A hysterically strange rumination on the meaning of celebrity, hot dogs and Gwen Stefani.

As various nations wrestle with issues of immigration, integration, and pluralism, second-generation immigrants are exploring new ways to make sense of who they are and where they belong in the face of competing cultural demands. Dreaming in Canadian turns the spotlight on the role of Bollywood cinema in the production of cultural, religious, and national identities among South Asian youth in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa. By documenting the voices of these young adults and how they draw on media in the formation of uniquely hybrid identities, this book interrogates the realities that underpin media portrayals of diaspora, nationalism, and multiculturalism.

The eclectic Orange County band No Doubt was formed in 1986 by Eric Stefani and John Spence who soon recruited Eric’s younger sister Gwen as co-vocalist. With the addition of Tony Kanal on Bass, they launched a 20 year career that would fuse ska, grunge, alt. rock and shades of several other musical genres into a unique mix. The 1987 suicide of John Spence resulted in the battlefield promotion of Gwen to lead vocalist, a shift that would prove a launch pad for her future solo career and media celebrity status. Through it all No Doubt went from strength to strength and in 1995, following the departure of Eric Stefani, finally found mainstream success when their third album, Tragic Kingdom, enjoyed over 15 million sales worldwide. Since then this ska-loving band from Southern California has flourished. Despite a frequently changing line-up and the potential distraction of Sven’s parallel solo career, No Doubt have stayed true to their mission to be musical and visual innovators.

The front-page news and the trials that followed Operation Varsity Blues were just the tip of the iceberg. Poison Ivy tells the bigger, seedier story of how elite colleges create paths to admission available only to the wealthy, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Evan Mandery reveals how tacit agreements between exclusive “Ivy-plus” schools and white affluent suburbs create widespread de facto segregation. And as a college degree continues to be the surest route to upward mobility, the inequality bred in our broken higher education system is now a principal driver of skyrocketing income inequality everywhere. Mandery—a professor at a public college that serves low- and middle-income students—contrasts the lip service paid to “opportunity” by so many elite colleges and universities with schools that actually walk the walk. Weaving in shocking data and captivating interviews with students and administrators alike, Poison Ivy also synthesizes fascinating insider information on everything from how students are evaluated, unfair tax breaks, and questionable fundraising practices to suburban rituals, testing, tutoring, tuition schemes, and more. This bold, provocative indictment of America’s elite colleges shows us what’s at stake in a faulty system—and what will be possible if we muster the collective will to transform it.

New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Drawing on never-before-published original source detail, the epic story of two of the most consequential, and largely forgotten, moments in Supreme Court history. For two hundred years, the constitutionality of capital punishment had been axiomatic. But in 1962, Justice Arthur Goldberg and his clerk Alan Dershowitz dared to suggest otherwise, launching an underfunded band of civil rights attorneys on a quixotic crusade. In 1972, in a most unlikely victory, the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s death penalty law in Furman v. Georgia. Though the decision had sharply divided the justices, nearly everyone, including the justices themselves, believed Furman would mean the end of executions in America. Instead, states responded with a swift and decisive showing of support for capital punishment. As anxiety about crime rose and public approval of the Supreme Court declined, the stage was set in 1976 for Gregg v. Georgia, in which the Court dramatically reversed direction. A Wild Justice is an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the Court, the justices, and the political complexities of one of the most racially charged and morally vexing issues of our time.

A satirical joyride in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, First Contact introduces us to the hyper-intelligent Rigelians, who admire Woody Allen movies and Bundt cake, and who urge the people of Earth to mend their ways to avoid destruction of their planet. But the president of the United States, a God-fearing, science-doubting fitness fanatic, is skeptical of the evidence presented to him and sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of his young attaché, an alien scam artist, several raccoons, and a scientist who has predicted the end of the universe. Parrot sketch excluded.