Freak Out The Squares

Russell Senior is a man too smart to have ever been a pop star. And Pulp were too odd a band ever to have become so big. But we can only be grateful that he was, and they did – and that Freak Out the Squares tells the story in Russell’s inimitable, entertaining and fascinating way. The first account of life inside Pulp, Freak Out the Squares recounts the band’s origins in Sheffield to their glory days at the height of Britpop, revealing the story behind the anthem of a generation, “Common People”. The book gives a glimpse into the world of Britpop luminaries such as Blur, Elastica and Suede and charts Pulp’s 2011 reunion tour, which culminated in a triumphant Glastonbury performance. Freak Out the Squares is Russell’s exceptionally witty, unusual and enlightening account of the heady time of being a key member of Britpop’s best-loved and most enduringly relevant band.

With "virtuosic vulnerability" (The Atlantic), the iconic bassist and Red Hot Chili peppers co-founder pens a love letter to a youth spent wild in Los Angeles in his raw and riveting coming-of-age memoir. In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and occasional flights of fantasy, Flea deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician, and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and 80s come to gritty, glorious life, including the potential for fun, danger, mayhem, or inspiration that lurked around every corner. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists, and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness, and love. This left him open to the life-changing moment when he and his best friends, soul brothers, and partners-in-mischief came up with the idea to start their own band, which became the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Acid for the Children is the debut of a stunning new literary voice, whose prose is as witty, entertaining, and wildly unpredictable as the author himself. It's a tenderly evocative coming-of-age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity from one of the most renowned musicians of our time. New York Times BestsellerA #1 LA Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerOne of NPR's "Favorite Books of 2019"

Erwin Rowell displays unusual genius. His path leads him to believe that the impossible may be possible after all. Come on Erwins journey in The Rule of Squares and find what can happen when the curiously motivated follow their dreams.

Starting with 1964's Goldfinger, every James Bond film has followed the same ritual, and so has its audience: after an exciting action sequence the screen goes black and the viewer spends three long minutes absorbing abstract opening credits and a song that sounds like it wants to return to 1964. In The James Bond Songs authors Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold use the genre to trace not only a changing cultural landscape, but also evolving conceptions of what a pop song is. They argue that the story of the Bond song is the story of the pop song more generally, and perhaps even the story of its end. Each chapter discusses a particular segment of the Bond canon and contextualizes it in its era's music and culture. But the book also asks how Bond and his music reflected and influenced our feelings about such topics as masculinity, race, money, and aging. Through these individual pieces the book presents the Bond song as the perfect anthem of late capitalism. The Bond songs want to talk about the fulfillment that comes from fast cars, shaken Martinis and mindless sex, but their unstable speakers, subjects, and addressees actually undercut the logic of the lifestyle James Bond is sworn to defend. The book is an invitation to think critically about pop music, about genre, and about the political aspects of popular culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

In 1976, a fledgling magazine held forth the the idea that comics could be art. In 2016, comics intended for an adult readership are reviewed favorably in the New York Times, enjoy panels devoted to them at Book Expo America, and sell in bookstores comparable to prose efforts of similar weight and intent. We Told You So: Comics as Art is an oral history about Fantagraphics Books’ key role in helping build and shape an art movement around a discredited, ignored and fading expression of Americana. It includes appearances by Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Harlan Ellison, Stan Lee, Daniel Clowes, Frank Miller, and more.

For fifty years Tessa Yates Clatterbuck is surrounded by death, but if her silent wish would have come true the day her husband died, she would have never gotten to experience a long lost dream, much less an unlikely love affair. Beau Patten is the witness to the heart wrenching scene of a woman losing her husband. His career as a country music star is taxing him, along with his nasty divorce, thus driving him to be careless and take up with younger women. It is only when Tessa and Bea’s worlds collide, literally, that the unfolding drama and suspense will be unraveled between a southern lady and a not so southern gentleman. With a fascinating cast of characters, Fingernail Moon will pull at every human emotion.

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she's ever worked for is on the line. Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California's dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

Has any president been more unjustly vilified than Donald Trump? Yes, he’s brash. Yes, he has an ego. Yes, his ad-libbing sometimes gets him into trouble. But the fact is Donald Trump is the most effective conservative president in decades. That’s why the media hate him. That’s why they lie about him. And there’s something else. When they lie about him, they’re really lying about you, because to the media, anyone who supports Donald Trump is deplorable. But here, at last, is the counterpunch we’ve been waiting for. Columnist and bestselling author Kurt Schlichter provides a fact-filled—and frequently hilarious—takedown of some of the media’s most pernicious lies about the president. In The 21 Biggest Lies about Donald Trump (and you!), you’ll learn: Why liberals cry “racism” at any argument they don’t like—when the real racists of American history have all been the Democrats How Trump “the warmonger” has actually given America a more realistic—and safer—foreign policy than any of his immediate predecessors Why the media refuses to understand the difference between legal and illegal immigrants (here’s a clue: Trump’s mother was a legal immigrant—and so is his wife) Why Trump and his supporters are infinitely more intelligent than a media that have gotten every major story of the Trump presidency wrong Trump’s great virtues (that too many Republicans lack): realism, courage, common sense, and an unapologetic determination to win conservative victories Tired of media and leftwing lies about Donald Trump? Then you’ll love this book.