Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in their Homes
Kyle Cassidy
Cassidy attempts to give an even-handed overview of the average gun owner in their home. Accompanying the gun owners are quick bios on the types of guns, professions of the owners and their pets and children’s names. From utili-kilted Rambo wannabes to teen girls with their shotguns, armed America is here. Check out their guns, reasoning, politics, cats and tchotchke collections.
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You
Dr. Sam Gosling
Gosling presents a quick and dirty overview of his snooping research. Learn how to tell how introverted, neurotic, conscientious, agreeable or narcissistic your friends, family and coworkers are. What is a messy desk the sign of? What message is a coworker sending when their family photos face their guests as opposed to them? What can a top 10 song list tell about a person? What you can tell about someone by their bookshelves. As Gosling points out, many of these telltale signs seem obvious… but you need to have him point them out to notice them.
Call of the Mall
Paco Underhill
What is wrong with the mall? Well, everything, according to consumer behavior specialist Underhill. And, he adds, the rise and fall of the mall has been almost entirely avoidable. Going through a standard mall visit, Underhill points out the numerous ways malls fail to satisfy the consumer. From the architecturally blank outer walls, lack of coat and package check, unreadable maps, terrible merchandise displays and bathrooms hidden down murky hallways, the average mall is designed almost on purpose to irritate the consumer. Why aren’t clothes shown on angled racks so you can see everything? Why isn’t there anything to eat that isn’t...
Snobbery: The American Version
Joseph Epstein
Snobbery often entails taking a petty, superficial, or irrelevant distinction and, so to say, running with it.
Epstein’s study of snobbery should be considered a guilty pleasure, replete with snarky little personal stories. His main premise is snobbery is a strangely unique phenomenon created by Americans. Our democracy gives us countless outlets to compare and judge our fellow humans. In past societies there were certainly social stratas filled with their nouveaux and bourgeoisie. But the changes of a parlor maid becoming a Duchess or miller an academic were slim to nil. There were less areas to be snobby about since there wasn’t much social...
The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them)
Peter Sagal
Host of NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, Sagal’s voice is all that a good liberal midwesterner should be. Whether discussing attending a swinger’s party, gambling, eating a 24-course gourmet meal or studying pornography, Sagal sounds wry, amused and slightly embarrassed, with strains of the midwest “well, to each their own… I guess” attitude. Interspersed with witty, snarky commentary Sagal and his wife daintily dip a toe into naughtiness of all types. While they rarely join in he naughtiness, they do study it with rapt attention – mostly. “Beth and I looked for some other way to pass the time There was ...
Money Changes Everything
Edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Shappell
Offill and Shappell edited another book I started a few years ago, The Friend Who Got Away, a collection of stories by women who had “broken up” with a best friend and which I found too depressing to finish. Money Changes Everything, while definitely having its depressing moments, also has some wildly good ones too. Twenty-two writers talk about their material wealth (or lack thereof) and how they ended up there. From trust-funds to schooling paid with porn-writing to “the money train” arriving, all sides of the stickiest of subjects are represented here. An engrossing look at one of last still-taboo...