shermer has believed in fundamentalist Christianity, alien abductions, Ayn Rand, megavitamin therapy, and deep-tissue massage. Now he believes in skepticism, and his motto is "Cognite tute--think for yourself." This updated edition of Why People Believe Weird Things covers Holocaust denial and creationism in considerable detail, and has chapters on abductions, Satanism, Afrocentrism, near-death experiences, Randian positivism, and psychics. Shermer has five basic answers to the implied question in his title: for consolation, for immediate gratification, for simplicity, for moral meaning, and because hope springs eternal. He shows the kinds of errors in thinking that lead people to believe weird (that is, unsubstantiated) things, especially the built-in human need to see patterns, even where there is no pattern to be seen. Throughout, Shermer emphasizes that skepticism (in his sense) does not need to be cynicism: "Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known." --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women Warriors: ADVENTURES FROM HISTORY'S GREATEST FEMALE FIGHTERS'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Working'
Studs Terkel records the voices of America. Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Terkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives.... In the first trade paperback edition of his national bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel presents "the real American experience" (Chicago Daily News)--"a magnificent book . . .. A work of art. To read it is to hear America talking." (Boston Globe). [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Written Out of Television: A TV Lover's Guide to Cast Changes 1945-1994'
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