Triumph Of The Yuppies

The “entertaining and insightful” first history of the Yuppie phenomenon, chronicling the roots, rise, triumph and (seeming) fall of the young urban professionals who radically altered American life between 1980 and 1987 (New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich). By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—had become a cultural punchline. But amidst the Yuppies' preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, something serious was happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later. Brimming with lively and nostalgic details (think Jane Fonda, The Sharper Image, and over-the-top fashion), Triumph of the Yuppies charts Boomers' transformation from hippy idealists in the late 1960s to careerists in the early 1980s, and details how marketers, the media, and politicians pivoted to appeal to this influential new group. Yuppie values had an undeniable impact on the worlds of fashion, food, and fitness, as well as affecting the broader culture—from gentrification and an obsession with career success to an indulgent materialism. Most significantly, the me‑first mindset typical of Yuppieness helped create the largest income inequality in a century. Tom McGrath’s masterful cultural history reveals how Yuppies reshaped American society. It is a portrait of America just as it was beginning to come apart—and the origin story of the fractured country we live in today.

An analysis of American politics from the presidency of Johnson to the present is arranged in such themes as campaigns, the media, and wars, in a volume that draws on the author's work as a winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence to illuminate particular events in modern history. Reprint.

In the midst of the Vietnam war, sit-ins, counter-culture, and campus rallies, the 1966 graduating class of a South New Jersey coast high school came of age on the margins of political and cultural upheaval. Rather than presenting the stereotype of Sixties youth scene, this study reveals this group to be conservative teenagers shaped by mainstream loyalties to God, Country, and Family. These "Coasters"—white, middle-class, suburban baby-boomers—were spectators of rather than participants in the decade's activism. Yet, even as they were missed by the powerful currents of the times, their lives were touched by those currents more than is suggested by the stereotype of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority." Paul Lyons interviewed 47 members of the class of 1966, recording recollections of their school days, politics, work, family life, community, and expectations for future careers and family. Each chapter is complemented by personal profiles of individual "Coasters." Removed from both the urban experience and that of the elite suburbs, these teenagers disprove popular cultural assumptions that all baby boomers, with few exceptions, went to Woodstock, protested against the Vietnam War, engaged in drug experimentation, or joined the hippie counter-culture. Instead, Lyons' study explores how their then relative ambivalence to political and cultural rebellion did not preclude many "Coasters" from indirectly incorporating over the years certain core Sixties values on issues of race, gender, mobility, and patriotism.

02 Dissent was founded in 1954 by intellectuals angered by the rightward drift of the country but uneasy with the dogmatism they saw on the American left, and it has provoked debates about political ideas and about American and global issues ever since. This provocative book—a collection of articles published in Dissent over the past fifty years—presents essays from each decade of Dissent's life that reveal how the magazine viewed that era, along with a new foreword to each section written by a contemporary Dissenter that provides perspective on the period.Articles include:* Norman Mailer on “Surplus Values and Mass Media”* Irving Howe on “New Styles in Leftism”* Theodore Draper on “Ghosts of Vietnam”* Sean Wilentz on “Bankruptcy and Zeal”* Michael Kazin on “A Patriotic Left”* Dwight MacDonald on “America, America”* and much more“I find these essays impressive not only in their quality but also in their surprising relevance to political life today.”—Robert Dahl, author of How Democratic Is the American Constitution? Dissent was founded in 1954 by intellectuals angered by the rightward drift of the country but uneasy with the dogmatism they saw on the American left, and it has provoked debates about political ideas and about American and global issues ever since. This provocative book—a collection of articles published in Dissent over the past fifty years—presents essays from each decade of Dissent's life that reveal how the magazine viewed that era, along with a new foreword to each section written by a contemporary Dissenter that provides perspective on the period.Articles include:* Norman Mailer on “Surplus Values and Mass Media”* Irving Howe on “New Styles in Leftism”* Theodore Draper on “Ghosts of Vietnam”* Sean Wilentz on “Bankruptcy and Zeal”* Michael Kazin on “A Patriotic Left”* Dwight MacDonald on “America, America”* and much more“I find these essays impressive not only in their quality but also in their surprising relevance to political life today.”—Robert Dahl, author of How Democratic Is the American Constitution?

A provocative, timely, and deeply-researched history of gun culture and how it reflects race and power in the United States

Learning marine biology from a textbook is one thing. But take readers to the bottom of the sea in a submarine to discover living fossils or to coral reefs to observe a day in the life of an octopus, and the sea and its splendors come into focus, in brilliant colors and with immediacy. In Sensuous Seas, Eugene Kaplan offers readers an irresistibly irreverent voyage to the world of sea creatures, with a look at their habitats, their beauty and, yes, even their sex lives. A marine biologist who has built fish farms in Africa and established a marine laboratory in Jamaica, Kaplan takes us to oceans across the world to experience the lives of their inhabitants, from the horribly grotesque to the exquisitely beautiful. In chapters with titles such as "Fiddler on the Root" (reproductive rituals of fiddler crabs) and "Size Does Count" (why barnacles have the largest penis, comparatively, in the animal kingdom), Kaplan ventures inside coral reefs to study mating parrotfish; dives 740 feet in a submarine to find living fossils; explains what results from swallowing a piece of living octopus tentacle; and describes a shark attack on a friend. The book is a sensuous blend of sparkling prose and 150 beautiful illustrations that clarify the science. Each chapter opens with an exciting personal anecdote that leads into the scientific exploration of a distinct inhabitant of the sea world--allowing the reader to experience firsthand the incredible complexity of sea life. A one-of-a-kind memoir that unfolds in remarkable reaches of ocean few of us can ever visit for ourselves, Sensuous Seas brings the underwater world back to living room and classroom alike. Readers will be surprised at how much marine biology they have learned while being amused.