A funny, smart, and gently irreverent look at the hipster phenomenon told through one man’s journey to become its consummate example I'm sorry, it's over. You just don't seem to know who you are. I can't be with somebody who doesn't know who they are . . . Brokenhearted, newly alone, and sobbing so hard there was enough snot coming out his nose to give an elephant a phlegm transplant, Matt Granfield decided the best way to find himself, to truly know who he was, was to become someone else. Already a bit of a hipster, and with his ex's words ringing in his ears, Matt embarked on a journey to try to become the hippest person on the planet—the world's Ultimate Hipster. The quest began innocuously enough—visiting trendy cafés, selling homemade jewelry at a market stall, and writing poetry—but it quickly spiraled out of control. Soon there were National Bike Polo Championships to attend, tattoo parlors to visit, bands to start, and organic vegetables to grow. But would all these hipster adventures help Matt find himself, and to truly know who he is? This hilarious and endearing tale of one man's heartache and his subsequent quest to find himself is a must read for anyone who's ever tried (and perhaps failed) to be cool.

One Percenter Revolution: Riding Free in the 21st Century finishes the trilogy started by best-selling author and editor of Easyriders magazine Dave Nichols, following a new generation of outlaw motorcyclists.

Style is predominantly an individual matter – the way people put themselves together creates a sense of individual identity – but collectively it creates a sense of common culture in a community, a city or a country. Geographically isolated from the fashion hubs of Paris and New York, Australia may not yet be synonymous with style. But as it moves away from the beach look that it is usually associated with and adopts haute couture, Australia is emerging as a shining star in the Southern Hemisphere. Though not the political capital of the country, Sydney is nevertheless Australia’s cultural capital, and the style hub and epicentre of the country’s fashion evolution. Sydney Street Style depicts the style of this less-explored fashion capital. Beautifully assembled and packed with full-colour photos of the stylish and eclectic residents of Sydney, this book will be a welcome addition to the library of any fashionista or armchair traveller.

Popular culture in the latter half of the twentieth century precipitated a decisive change in style and body image. Postwar film, television, radio shows, pulp fiction and comics placed heroic types firmly within public consciousness. This book concentrates on these heroic male types as they have evolved from the postwar era and their relationship to fashion to the present day. As well as demonstrating the role of male icons in contemporary society, this book’s originality also lies in showing the many gender slippages that these icons help to effect or expose. It is by exploring the somewhat inviolate types accorded to contemporary masculinity that we see the very fragility of a stable or rounded male identity.

Since the late 1980s, green consumerism has been hailed in the West as an efficient solution to environmental problems. However, Chinese consumers have been slow to warm up to eco-friendly products. Consumers prefer SUVs to hybrid cars, health supplements and snake oil medicines to organic foods and eco-fashion is still secluded in high-end designer studios. These choices contradict the findings of many sustainable lifestyle surveys that claim to register a rising desire for green products among the Chinese. This book examines the psycho-cultural differences that disrupt the translation of "eco-friendly" appeals to China by analyzing environmental advertising. It explores the different notions of "green", the structures of desire that underlies the advertisements, and how they are shaped by ideological, cultural, and historical differences. Rather than arguing the superiority of the American or Chinese version of green consumerism, the book interrogates the role of advertising in the global spread of Western ideologies and explores the possibilities for consumers to resist transnational corporate hegemony in the green movement. This book fills an important gap in the critical scholarship on green marketing and should be of interest to students and scholars of environment studies, green advertising and marketing, environmental communication and media studies, China studies and environmental sociology, ethics and cultural studies.

A powerful and heartbreaking novel that chronicles the epic story of two families, two sons, and two marriages Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved begins in New York in 1975, when art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship. Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years, follows the evolution of the growing involvement between his family and Bill's-an intricate constellation of attachments that includes the two men; their wives, Erica and Violet; and their children, Matthew and Mark. The families live in the same building in New York, share a house in Vermont during the summer, keep up a lively exchange of thoughts and ideas, and find themselves permanently altered by one another. Over the years, they not only enjoy love but endure loss-in one case sudden, incapacitating loss; in another, a different kind, one that is hidden and slow-growing, and which insidiously erodes the fabric of their lives. Intimate in tone and seductive in its complexity, the novel moves seamlessly from inner worlds to outer worlds, from the deeply private to the public, from physical infirmity to cultural illness. Part family novel, part psychological thriller, What I Loved is a beautifully written exploration of love, loss, and betrayal-and of a man's attempt to make sense of the world and go on living.

Music videos promote popular artists in cultural forms that circulate widely across social media networks. With the advent of YouTube in 2005 and the proliferation of handheld technologies and social networking sites, the music video has become available to millions worldwide, and continues to serve as a fertile platform for the debate of issues and themes in popular culture. This volume of essays serves as a foundational handbook for the study and interpretation of the popular music video, with the specific aim of examining the industry contexts, cultural concepts, and aesthetic materials that videos rely upon in order to be both intelligible and meaningful. Easily accessible to viewers in everyday life, music videos offer profound cultural interventions and negotiations while traversing a range of media forms. From a variety of unique perspectives, the contributors to this volume undertake discussions that open up new avenues for exploring the creative changes and developments in music video production. With chapters that address music video authorship, distribution, cultural representations, mediations, aesthetics, and discourses, this study signals a major initiative to provide a deeper understanding of the intersecting and interdisciplinary approaches that are invoked in the analysis of this popular and influential musical form.

In his new novel, John Ajvide Lindqvist does for zombies what his previous novel, Let the Right One In, did for vampires. Across Stockholm the power grid has gone crazy. In the morgue and in cemeteries, the recently deceased are waking up. One grandfather is alight with hope that his grandson will be returned, but one husband is aghast at what his adored wife has become. A horror novel that transcends its genre by showing what the return of the dead might really mean to those who loved them.

The middle-aged protagonist of Sartre's philosophical novel, set in 1938, refuses to give up his ideas of freedom, despite the approach of the war

Set in Paris on the eve of World War II, the novel draws upon Simone de Beauvoir's relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, and the affair that almost destroyed it.