Eileen is too smart for the third grade, but when she gets a chance to be skipped ahead, she fails the test. The clownish school psychologist tries to gain her trust with an offer of Oreos, but she refuses. After all, he is a stranger and might try to poison her! This is the start of the author’s love-hate relationship with the rules as they were laid out for a girl in the 1960s and as they persist in some form today. As she ascends through a physics degree at Yale that dashes her hopes for love and romance, to a post-graduate summer that leaves her “peed on, shot at, and kidnapped,” to a marriage of supposed equals in which she is expected to do all the housework, child-rearing, and bill paying and make sure the Roto-Rooter guy arrives on time, Pollack shares with poignant humor the trials of being smart and female in a world in which women are rarely appreciated for both their bodies and their minds. Maybe It’s Me is a question all women have asked themselves. But Pollack’s message will resonate with readers of all genders as a story of the very human search for connection, love, acceptance, and self-respect. The author of the groundbreaking memoir The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, Pollack proves that even in her sixties, wiser and more bruised but no less hilarious, she is still very much in the game.

In Dancing in Spite of Myself, Lawrence Grossberg--well known as a pioneering figure in cultural studies--has collected essays written over the past twenty years that have also established him as one of the leading theorists of popular culture and, specifically, of rock music. Grossberg offers an original and sophisticated view of the growing power of popular culture and its increasing inseparability from contemporary structures of economic and political power and from our everyday lives. In the course of conducting this exploration into the meaning of "popularity," he investigates the nature of fandom, the social effects of rock music and youth culture, and the possibilities for understanding the history of popular texts and practices. Describing what he calls "the postmodernity of everyday life," Grossberg offers important insights into the relation of pop music to issues of postmodernity and inton the growing power of the new cultural conservatism and its relationship to "the popular." Exploring the limits of existing theories of hegemony in cultural studies, Grossberg reveals the ways in which popular culture is being mobilized in the service of economic and political struggles. In articulating his own critical practice, Grossberg surveys and challenges some of the major assumptions of popular culture studies, including notions of domination and resistance, mainstream and marginality, and authenticity and incorporation. Dancing in Spite of Myself provides an introduction to contemporary theories of popular culture and a clear statement of relationships among theories of the nature of rock music, postmodernity, and conservative hegemony.

From the inception of the science fiction film, writers, directors, producers, and actors have understood that the genre lends itself to a level of social commentary not available in other formats. Viewers find it easier to accept explorations of such issues as domestic violence, war, xenophobia, faith, identity, racism, and other difficult topics when the protagonists exist in future times or other worlds that are only vaguely similar to our own. The 22 original essays in this collection examine how the issues in particular science fiction films--from 1930's High Treason to 1999's The Iron Giant--reflect and comment on the prevailing issues of their time. The 16 writers (including such noted contributors as Ted Okuda, Gary Don Rhodes, Bryan Senn, John Soister and Ken Weiss) provide insight on how the genre's wistful daydreaming, forthcoming wonders, and nightmarish scenarios are often grounded in the grimmer realities of the human condition. Films covered include It Came from Outer Space, Godzilla, The 27th Day, Alien and Starship Troopers, plus television's The Adventures of Superman, the Flash Gordon serials, and vintage space cartoons by Fleischer.

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon

Today's college admission applications involve writing more than just one essay. The various required paragraphs and statements demand skill and finesse. Writing Successful College Applications offers vital tips and step-by-step expert advice to help students create outstanding essays to succeed in all aspects of their college applications. This new book offers proven strategies to help students craft a successful essay or personal statement, with tips and insights to guide them through the writing process. There are over 50 sample personal statements from successful students plus bonus information on how to write strong activity and academic paragraphs as well as the "Why This School" paragraph-essential pieces of college applications that should not be overlooked. Interviews with Deans of Admission offer valuable information on what colleges are really looking for in an admission essay.

Thriving within a narrow niche in rock music is the recording on which one artist composes, plays, sings and often produces each track. As a showcase of individual effort and talent, the single-artist rock album has been adopted by artists such as Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, and Prince to produce unique additions to their discographies. To this type of album, Steve Hamelman has affixed the label AlphaSoloism. In All by Myself: Essays on the Single-Artist Rock Album, eleven scholars explore eleven different albums, both well-known and obscure, released between 1970 and 2011. Their essays illuminate aesthetic, technical, and theoretical elements that distinguish AlphaSolo recordings from conventional ones.In addition to providing historical background on studio, live, original, and cover recordings released between the 1970 to the present, the essays explore questions of intention, craft, performance, and reception. All by Myself marks the AlphaSolo subgenre’s moment of origin as a musical category and academic field. To date, no study exists on this unique genre of music-making, and All by Myself serves as a call for future investigations into this present and growing phenomenon in rock culture.

Personal essays exploring identity, work, family, and community through the prism of race and black culture.