An intimate look at America's child beauty pagaents. The vibrant portraits of these young contestants twist notions of sexuality and identity, exposing a new perspective on a uniquely American subculture. High Glitz is a subgenre of pagaents characterised by couture costumes,glamour make-up, elaborate hair styles and even dental veneers. The girls are spray-tanned, made-up and groomed to glossy perfection. Anderson captures the results of this time-consuming and often unnerving endeavour in exquisite detail.

“Intense….A higher caliber of entertainment.” —New York Times Elmore Leonard’s Glitz is a killer…in the best possible way. “The King Daddy of crime writers” (Seattle Times) electrifies with this unputdownable noir tale of a mama’s boy psycho killer with a vendetta against a Miami cop. A cat-and-mouse tale with claws, Glitz is thrilling, frightening, explosive, surprising, everything a great thriller is supposed to be—superior crime fiction the genre’s late greats, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, et al, would have been proud to call their own. Elmore Leonard, the creator of magnificent mayhem and truly unforgettable characters—like U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of the hit TV series Justified—is at his nail-biting, page-turning best with Glitz which Stephen King in the New York Times Book Review calls, “Smashing and satisfying.”

A fresh exploration of American feminist history told through the lens of the beauty pageant world. Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the 21st century. Yet they are thriving. America’s most enduring contest, Miss America, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Why do they persist? In Here She Is, Hilary Levey Friedman reveals the surprising ways pageants have been an empowering feminist tradition. She traces the role of pageants in many of the feminist movement’s signature achievements, including bringing women into the public sphere, helping them become leaders in business and politics, providing increased educational opportunities, and giving them a voice in the age of #MeToo. Using her unique perspective as a NOW state president, daughter to Miss America 1970, sometimes pageant judge, and scholar, Friedman explores how pageants became so deeply embedded in American life from their origins as a P.T. Barnum spectacle at the birth of the suffrage movement, through Miss Universe’s bathing beauties to the talent- and achievement-based competitions of today. She looks at how pageantry has morphed into culture everywhere from The Bachelor and RuPaul’s Drag Race to cheer and specialized contests like those for children, Indigenous women, and contestants with disabilities. Friedman also acknowledges the damaging and unrealistic expectations pageants place on women in society and discusses the controversies, including Miss America’s ableist and racist history, Trump’s ownership of the Miss Universe Organization, and the death of child pageant-winner JonBenét Ramsey. Presenting a more complex narrative than what’s been previously portrayed, Here She Is shows that as American women continue to evolve, so too will beauty pageants.

Out is a fashion, style, celebrity and opinion magazine for the modern gay man.

There are still a few things money can’t buy. Love is one, cool is another. But while love can be left to fate, cool doesn’t need to be. Though it may seem like something you’re born with, cool is actually a code, and you’re holding the key to the code in your hands. It’s all a matter of getting the right facts straight: Why is Jackson Pollock important? What handbag will get you upgraded at the airport? Who is Jacques Derrida and why does he matter? Covering everything from fashion and design to art and philosophy—all in entertaining, fact-filled bites—Nancy MacDonell has assembled the ultimate cheat sheet. In the Know is nothing less than a one-volume guide to navigating life with style and flair.

In the year 1939, discretion is a way of life for young men like Darius Krasner. However, when he gets caught making love to one of the young farm hands by the wicked Agnes McCain, and she threatens to expose him and take his dog, he’s forced to run away from the only family and home he’s ever known. In his rush to leave, Darius stumbles across one of the most wonderful, handsome young men he’s ever met. Unfortunately, there isn’t much time to get to know him because there’s a storm approaching and Darius decides to run back home to make sure his family is safe. By the time Darius reaches the farm, there’s a twister in the distance and he escapes to the house for shelter. On his way, a piece of flying debris hits him on the head and knocks him out. When he finally regains consciousness, he’s in the most unusual place called The Land of Pride. And according to The Good Fairy, Miss Glitz, his only way back home involves a pair of magical pink stilettos, a silvery gilded road, a place called The Rainbow City, and a man they call the Wonderful Wizard of Pride. It’s an LGBTQ+ fairytale filled with references to gay culture and LGBTQ+ Pride that’s long before Darius’s time, but he’s well aware there’s no shame or hate in The Land of Pride. In his quest to find The Wizard of Pride, he meets other people like himself, and one in particular who teaches him that he can fall in love and live happily ever after with a man, which is something he never thought possible.

Current philosophies of art remain sadly dominated by visions of its end and lamentations of decline. Defining the very notions of art and the aesthetic as special products of Western modernity, they suggest that postmodern challenges to traditional high culture pose a devastating danger to art's future. Richard Shusterman's new book cuts through the seductive confusions of these views by tracing the earthy roots of aesthetic experience and showing how the recent flourishing of aesthetic forms outside modernity's sacralized realm of fine art evince the persistent presence of an artistic impulse far deeper and more durable than the modernist moment. Performing Live defends the abiding power of aesthetic experience by exploring its diverse roles, methods, and meanings, especially in fields marginal to traditional aesthetics but now most vibrantly alive in today's culture and new media. Ranging from rap, techno, and country music to cinema, cyberspace and urban design, Shusterman develops his radical theory of "somaesthetics," charting the complex network of bodily arts so prominent in contemporary life and self-styling. By blending concrete aesthetic analysis with insightful social critique, Shusterman, a well-known pragmatist philosopher, provides a rich menu and critical guide for today's pursuit of the art of living.