Bøger udgivet af Basic Books

Centenarians, once a rarity, are the world's fastest growing age group: there are currently about 50,000 people over 100 in the United States alone, almost three times as many as there were in 1980. Centenarians are setting the gold standard for healthy aging. What can we learn from these pioneers? How can people decades younger apply the centenarians' longevity lessons to their own lives? These are the questions Harvard scientists Thomas Perls and Margery Hutter Silver set out to answer when they launched the New England Centenarian Study. As they probed beyond disease to identify the parameters of an energetic later life, Perls and Silver realized that the key to preserving health and vitality lies not in learning how people stay young, but in understanding how they age well. By identifying lifestyle patterns, vitamins, and medications that contribute to aging well -- and may even help slow down the aging process -- they show how all of us can maximize the healthy portion of the life-span. Filled with personal profiles, informational sidebars, and quizzes, Living to 100 offers inspiration and solid scientific information to the more than seventy-five million people alive today who can look forward to their ninth and tenth decades.

Christians are by their nature a people out of place. Their true home is with God; in civic life, they are alien citizens "in but not of the world." In American Babylon, eminent theologian Richard John Neuhaus examines the particular truth of that ambiguity for Catholics in America today. Neuhaus addresses the essential quandaries of Catholic life -- assessing how Catholics can keep their heads above water in the sea of immorality that confronts them in the world, how they can be patriotic even though their true country is not in this world, and how they might reconcile their duties as citizens with their commitment to God. Deeply learned, frequently combative, and always eloquent, American Babylon is Neuhaus's magnum opus -- and will be essential reading for all Christians.

Throughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the continent, turning noon into dusk, demolishing farm communities, and bringing trains to a halt as the crushed bodies of insects greased the rails. In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust "the single greatest impediment to the settlement of the country." From the Dakotas to Texas, from California to Iowa, the swarms pushed thousands of settlers to the brink of starvation, prompting the federal government to enlist some of the greatest scientific minds of the day and thereby jumpstarting the fledgling science of entomology. Over the next few decades, the Rocky Mountain locust suddenly -- and mysteriously -- vanished. A century later, Jeffrey Lockwood set out to discover why. Unconvinced by the reigning theories, he searched for new evidence in musty books, crumbling maps, and crevassed glaciers, eventually piecing together the elusive answer: A group of early settlers unwittingly destroyed the locust's sanctuaries just as the insect was experiencing a natural population crash. Drawing on historical accounts and modern science, Locust brings to life the cultural, economic, and political forces at work in America in the late-nineteenth century, even as it solves one of the greatest ecological mysteries of our time.

Between 1939 and 1944, as the Nazis overran Europe, they were also quietly conducting another type of pillage. The Lost Museum tells the story of the Jewish art collectors and gallery owners in France who were stripped of rare works by artists such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, Cézanne, and Picasso. Before they were through, the Nazis had taken more than 20,000 paintings, sculptures, and drawings from France.The Lost Museum explores the Nazis' systematic confiscation of these artworks, focusing on the private collections of five families: Rothschild, Rosenberg, Bernheim-Jeune, David-Weill, and Schloss. The book is filled with private family photos of this art, some of which has never before been seen by the public, and it traces the fate of these works as they passed through the hands of top German officials, unscrupulous art dealers, and unwitting auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's.

With the media increasingly setting political and social agendas, news coverage about a problem can be the first step toward a solution. This handbook, based on interviews with media-savvy activists and twenty-five professional journalists, explains how to generate news coverage about any cause or issue that concerns you. Learn how to stage media events, write press releases, compile media lists, contact reporters, deliver sound bites, book a guest on talk radio, lobby editorial writers, columnists, and photographers, and much more. Making the News also contains unique advice on how to create newsworthy visual imagery. Simple, complicated, cheap, funny, flashy -- ideas for all kinds of media events are described.

After thirty years of feminism, women continue to underachieve, occupying only 10 percent of top-level managerial or professional positions. And significant achievement-influential woman leaders and visionaries-is rarer still. The reason, argues this bold and inspiring book, lies in the self-imposed psychological glass ceiling, which influences every decision women make in their lives. What's Holding You Back? charts women's unique pathways to achievement and examines eight life-defining choices that determine their ultimate level of accomplishment.

Stephen Carter argues that American politics is unimaginable without America's religious voice. Using contemporary and historical examples, from abolitionist sermons to presidential candidates' confessions, he illustrates ways in which religion and politics do and do not mesh well and ways in which spiritual perspectives might make vital contributions to our national debates. He also warns us of the importance of setting out some sensible limits, so that religious institutions do not allow themselves to be seduced by the lure of temporal power, and offers strong examples of principled and prophetic religious activism for those who choose their God before their country.

Uncovers the elements of creative collaboration by examining six of the century's most extraordinary groups and distill their successful practices into lessons that virtually any organization can learn and commit to in order to transform its own management into a collaborative and successful group of leaders. Paper. DLC: Organizational effectiveness - Case studies.

The Senate was originally conceived by the Founding Fathers as an anti-democratic counterweight to the more volatile House of Representatives, but in the twentieth century it has often acted as an impediment to needed reforms. A hundred years ago, senators were still chosen by state legislatures, rather than by direct elections. Now, in the wake of the 2004 elections, and the consolidation of Republican control, the Senate is likely to become a crucible of power shifts that will have enormous impact on American politics in the twenty-first century. In The Most Exclusive Club, acclaimed political historian Lewis Gould puts the debates about the Senate's future into the context of its history from the Progressive Era to the war in Iraq. From charges of corruption to the occasional attempt at reform, Gould highlights the major players, issues, and debates (including the League of Nations, the McCarthy hearings, and the Iran-Contra affair) that have shaped the institution. Beyond the usual outsized figures such as Lyndon Johnson, Strom Thurmond, and Barry Goldwater, Gould also tells the story of the lesser-known Senate leaders who have played a vital role in America's upper house. Filled with colorful anecdotes, this is a long-awaited history of one of the most powerful political bodies in the world, written by a master. Gould's sweeping narrative combines deft storytelling with a fresh look at the crucible of contemporary political debate and decision-making.

Every smile is the product of physical processes common to all humans. But since the dawn of civilization, the upward movement of the muscles of the face has carried a bewildering range of meanings. Supreme enlightenment is reflected in the holy smile of the Buddha, yet the Victorians thought of open-mouthed smiling as obscene, and nineteenth-century English and American slang equated "smiling" with drinking whisky.In A Brief History of the Smile, Angus Trumble deftly combines art, poetry, history, and biology into an intriguing portrait of the many nuances of the smile. Elegantly illustrating his points with emblematic works of art, from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European paintings to Japanese woodblock prints, Trumble explores the meanings of smiling in a variety of cultures and contexts. Effortlessly mingling erudition, wit, and personal anecdote, Trumble weaves a seamless interdisciplinary tapestry, bringing his expertise as a writer, historian, and thinker to bear on the art of smiling in this warm and perceptive work.

One of the world's leading sociologists and most quoted intellectuals in America today, Amitai Etzioni has been the subject of numerous profiles in all the major media and has worked both with members of the Clinton Administration and Republican senators on social issues and policy. Now, in this important new book, he invites us to explore how a good society should operate and what values we must bring to our social interactions if we are to achieve stronger and more enduring community ties.As Etzioni has found in his years devoted to researching and studying the subject, the problem facing society today is that half the population is wary of order and morality, while the other half is suspicious of liberty, which is equated with permissiveness. In an in-depth analysis that masterfully cuts this Gordian knot, the author lays out how we can, indeed must, have both order and autonomy if we are to create a society in which communities and individuals can thrive. Recognizing that excessive morality and excessive liberty are each a dire threat to the health of society, Etzioni demonstrates how we have overreacted in recent years by assuming that there must be a tradeoff between morality and freedom. However, this need not be the case, because when order is largely based on moral commitments rather than on the law, and autonomy is regarded as a place in a social space, these two social virtues can reinforce each other.Using this framework, Etzioni studies the implications for the future of diversity in America, the implications for educating the next generation, and our relationships with other societies. He also explores the public policy implications of his observations and how governments, community groups and families can respond and grow.

No major enterprise or financial institution can avoid doing business with China -- if not directly, then through myriad hidden connections. Global businesses either use Chinese resources or sell to and in China or compete with companies that do. Because there's no avoiding China, business leaders need a framework that orders the different (and seemingly contradictory) streams of data that hint at its future. That framework is The China Strategy. In this invaluable book, Edward Tse explains the ever-changing nature of China's business environment, its increasingly complex relationship with the rest of the world, and the global business implications -- not just for our current environment but for the next decade. Change, Tse argues, is taking place in non-linearly. Some dimensions (like Chinese entrepreneurship) are expanding exponentially, while others (like the value of China's labor arbitrage) may be reaching a plateau. Eschewing easy explanations, Tse shows how to build and execute a global business strategy in light of these changes, offering practical advice amidst a sea of simple books that offer too-quick solutions. In a world in which a successful business strategy means a successful China strategy, this book is uniquely positioned to help business leaders navigate the &"country that cannot be ignored."

When psychotherapist Jeanne Safer lost her mother, she was determined to turn her loss into an opportunity for insight and growth. Through her own experience, her work with patients, and in-depth interviews, Safer shows that the death of a parent can be a catalyst for change. In this updated paperback edition, Safer includes a helpful resource section, including information on hospice care, rehabilitation programs, and more. Bold, surprising, and compassionate, Death Benefits challenges the idea that loss must simply be endured or overcome.

The debate over affirmative action has raged for over four decades, with little give on either side. Most agree that it began as noble effort to jump-start racial integration; many believe it devolved into a patently unfair system of quotas and concealment. Now, with the Supreme Court set to rule on a case that could sharply curtail the use of racial preferences in American universities, law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor offer a definitive account of what affirmative action has become, showing that while the objective is laudable, the effects have been anything but. Sander and Taylor have long admired affirmative action's original goals, but after many years of studying racial preferences, they have reached a controversial but undeniable conclusion: that preferences hurt underrepresented minorities far more than they help them. At the heart of affirmative action's failure is a simple phenomenon called mismatch. Using dramatic new data and numerous interviews with affected former students and university officials of color, the authors show how racial preferences often put students in competition with far better-prepared classmates, dooming many to fall so far behind that they can never catch up. Mismatch largely explains why, even though black applicants are more likely to enter college than whites with similar backgrounds, they are far less likely to finish; why there are so few black and Hispanic professionals with science and engineering degrees and doctorates; why black law graduates fail bar exams at four times the rate of whites; and why universities accept relatively affluent minorities over working class and poor people of all races. Sander and Taylor believe it is possible to achieve the goal of racial equality in higher education, but they argue that alternative policies -- such as full public disclosure of all preferential admission policies, a focused commitment to improving socioeconomic diversity on campuses, outreach to minority communities, and a renewed focus on K-12 schooling -- will go farther in achieving that goal than preferences, while also allowing applicants to make informed decisions. Bold, controversial, and deeply researched, Mismatch calls for a renewed examination of this most divisive of social programs -- and for reforms that will help realize the ultimate goal of racial equality.

Ask a dozen talking heads about how the economy works and what course of action we should take and you'll get thirteen different answers. But what if we possessed a handful of basic principles that could guide our decisions -- both the personal ones about what to buy and how to spend but also those national ones that have been capturing the headlines? Robert H. Frank, (a.k.a. the Economic Naturalist) has been illustrating those principles longer and more clearly than anyone else. In The Economic Naturalist's Field Guide, he reveals how they play out in Washington, on Wall Street, and in our own lives, covering everything from tax policy to financial investment to everyday decisions about saving and spending. In today's uncertain economic climate, The Economic Naturalist's Field Guide's insights have more bearing on our pocketbooks, policies, and personal happiness than ever.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Glass half-full or half-empty? Do you look on the bright side or turn towards the dark? These are easy questions for most of us to answer, because our personality types are hard-wired into our brains. As pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox has discovered, our outlook on life reflects our primal inclination to seek pleasure or avoid danger -- inclinations that, in many people, are healthily balanced. But when our "fear brain" or "pleasure brain" is too strong, the results can be disastrous, as those of us suffering from debilitating shyness, addiction, depression, or anxiety know all too well. Luckily, anyone suffering from these afflictions has reason to hope. Stunning breakthroughs in neuroscience show that our brains are more malleable than we ever imagined. In Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain, Fox describes a range of techniques -- from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy to innovative cognitive-retraining exercises -- that can actually alter our brains' circuitry, strengthening specific thought processes by exercising the neural systems that control them. The implications are enormous: lifelong pessimists can train themselves to think positively and find happiness, while pleasure-seekers inclined toward risky or destructive behavior can take control of their lives. Drawing on her own cutting-edge research, Fox shows how we can retrain our brains to brighten our lives and learn to flourish. With keen insights into how genes, life experiences and cognitive processes interleave together to make us who we are, Rainy Brain, SunnyBrain revolutionizes our basic concept of individuality. We learn that we can influence our own personalities, and that our lives are only as "sunny" or as "rainy" as we allow them to be.

More than any other place on Earth, the Galapagos Islands are the workshop of evolution. Isolated and desolate, they were largely overlooked by early explorers until Charles Darwin arrived there in the 1830's. It was Darwin who recognized that Galapagos' isolation and desolation were advantages: the paucity of species and lack of outside influences made the workings of natural selection crystal clear. Since then, every important advance and controversy in evolutionary thinking has had its reflection on the Galapagos. In every sense-intellectually, institutionally, and culturally-the history of science on these islands is a history of the way evolutionary science was done for the past 150 years. Evolution's Workshop tells the story of Darwin's explorations there; the fabulous Gilded Age expeditions, run from rich men's gigantic yachts, that featured rough-and-ready science during the day and black-tie dinners every night; the struggle for control of research on the Galapagos; the current efforts by "creation scientists" to use the Galapagos to undercut evolutionary teaching; and many other compelling stories.

Marshall McLuhan's insights are fresher and more applicable today than when he first announced them to a startled world. A whole new generation is turning to his work to understand a global village made real by the information superhighway and the overwhelming challenge of electronic transformation."Before anyone could perceive the electric form of the information revolution, McLuhan was publishing brilliant explanations of the perceptual changes being experienced by the users of mass media. He seemed futuristic to some and an enemy of print and literacy to others. He was, in reality, a deeply literate man of astonishing prescience. Tom Wolfe suggested aloud that McLuhan's work was as important culturally as that of Darwin or Freud. Agreement and scoffing ensued. Increasingly Wolfe's wonder seems justified."From the IntroductionHere in one volume, are McLuhan's key ideas, drawn from his books, articles, correspondence, and published speeches. This book is the essential archive of his constantly surprising vision.

A biography of Austrian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, from the author of "What Happens in Groups" and "Dictionary of Kleinian Thought".

When detectives come upon a murder victim, there's one thing they want to know above all else: When did the victim die? The answer can narrow a group of suspects, make or break an alibi, even assign a name to an unidentified body. But outside the fictional world of murder mysteries, time-of-death determinations have remained infamously elusive, bedeviling criminal investigators throughout history. Armed with an array of high-tech devices and tests, the world's best forensic pathologists are doing their best to shift the balance, but as Jessica Snyder Sachs demonstrates so eloquently in Corpse, this is a case in which nature might just trump technology: Plants, chemicals, and insects found near the body are turning out to be the fiercest weapons in our crime-fighting arsenal. In this highly original book, Sachs accompanies an eccentric group of entomologists, anthropologists, biochemists, and botanists -- a new kind of biological "Mod Squad" -- on some of their grisliest, most intractable cases. She also takes us into the courtroom, where "post-O.J." forensic science as a whole is coming under fire and the new multidisciplinary art of forensic ecology is struggling to establish its credibility. Corpse is the fascinating story of the 2000year search to pinpoint time of death. It is also the terrible and beautiful story of what happens to our bodies when we die.

Two legal scholars explore the security and political implications of revolutionary new technologies from drones to 3-D printers, and explain how governments must adapt to our brave new world of dispersed threats. From drone warfare in the Middle East to digital spying by the National Security Agency, the U.S. government has harnessed the power of cutting-edge technology to awesome effect. But what happens when ordinary people have the same tools at their fingertips? Advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology, and robotics mean that more people than ever before have access to potentially dangerous technologies-from drones to computer networks and biological agents-which could be used to attack states and private citizens alike. In The Future of Violence, law and security experts Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum detail the myriad possibilities, challenges, and enormous risks present in the modern world, and argue that if our national governments can no longer adequately protect us from harm, they will lose their legitimacy. Consequently, governments, companies, and citizens must rethink their security efforts to protect lives and liberty. In this brave new world where many little brothers are as menacing as any Big Brother, safeguarding our liberty and privacy may require strong domestic and international surveillance and regulatory controls. Maintaining security in this world where anyone can attack anyone requires a global perspective, with more multinational forces and greater action to protect (and protect against) weaker states who do not yet have the capability to police their own people. Drawing on political thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to the Founders and beyond, Wittes and Blum show that, despite recent protestations to the contrary, security and liberty are mutually supportive, and that we must embrace one to ensure the other. The Future of Violence is at once an introduction to our emerging world -- one in which students can print guns with 3-D printers and scientists' manipulations of viruses can be recreated and unleashed by ordinary people -- and an authoritative blueprint for how government must adapt in order to survive and protect us.

A disastrous war in Iraq, prisoner abuse, secret wiretaps -- the presidency of George W. Bush represents a crisis in American democracy. How did this happen? In Running Alone the revered political scientist and commentator James MacGregor Burns sets the imperial presidency of George W. Bush in the context of half a century of presidential politics. In his 1960 campaign, John F. Kennedy turned his back on the Democratic Party. He relied instead on his personal charisma and his family's vast wealth to win office. Once elected, he governed much as he had run: alone. He ignored the Democratic platform and instead sought counsel from a small group of hand-picked advisors, including his own brother. Kennedy fundamentally reshaped the role of President, and each of his successors has built on this model. American presidents have become increasingly isolated from the parties that brought them to power. Democratic presidents -- Johnson, Carter, and Clinton -- did tremendous damage to the Democratic Party by abandoning its core principles. Republican presidents have managed to lead more effectively in isolation, but have imperiled the nation in the process. Drawing on his own personal letters, interviews, and recollections of America's presidents, Burns charts the decline of genuine leadership in the Oval Office and offers a stirring vision of what the presidency can and should be. America deserves better leaders, and with unsurpassed knowledge of American history and politics, Burns shows us the way forward.

Lives of the Planets describes a scientific field in the midst of a revolution. Planetary science has mainly been a descriptive science, but it is becoming increasingly experimental. The space probes that went up between the 1960s and 1990s were primarily generalists-they collected massive amounts of information so that scientists could learn what questions to pursue. But recent missions have become more focused: Scientists know better what information they want and how to collect it. Even now probes are on their way to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto, with Europa-one of Jupiter's moons-on the agenda. In a sweeping look into the manifold objects inhabiting the depths of space, Lives of the Planets delves into the mythology and the knowledge humanity has built over the ages. Placing our current understanding in historical context, Richard Corfield explores the seismic shifts in planetary astronomy and probes why we must change our perspective of our place in the universe. In our era of extraordinary discovery, this is the first comprehensive survey of this new understanding and the history of how we got here.

This powerful essay collection from an award-winning author takes a critical look at America's history of racism and the battles fought through the years by Black Americans. African Americans have been at war with certain elements of the white population from the very beginning. Being Black in this hemisphere is a battle, and each day is one spent at the front. In this new collection of essays, his first since Airing Dirty Laundry (1993), Ishmael Reed explores the many forms that this homefront war has taken. His brilliant social criticism feints deftly among past and present, government and media, personal and political. From the author whose essay style has been compared to the punching power of boxers Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, this book is a series of fast, powerful jabs at America's long tradition of racism. "Reed wears the mantle of Baldwin and Ellison like a high-powered Flip Wilson in drag." --Baltimore Sun "Ishmael Reed is a genius." --Terry McMillan "The sweep of his work has both grandeur and genius, and even when you disagree with him, he has you laughing, often at yourself. His always-provocative writing has humanity, humor, power, and vision. A true original." --Jill Nelson

In the course of his numerous talks and presentations to college and grade school students, civic clubs, and nursing homes, climatologist Randy Cerveny found that people of all ages are fascinated by the "unusual" -- and he seized on that fascination to tell them about strange weather. Now, in his first book, the rest of us can learn of real, documented stories such as these: Odd occurrences of chickens losing all their feathers during tornadoes (so-called "chicken plucking"); Strange stories of finding lightning victims who have been completely stripped of all of their clothes (through a process known as "the vapor effect"); Weird stories of how past powerful hailstorms have both led to the ending of one war -- and the complete prevention of another; Bizarre uses of weather -- such as the strange contraption called a "windwagon" that literally "sailed" nearly 500 miles from Kansas to Colorado; Each chapter in Freaks of the Storm encompasses the oddities of a specific type of weather, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning, and hail. The author also divides specific conditions into a set of categories associated with the overall phenomena.

When John Lusk and Kyle Harrison graduated from Wharton in 1999, nearly all of their entrepreneurially minded classmates set their sights on conquering the dot-com world. To the almost universal disdain of their friends and professors, these two turned down tempting job offers, borrowed money from friends and family, loaded up on credit card debt, and decided to start a single-product company to manufacture and market a computer mouse shaped like the head of a golf club. They watched enviously as nearly all of their friends became millionaires in the dot-com boom, but they persevered and forged their own path. To chart their progress and to keep themselves motivated against the odds, they kept a diary that recorded the realities of their everyday life as entrepreneurs. Out of their diary entries grew The MouseDriver Chronicles, an intimate, insightful, and often funny look into the minds of two entrepreneurs and how they brought a simple idea to market. From The MouseDriver Chronicles: "School was just about over, and the wondrous combination of brick-baking heat and relentless high humidity that defines summer in south Philadelphia wasn't too far off. We couldn't afford to wait around for it. We needed to blaze to San Francisco and get rolling. Fine. No problem. Except we didn't yet have an office in San Francisco. Or a place to live. Or MouseDrivers in stock. We had all our plans and ambition, but everything real about running a business was ahead of us. Immediately ahead."

This widely praised history of the controversies that have beset American schools and universities since World War II is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the condition of American education today.

Never before have two revolutions with so much potential to save and prolong human life occurred simultaneously. The converging, synergistic power of the biochemical and digital revolutions now allows us to read every letter of life's code, create precisely targeted drugs to control it, and tailor their use to individual patients. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and countless other killers can be vanquished -- if we make full use of the tools of modern drug design and allow doctors the use of modern data gathering and analytical tools when prescribing drugs to their patients. But Washington stands in the way, clinging to outdated drug-approval protocols developed decades ago during medicine's long battle with the infectious epidemics of the past. Peter Huber, an expert in science, technology, and public policy, demonstrates why Washington's one-size-fits-all drug policies can't deal with diseases rooted in the complex molecular diversity of human bodies. Washington is ill-equipped to handle the torrents of data that now propel the advance of molecular medicine and is reluctant to embrace the statistical methods of the digital age that can. Obsolete economic policies, often rationalized as cost-saving measures, stifle innovation and suppress investment in the medicine that can provide the best cures at the lowest cost. In the 1980s, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, until the FDA loosened its throttling grip and began streamlining and accelerating approval of life-saving drugs. The Cure in the Code shows patients, doctors, investors, and policy makers what we must now do to capture the full life-saving and cost-saving potential of the revolution in molecular medicine. America has to choose. At stake for America is the power to lead the world in mastering the most free, fecund, competitive, dynamic, and intelligent natural resource on the planet -- the molecular code that spawns human life and controls our health.

In American Culture, American Tastes, Michael Kammen leads us on an entertaining, thought-provoking tour of America's changing tastes, uses of leisure, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them throughout our nation's history. Starting at the point in time that late-nineteenth-century popular culture began to evolve into post-WWII mass culture, Kammen charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the relationship between "high" and "low" art; the commercialization of organized entertainment; and the ways in which television has shaped mass culture and consumerism has reconfigured it. In doing so, he draws from sources as varied and rich as the work of esteemed cultural theorists, "The Simpsons," jigsaw puzzles, Walter Winchell's gossip columns, Whitman's poetry, Warhol's art, "Sesame Street," and the Book-of-the-Month Club. With wit and ingenuity Kammen traces the emergence of American mass culture and the contested meanings of leisure, taste, consumer culture, and social divisions that it has spawned.