For most of us, sitting in our living rooms looking for an excuse not to talk to each other of a Thursday night, a million million miles away from moon landings and Cold War tension and Third World famine, it is the addiction to a little flickering box in the corner that has shaped our lives since the late 1950s.

In this tribute to teleheaven, Jeffries explores the way our lives have been coloured by looking at the world through the cathode ray tube, and how the addiction to a little flickering box in the corner has shaped our lives since the late 1950s.

Reconceptualizing Mental Illness in the Viral Age: Souls in the Machine reframes the pop-culture milieu of the current state of mental illness and mental wellness in the post-COVID era. The profound psychological trauma left in the wake of the neuro-exhaustion engendered by this explosive epoch has created the perfect atmosphere, cybersphere, for another historical ‘Great Awakening’. Previously, infectious ideas infrequently led to moral and psychological upheaval. However, with mass, social, and popular media now comprising the psychosocial milieu from which emerge today’s social contagions the speed, ease, and facility with which ideas infect and commandeer the cybersphere is so profound as to be mentally devastating. Techno-psychopathologies have hyper-evolved. In an age of overwhelming distraction and irresistible technology, the one certainty amid the chaos is that the current standard of conceptualizing mental illness, through checklist diagnostics, has been outdated since the digital era began. The human mind is now fundamentally different.

Jonathan Ames, whose debut novel I Pass Like Night was enthusiastically praised by Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates, has followed up with a brilliant and comic second novel. Louis Ives, the narrator of The Extra Man, fancies himself a young gentleman fashioned after his heroes in the books of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He dresses the part -- favoring neckties, blue blazers, and sport coats. But he also has a penchant for women's clothing, a weakness that causes him to lose his job as a teacher at a Princeton day school after a bizarre incident involving a colleague's brassiere. Thrust out of Princeton, he heads to New York where he rents a cheap room in the madly discombobulated apartment of Henry Harrison, a failed but brilliant playwright who dances alone to Ethel Merman records, sneaks into Broadway shows, and performs with great style the duties of a walker -- an escort for the rich widows of the Upper East Side. The two men, separated in age by more than forty years, develop a relationship that is irascible mentor and eager apprentice, and they form a bond the depths of which neither expected. But Louis, when he's not with Henry, has fascinations that lead him to an unusual community on the fringes of the sex world of Times Square. He develops a secret life there, which he fears will be his undoing and which he must keep hidden from Henry at all costs. A hilarious yet moving story about friendship and longing, The Extra Man is an original and unforgettable novel by one of America's most talented young writers.

They don't make comedy like they used to . . . From the slapstick comedy of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, the surrealism of Spike Milligan and Monty Python, and the golden age of political incorrectness helmed by Benny Hill, to the alternative scene that burst forth following the punk movement, the hedonistic joy of Absolutely Fabulous, the lacerating scorn of Jimmy Carr, Ricky Gervais, and Jo Brand and the meteoric rise of socially conscious stand up today: comedy can be many things, and it is a cultural phenomenon has come to define Britain like few others. In Different Times, David Stubbs charts the superstars that were in on the gags, the unsung heroes hiding in the wings and the people who ended up being the butt of the joke. Comedians and their work speak to and of their time, drawing upon and moulding Britons' relationship with their national history, reflecting us as a people, and, simply, providing raucous laughs for millions of people around the world. Different Times is a joyous, witty and insightful paean to British comedy.

In 1961, 13 black and white people - the Freedom Riders - tested the ban on segregation in interstate travel by going together from Washington to New Orleans. This is the account of a young black Briton following their route in the late 1990s.

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang offers the ultimate record of modern, post WW2 American Slang. The 25,000 entries are accompanied by citations that authenticate the words as well as offer examples of usage from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, television shows, musical lyrics, and Internet user groups. Etymology, cultural context, country of origin and the date the word was first used are also provided. In terms of content, the cultural transformations since 1945 are astounding. Television, computers, drugs, music, unpopular wars, youth movements, changing racial sensitivities and attitudes towards sex and sexuality are all substantial factors that have shaped culture and language. This new edition includes over 500 new headwords collected with citations from the last five years, a period of immense change in the English language, as well as revised existing entries with new dating and citations. No term is excluded on the grounds that it might be considered offensive as a racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or any kind of slur. This dictionary contains many entries and citations that will, and should, offend. Rich, scholarly and informative, The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English is an indispensable resource for language researchers, lexicographers and translators.