Four million adults in the United States say that becoming famous is the most important goal in their lives. In any random sampling of one hundred American adults, two will have fame as their consuming desire. What motivates those who set fame as their priority, where did the desire come from, how does the pursuit of fame influence their lives, and how is it expressed? Based on the research of Orville Gilbert Brim, award-winning scholar in the field of child and human development, Look at Me! answers those questions. Look at Me! examines the desire to be famous in people of all ages, backgrounds, and social status and how succeeding or failing affects their lives and their personalities. It explores the implications of the pursuit of fame throughout a person's lifetime, covering the nature of the desire; fame, money, and power; the sources of fame; how people find a path to fame; the kinds of recognition sought; creating an audience; making fame last; and the resulting, often damaged, life of the fame-seeker. In our current age of celebrity fixation and reality television, Brim gives us a social-psychological perspective on the origins of this pervasive desire for fame and its effects on our lives. "Look at Me! is a fascinating in-depth study of society's obsession with fame. If you ever wondered what it's like to be famous, why fame comes to some and is sought by others, it's all here . . ." ---Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner "In a voice filled with wisdom and insight, daring and self-reflection, Orville Brim masterfully traces the developmental origins and trajectory of fame. Look at Me! lets us see---with new eyes---the cultural priorities and obsessions that feed our individual hunger and appetites. A rare and rewarding book." ---Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University and author of Respect and The Third Chapter Orville Gilbert Brim has had a long and distinguished career. He is the former director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, former president of the Foundation for Child Development, former president of the Russell Sage Foundation, and author and coauthor of more than a dozen books about human development, intelligence, ambition, and personality. Cover image ©iStockphoto.com/susib

In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Andy Warhol coined that prophetic line in 1968. Ironically, in today's modern society, Warhol's statement is arguably more famous than its author. Forty-plus years after he made his seemingly outrageous pronouncement, most people would probably agree that his prediction appears to have in fact, come true. It has become possible, in large part, due to the vast audiences of hundreds of channels of scripted television and unscripted reality TV shows, the new media digital revolution dominated by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, countless blogs and seemingly infinite legions of websites. Author Darrell Miller characterizes fame as that defining point in your life or career-whether you are a celebrity or not-that has the potential and capacity to actually take you to a higher level of success and to reach your personal or business goals. Throughout his career as an entertainment attorney, the author has observed many celebrity artists, athletes and other high profile people who have achieved or exceeded their financial and personal dreams. As an entertainment attorney in Los Angeles, he has worked with or studied many non-celebrities who became instantly famous as a result of being on reality TV, winning a lottery or getting a big promotion at their job. Miller's primary goal is to make people stop and give real consideration to some of these issues in an effort to motivate them to understand that once they have reached a certain level of fame and fortune, it is extremely important to spend quality time, energy and research on developing basic plans and strategies in order to sustain their success. As Mr. Miller writes, there are serious perils to blindly embracing and enjoying the fleeting fun of celebrity fame and fast money. The tabloids, newspapers, blogs and social media are littered with the ruins of shooting stars-celebrities, politicians, sports figures and executives-all have come and gone in the blink of the public's eye. The concept driving The 16th Minute of Fame is that it is vital to avoid embracing the superficial, popularized concept of fame. The core theme explored in this book will largely center on how a person can achieve and sustain fame in the entertainment industry. However, the issues of fame, fortune and success are universal, and they inevitably affect most professions. Miller uses the entertainment industry as the backdrop for much of the discussions in this book because that is the industry that he knows best. However, the information presented will also be directly applicable to most non-entertainment related athletes, professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs who are pursuing goals to advance their personal life and/or business.

The Ordinary and the Extraordinary: Unpacking the Celebrity Image -- The Labor of Ordinariness: Famous for "Being Yourself" -- Celebrity Lifestyle Labor: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary -- Lauren Conrad: Us Weekly and the Extraordinarily Ordinary Celebrity -- Conclusion: The Future of the Extraordinarily Ordinary Celebrity.

From two distinguished academics, this book includes contributions from top scholars such as Richard Dyer, and brings together key writings and new perspectives on stars and stardom in cinema across the world.

"Ambition is a dominant force in for human civilization, driving its greatest achievements and most horrific abuses. Our striving has brought art, airplanes, and antibiotics, as well as wars, genocide, and despotism. This mixed record raises obvious concerns about how we can channel ambition in the most productive directions. To that end, the book begins by exploring three central focuses of ambition: recognition, power, and money,. It argues that an excessive preoccupation with these external markers for success can be self defeating for individuals and toxic for society. Discussion then shifts to the obstacles to constructive ambition and the consequences when ambitions are skewed or blocked by inequality and identity-related characteristics such as gender, race, class, and national origin. Attention also centers on the ways that families, schools, and colleges might play a more effective role in developing positive ambition. The book concludes with an exploration of what sorts of ambitions contribute to sustained well being. Contemporary research makes clear that that, even from a purely self -interested perspective, individuals would do well to strive for some goals that transcend the self. Pursuing objectives that have intrinsic value, such as building relationships and contributing to society, generally brings greater fulfilment than chasing extrinsic rewards such as wealth, power, and fame. And society benefits when ambitions for self advancement do not crowd out efforts for the common good. The hope is to prompt readers to reconsider where their ambitions are leading and whether that destination reflects their deepest needs and highest aspirations"

Covering—the musical practice of one artist recording or performing another composer's song—has always been an attribute of popular music. In 2009, the internet database Second Hand Songs estimated that there are 40,000 songs with at least one cover version. Some of the more common variations of this "appropriationist" method of musical quotation include traditional forms such as patriotic anthems, religious hymns such as Amazing Grace, Muzak's instrumental interpretations, Christmas classics, and children's songs. Novelty and comedy collections from parodists such as Weird Al Yankovic also align in the cover category, as does the "larcenous art" of sampling, and technological variations in dance remixes and mash-ups. Film and television soundtracks and advertisers increasingly rely on versions of familiar pop tunes to assist in marketing their narratives and products. The cover phenomenon in popular culture may be viewed as a postmodern manifestation in music as artists revisit, reinterpret and re-examine a significant cross section of musical styles, periods, genres, individual records, and other artists and their catalogues of works.The cover complex, with its multiple variations, issues, contexts, and re-contextualizations comprises an important and rich popular culture text. These re-recordings represent artifacts which embody artistic, social, cultural, historical, commercial, biographical, and novel meanings. Through homage, allusion, apprenticeship, and parody, among other modes, these diverse musical quotations express, preserve, and distribute popular culture, popular music and their intersecting historical narratives. Play it Again represents the first collection of critical perspectives on the many facets of cover songs in popular music.

Social Studies - The Next Generation broadens the imagination within social studies education by highlighting current, cutting-edge scholarship incorporating critical discourses. Drawing on postmodern, poststructural, postcolonial, and feminist theories often borrowed from cultural studies, curriculum theory, critical geography, women's studies, and queer studies, the scholars contributing to this volume ask new questions about social studies, use different methodologies to study the field, and report findings with new forms of textualization. This book is dialogic and even conversational, ending with provocative responses from established social studies scholars and the editors and disturbs the given and the taken for granted in social studies research.