Rejuvenile

Once upon a time, boys and girls grew up and set aside childish things. Nowadays, moms and dads skateboard alongside their kids and download the latest pop-song ringtones. Captains of industry pose for the cover of BusinessWeek holding Super Soakers. The average age of video game players is twenty-nine and rising. Top chefs develop recipes for Easy-Bake Ovens. Disney World is the world’s top adult vacation destination (that’s adults without kids). And young people delay marriage and childbirth longer than ever in part to keep family obligations from interfering with their fun fun fun. Christopher Noxon has coined a word for this new breed of grown-up: rejuveniles. And as a self-confessed rejuvenile, he’s a sympathetic yet critical guide to this bright and shiny world of people who see growing up as “winding down”—exchanging a life of playful flexibility for anxious days tending lawns and mutual funds. In Rejuvenile, Noxon explores the historical roots of today’s rejuveniles (hint: all roads lead to Peter Pan), the “toyification” of practical devices (car cuteness is at an all-time high), and the new gospel of play. He talks to parents who love cartoons more than their children do, twenty-somethings who live happily with their parents, and grown-ups who evangelize on behalf of all-ages tag and Legos. And he takes on the “Harrumphing Codgers,” who see the rejuvenile as a threat to the social order. Noxon tempers stories of his and others’ rejuvenile tendencies with cautionary notes about “lost souls whose taste for childish things is creepy at best.” (Exhibit A: Michael Jackson.) On balance, though, he sees rejuveniles as optimists and capital-R Romantics, people driven by a desire “to hold on to the part of ourselves that feels the most genuinely human. We believe in play, in make believe, in learning, in naps. And in a time of deep uncertainty, we trust that this deeper, more adaptable part of ourselves is our best tool of survival.” Fresh and delightfully contrarian, Rejuvenile makes hilarious sense of this seismic culture change. It’s essential reading not only for grown-ups who refuse to “act their age,” but for those who wish they would just grow up.

Once upon a time, boys and girls grew up and set aside childish things. Nowadays, moms and dads skateboard alongside their kids and download the latest pop-song ringtones. Captains of industry pose for the cover of BusinessWeek holding Super Soakers. The average age of video game players is twenty-nine and rising. Top chefs develop recipes for Easy-Bake Ovens. Disney World is the world’s top adult vacation destination (that’s adults without kids). And young people delay marriage and childbirth longer than ever in part to keep family obligations from interfering with their fun fun fun. Christopher Noxon has coined a word for this new breed of grown-up: rejuveniles. And as a self-confessed rejuvenile, he’s a sympathetic yet critical guide to this bright and shiny world of people who see growing up as “winding down”—exchanging a life of playful flexibility for anxious days tending lawns and mutual funds. In Rejuvenile, Noxon explores the historical roots of today’s rejuveniles (hint: all roads lead to Peter Pan), the “toyification” of practical devices (car cuteness is at an all-time high), and the new gospel of play. He talks to parents who love cartoons more than their children do, twenty-somethings who live happily with their parents, and grown-ups who evangelize on behalf of all-ages tag and Legos. And he takes on the “Harrumphing Codgers,” who see the rejuvenile as a threat to the social order. Noxon tempers stories of his and others’ rejuvenile tendencies with cautionary notes about “lost souls whose taste for childish things is creepy at best.” (Exhibit A: Michael Jackson.) On balance, though, he sees rejuveniles as optimists and capital-R Romantics, people driven by a desire “to hold on to the part of ourselves that feels the most genuinely human. We believe in play, in make believe, in learning, in naps. And in a time of deep uncertainty, we trust that this deeper, more adaptable part of ourselves is our best tool of survival.” Fresh and delightfully contrarian, Rejuvenile makes hilarious sense of this seismic culture change. It’s essential reading not only for grown-ups who refuse to “act their age,” but for those who wish they would just grow up.

“Plus One is a smart and funny novel about Hollywood, but where it truly shines is in Noxon's stunning and painfully accurate depiction of the complex rhythms and growing pains of a marriage.” — Jonathan Tropper, author of This Is Where I Leave You and One Last Thing Before I Go "Well observed, honest, and laugh-out-loud funny, Plus One tells a story from the inside of show business about being on the outside."— Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men Christopher Noxon's debut novel Plus One is a comedic take on bread-winning women and caretaking men in contemporary Los Angeles. Alex Sherman-Zicklin is a mid-level marketing executive whose wife's fourteenth attempt at a TV pilot is produced, ordered to series, and awarded an Emmy. Overnight, she's sucked into a mad show-business vortex and he's tasked with managing their new high-profile Hollywood lifestyle. He falls in with a posse of Plus Ones, men who are married to women whose success, income, and public recognition far surpasses their own. What will it take for him to regain the foreground in his own life? Christopher Noxon is an accomplished journalist who has written for such publications as the New Yorker, Details, Los Angeles Magazine, Salon, and the New York Times Magazine; his first book, Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up (Crown), earned him interviews on such shows as the Colbert Report and Good Morning America and generated features in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and Talk of the Nation; Ira Glass of This American Life called the book "an eye-opener." Noxon happens to be married to a top TV writer/producer and does the school chauffeuring for their three children, so he knows whereof he speaks regarding Plus Ones. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

This illustrated history of the civil rights movement draws parallels to current events and offers inspiration for today’s young change-makers. Revisiting episodes from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, Good Trouble highlights essential lessons for modern-day activists and the civically minded. In words and vivid pen-and-watercolor illustrations, journalist Christopher Noxon dives into the real stories behind the front lines of the Montgomery bus boycott and the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins. Noxon profiles notable figures such as Rosa Parks and Bayard Rustin, all while exploring the parallels between the civil rights movement era and the present moment. This thoughtful, fresh approach is sure to inspire conversation, action, and, most importantly, hope.

This new book offers a timely and lively appraisal of the concept of communicative repertoires, resources we use to express who we are when in dialogue with others. Each chapter describes and illustrates the communicative resources humans deploy daily, but rarely think about – not only the multiple languages we use, but how we dress or gesture, how we greet each other or tell stories, the nicknames we coin, and the mass media references we make – and how these resources combine in infinitely varied performances of identity. Rymes also discusses how our repertoires shift and grow over the course of a lifetime, as well how a repertoire perspective can lead to a rethinking of cultural diversity and human interaction, from categorizing people’s differences to understanding how our repertoires can expand and overlap with other, thereby helping us to find common ground and communicate in increasingly multicultural schools, workplaces, markets, and social spheres. Rymes affirms the importance of the communicative repertoires concept with highly engaging discussions and contemporary examples from mass media, popular culture, and everyday life. The result is a fresh and exciting work that will resonate with students and scholars in sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, applied linguistics, and education.

The clearest, boldest and most systematic statement of Simon Critchley’s influential views on philosophy, ethics, and politics, Infinitely Demanding identifies a massive political disappointment at the heart of liberal democracy. Arguing that what is called for is an ethics of commitment that can inform a radical politics, Critchley considers the possibility of political subjectivity and action after Marx and Marxism, taking in the work of Kant, Levinas, Badiou and Lacan. Infinitely Demanding culminates in an argument for anarchism as an ethical practice and a remotivating means of political organization.

This oft-quoted all-time favorite of the medical community will gladden--and strengthen--the hearts of patients, doctors, and anyone entering medical study, internship, or practice. With unassailable logic and rapier wit, the sage Dr. Oscar London muses on the challenges and joys of doctoring, and imparts timeless truths, reality checks, and poignant insights gleaned from 30 years of general practice--while never taking himself (or his profession) too seriously. The classic book on the art and humor of practicing medicine, celebrating its 20th anniversary in a new gift edition with updates throughout. Previous editions have sold more than 200,000 copies. The perfect gift for med students and grads as well as new and practicing physicians. Approximately 17,000 students graduate from med school each spring in North America.

The Emmy Award–winning creator of GASLAND tells his intimate and damning, personal story of our world in crisis. With a foreword by Bill McKibben. The rules have changed. The water has changed. The climate has changed. The truth has changed. We must change. In The Truth Has Changed, Josh Fox turns the rapid-fire shocks that are remaking the very fabric of our lives—writing as a first responder, a reporter, a documentarian, and an activist—into art, literature, and at least one answer to the question of what the future holds. Our normal isn’t normal anymore. The paradigm shift that global warming represents parallels a paradigm shift in how we process truth. Both deeply affect democracy. Josh Fox has had a front row seat—a first responder after 9/11, filming the Deepwater Horizon spill close up from the air and on the ground, a member of Bernie Sanders’s delegation of the Democratic Platform Committee, risking his life to cross a bridge on Thanksgiving Day at Standing Rock, traveling the nation and the world, shooting his films, talking to people everywhere he goes. The Truth Has Changed is his first book, the companion to his new one-man show of the same title, and it’s beautiful.