Film Landscapes of Global Youth
This book explores the dynamic landscapes of global youth through spatially grounded chapters focused on film and media. It is a collection of incredible works concerning children and young people in, out, and through media as well as an examination of what is possible for the future of research within the intersections of geography, film theory, and children's studies.It contains contributions from leading academics from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, art, film and media studies, women and gender studies, Indigenous studies, education, and geography, with chapters focused on a spatial area and the representations and relationships of children in that area through film and media. The insights presented also provide a unique and eclectic perspective on the current state of children's research in relation to the ever-changing media landscape of the 21st century. Film Landscapes of Global Youth approaches the subjects of children and young people in film and media in a way that is not bound by genre, format, medium, or the on-/off-screen binary. Each chapter offers an insightful look at the relationships and portrayals of children and young people in relation to a specific country, culture, or geographic feature.This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersections between geography, young lives, and the power of film, television, social media, content creation, and more.
Existential Hope
We are living in a time of growing existential risk, posing multiple threats to the survival of our species. We are also facing an epidemic of existential anxiety, with people struggling to find meaning and purpose in a complex and dehumanizing world. In such times, hope can be hard to find. Yet, we are not alone with these problems. They have been troubling people for centuries now and, with 8 billion fellow human beings to work with, we can and will achieve amazing things. In this wide-ranging exploration of humanity's existential predicament, the philosopher and pioneer of Existential Risk Studies, SJ Beard, takes stock of what humanity has learned about ourselves and how we can move forward in our quest for meaning, safety and human flourishing. Ultimately, they argue, our future depends upon us looking beyond existential threats to focus on our shared hopes, and then facing up to the fact that we all have important choices to make about what kind of humanity we really want.
The Last Kilo
"T.J. English hits the bullseye again. This is true crime writing at its most gripping and immediate -- a riveting epic about crooked cops, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and politicians who corrupted a continent and got snow to flow out of the tropics. The Last Kilo is a revelation." --Nicholas Pileggi, author of Goodfellas and CasinoFrom true-crime legend T. J. English, the epic, behind-the-scenes saga of "Los Muchachos," one of the most successful cocaine trafficking organizations in American history--a story of glitz, glamour, and organized crime set against 1980's Miami.Despite what Scarface might lead one to believe, violence was not the dominant characteristic of the cocaine business. It was corruption: the dirty cops, agents, lawyers, judges, and politicians who made the drug world go round. And no one managed that carousel of dangerous players better than Willy Falcon.A Cuban exile whose family escaped Fidel Castro's Cuba when he was eleven years old, Falcon, as a teenager, became active in the anti-Castro movement. He began smuggling cocaine into the U.S. as a way to raise money to buy arms for the Contras in Central America. This counter-revolutionary activity led directly to Willy's genesis as a narco. He and his partners built an extraordinary international organization from the ground up. Los Muchachos, the syndicate founded by Falcon, thrived as a major cocaine distribution network in the U.S. from the late 1970's into the early 1990's. At their height, Los Muchachos made more than a hundred million dollars a year. At the same time, Willy, his brother Tavy Falcon, and partner Sal Magluta became famous as championship powerboat racers.Cocaine, used by everyone from A-list celebrities to lawyers and people in law enforcement, came to define an era, and for a time, Willy Falcon and those like him--major suppliers, of whom there were only a few--became stars in their own right. They were the deliverers of good times, at least until the downside of persistent cocaine use became apparent: delusions of grandeur, psychological addiction, financial ruin. Thus, the War on Drugs was born, and federal authorities came after Falcon and his crew with a vengeance. Willy found himself on the run, his marriage and family life in shambles, the halcyon days of boat races and lavish trips to Vegas and parties at the Mutiny night club seemingly a distant memory.T. J. English has been granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of Los Muchachos, sitting down with Willy Falcon and his associates for many lengthy interviews, and revealing never-before-understood details about drug trafficking. A classic of true-crime writing from a master of the genre, The Last Kilo traces the rise and fall of a true cocaine empire--and the lives left in its wake.
Barbieland
A fresh and colorful cultural history of Mattel's Barbie and how she helped shape our understanding of modern feminism and capitalism--perfect for fans of The Secret History of Wonder Woman and DisneyWar. In June of 1952, German publishing tycoon Axel Springer was sending a new paper to print: a four-page broadsheet that almost ready, save for a narrow blank on the second page. With minutes to spare, Springer commissioned a one-block cartoon of a petite blonde with a predilection for rich men. That blonde was named "Lilli." But in a span of seven short years, she would be reborn in plastic, across an ocean, and under a different name: Barbara Millicent Roberts. If Barbie began as a blank space, the world has spent seven decades filling it in. No doll has elicited more adoration from fans, more hatred from detractors, and more eyerolls from the indifferent. To boosters, she is the ultimate symbol of unabashed girlhood, an 11.5-inch figurine who shot to the moon before American women could get credit cards, an evolving illustration that, per one tagline, "we girls can do anything." To critics, she represents an inane vision of femininity that was going out of style just years after she was "born"--an homage to impossible body proportions, an emblem of Eurocentric beauty standards, a bimbo built on an empire of polyethylene. For everyone else, Barbie is to dolls what Xerox is to copy machines, or Kleenex is to tissues. She is, for better or for worse, an American icon. Barbie's conquest over the toy market did not happen by accident. It is the byproduct of meticulous marketing, occasional backstabbing, squadrons of designers with strong opinions on coral lip shades, and covert corporate maneuvers--many of which replicate, in miniature, the economic trajectory of the country Barbie seems to represent.
New York's Coldest Cases
Unravel Ten of the New York's Most Interesting Murder Mysteries.David Bushman's and Mark Givens' engaging retellings take readers through the history of the crimes and the personal anecdotes of family and friends who were impacted by the deaths. Breakdowns of the crime scenes, timelines of the victims and the suspects, and various clues give readers a personal guide to the unsolved murders that have rocked New York.
Progress
For readers of Thomas Piketty, David Graeber, and Jared Diamond: A bold, provocative, wide-ranging argument about the human idea of progress that offers a new vision of our futureProgress is power. Narratives of progress, the stories we tell about whether a society is moving in the right or the wrong direction, are immensely potent. Progress has built cities, flattened mountains, charted the globe, delved the oceans and space, created wealth, opportunity, and remarkable innovation, and ushered in a new epoch unique in our planet's 4.5-billion-year history. But the modern story of progress is also a very dangerous fiction. It shapes our sense of what progress means, and justifies what we will do to achieve it--no matter the cost. We continue to subscribe to a set of myths, about dominion, growth, extraction, and expansion, that have fueled our success, but now threaten our--and all species'-- existence on a planet in crisis. In Progress, geographer Samuel Miller McDonald offers a radical new perspective on the myths upon which the modern world is built, illuminating its destructive lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative. Drawing on interdisciplinary research across anthropology, history, philosophy and geography, McDonald argues that if humanity is to thrive, then we must dismantle, reimagine, and create anew what progress means.
Placeless
In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's Evicted, a longtime housing activist presents a vivid and myth-breaking account of why homelessness endures in contemporary America... Millions of people are affected by homelessness, but media pundits and politicians see homelessness as a social work problem, or a matter of personal pathology, or some peculiar subspecies of urban poverty. Informed by the author's own front-line experiences from more than two decades working as an advocate for homeless people in New York City and his work with housing activists across the country. Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age presents an alternative and innovative, wide-angle view of homelessness and displacement in New York and elsewhere. A tour of the geography of homelessness in New York City, where some 100,000 people a night sleep in the city's shelter system, Markee visits certain city landmarks where homeless New Yorkers struggle to survive: armories once built to quarter militias who put down worker uprisings a train tunnel underneath Riverside Parka grim intake center where infants, children, and families were forced to sleep on office floorsa former psychiatric wing of Bellevue Hospital now sheltering hundreds of homeless men each nighta Manhattan park surrounded by luxury condos where the police routinely harassed homeless street-dwellersBlending historical analysis, urban theory, and the latest policy research, Markee considers homelessness in America as a tragic yet inevitable consequence of economic shifts inaugurated in the Reagan era, worsening inequality and housing affordability, systemic racism, and neoliberal government policies. At a moment where tabloids and politicians use homelessness as an excuse to whip up fear, Placeless is a powerful and moving account of a social problem whose solution is entirely possible.
Post-Self
Using extreme music and film as points of departure, Post-Self digs deep into the darkest thoughts of the most dissatisfied minds, minds that want to leave their bodies behind. Everyone is looking for a way out. Throughout history, the physical body has often been seen as a prison, as something to be escaped by any means necessary: technology, mechanization, drugs and sensory deprivation, rapture, or even death. Taking in horror movies, heavy metal, philosophy, science fiction, and cybernetics, Post-Self is an exploration of the ways that human beings have sought to make this escape, to transcend the limits of the human body, to find a way out. As the physical world continues to collapse around us, and we are faced with a particularly 21st-century kind of dread and dehumanization, Post-Self asks what this escape from our bodies might look like, and what it might mean for the future of civilisation.
Across the Universe
An entertaining and eye-opening look at the history of the crossword, who constructs them, and why crosswords matter as both a reflection of and influence on our culture From Wordle to Spelling Bee, we live in a time of word game mania. Crosswords in particular gained renewed popularity during the Covid-19 lockdown, when games became another kind of refuge. Today, 36 million Americans solve crosswords once a week or more, and nearly 23 million solve them daily. Yet, as longtime New Yorker crossword contributor Natan Last will tell you, the seemingly apolitical puzzle has never been more controversial--or more interesting. A surprisingly ubiquitous influence in the worlds of art, literature, and technology, as Last demonstrates, the puzzle and its most popular purveyors--including publications such as The New York Times, still the gold standard for word games--have in recent years been challenged for the way they prioritize certain cultures and perspectives as the norm, demoting others to obscurity. At the same time, the crossword has never been more democratic. A larger, younger, more tech-savvy, and solidaristic group of people have fallen in love with puzzle solving, ushering in a more inclusive community of constructors, challenging the very idea of what "normal" actually means. With a critical eye toward the puzzle's history, Natan Last explores the debates about the future of the crossword and investigates those who are determining its next phase, ultimately asking if the crossword can help us reshape the world. Across the Universe interrogates all the ways words--and the games we make using those words--change our culture, while bringing us into the world of those pushing for the crossword's much-needed evolution.
