Discusses what black males fear most, their longing for intimacy, the pitfalls of patriarchy, and the destruction of oppression through redemption and love.

Bad Girls examines representational practices of film and television stories beginning with post-Vietnam cinema and ending with postfeminisms and contemporary public disputes over women in the military. The book explores a diverse range of popular media texts, from the Alien saga to Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, from The Net and VR5 to Sportsnight and G.I. Jane. The research is framed as a study of intergenerational tensions in portrayals of women and public institutions - in careers, governmental service, and interactions with technology. Using iconic texts and their contexts as a primary focus, this book offers a rhetorical and cultural history of the tensions between remembering and forgetting in representations of the American feminist movement between 1979 and 2005. Looking forward, the book sets an agenda for discussion of gender issues over the next twenty-five years and articulates with authority the manner in which «transgression» itself has become a site of struggle.

On the one hand, nobody wants to be a dick. On the other hand, dicks are everywhere! They cut in line, talk behind our backs, recline into our seats, and even have the power to morph into trolls online. Their powers are impressive, but with a little foresight and thoughtfulness, we can take a stand against dickishness today. How Not to Be a Dick is packed with honest and straightforward advice, but it also includes playful illustrations showing two well-meaning (but not always well behaved) young people as they confront moments of potential dickishness in their everyday lives. Sometimes they falter, sometimes they triumph, but they always seek to find a better way. And with their help, you can too. Just see the agreement at the beginning of the book: I pledge to use the tools and techniques provided in this book to help make the world a less dickish place. "Doherty fires absurd twenty-first-century zingers that happen to be really, really, really funny."—starred, Booklist

When men speak anything is possible. Meet the reemerging multi-faceted talking male of the 21st Century, too long waiting silently off stage behind a curtain of macho myth and militant misrepresentation. Within these pages you will discover the true male as related by dozens of sincerely sensitive real men, each in his own manner expressing the fact that men can be men in ways reported all too rarely. Every man knows it takes courage to resolve warm compassionate mothered beginnings with social expectations that he develop into an impassionate, hard-edged gladiator, but real men do it each day. To generalize men as either raging bulls or dull-witted patsies of feminine guile is no longer tolerable in today’s more open arena of homogenized gender. The laughable oaf depicted in sitcoms and feminist backlash and the drooling sex-crazed dullard popularized as a male stereotype by Howard Stern, South Park, and The Man Show are but masks for the truly multi-faceted creature capable of a full spectrum of emotional and creative behaviors. Although the narrow view that genetic testosterone-driven assertiveness can turn men into brutish warriors and rapist conquerors can be supported, most men throughout recorded history have overcome their animal heritage to become romantic tender-hearted and caring lovers and fathers, poets and counselors, chefs, and couturiers. In short, in our own widely varied yet comprehensive way, we men are far more interesting and complex than advertised. No matter how you translate us, it can always be said about whatever we do or say It’s a Dick Thing!

Explores the cultural significance of the metrosexual in sports.

A “brilliant and provocative” (The New Yorker) celebration of Melville’s masterpiece—from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick’s enlightening and entertaining tour through Melville’s classic. As he did in his National Book Award–winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick brings a sailor’s eye and an adventurer’s passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey. He skillfully navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable characters—finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. An ideal match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that this classic tale waits to be discovered anew. “Gracefully written [with an] infectious enthusiasm…”—New York Times Book Review

Spin or fact? Theater or reality? A biting, original political satire that challenges audiences of any political affiliation, THE EXTREMISTS is a labyrinth of wordplay and mind games in which a television talk-show host and his guest, author of a book about terrorism, get lost in their own doublespeak ... or are they really double-agents, subversively reprogramming our sound-byte-saturated minds? "It's Samuel Beckett meets Larry King in this new play by CJ Hopkins. When an expert on terrorism appears on a T V talk show, the conversation becomes a perverse satirical rant on the increasing alienation of the individual in the modern world ... A dark satire that playfully mocks the essential absurdity of the talking-head culture ... taking on big issues like the loss of individualism and the looming apocalypse ... smartly written ..." -Atlanta Journal Constitution "The audience never tunes out while watching THE EXTREMISTS ... At first we sit back and laugh at the doublespeak as CJ Hopkins's media satire takes potshots at some easy targets. By the end, we find ourselves squirming as if we're the ones in the hot seat, mentally justifying our own choices and behaviors ... After a stealthy first half, the production confronts the viewers like it's a merciless Jon Stewart and we're a hapless Jim Cramer ... The play doesn't just target conservatives, but implies that the entire political process is a corrupt means for national and global dominance." -Creative Loafing (Atlanta) "The word 'insane' is one of the most frequently heard words on the stage ... It describes the evening very well ... THE EXTREMISTS begins as harmless media satire, a conversation in which the host and the invited expert toss empty phrases back and forth ... Hopkins builds a construct of ideas out of their rhetoric, until everything revolves around one thing: What is the truth for the good guys, and what is it for the bad guys? ... What is the reality? ... Intellectual theater in the truest sense." -Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin) "A gripping satire, which spills into sinister weirdness." -Die Tageszeitung (Berlin)

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship—in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film—and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: "the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert." As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do.

A collection of “entertaining . . . unapologetically opinionated” essays from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Commissario Guido Brunetti novels (The New York Times). Donna Leon has won legions of fans and waves of critical acclaim for her international bestselling mystery series featuring Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti—not only for her intricate plots and gripping narratives, but for her insight into the culture, politics, family-life, and history of Venice. But outside of her mystery novels, Leon has also been writing essays on Venetian life and related topics for years. In My Venice and Other Essays, the best of these essays are collected: more than fifty charming and insightful works ranging in topic from battles over garbage in the canals to the troubles with rehabbing Venetian real estate. Leon shares episodes from her life, explores her love of opera, and recounts tales from in and around her country house in the mountains. With pointed observations and humor, she also explores her family history, her former life in New Jersey, and the idea of the “Italian man.” Sure to please longtime Leon fans as well as anyone who appreciates the wit and wisdom of a master wordsmith, this volume offers “an intriguing glimpse at the strong views of an exceptionally interesting and entertaining novelist” (The Seattle Times).