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Popular Culture September 2020
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Rock College : An Unofficial History of Mount Eden Prison by Mark DerbyGrim, Victorian, notorious, for 150 years Mount Eden Prison held both New Zealand’s political prisoners and its most infamous criminals. Te Kooti, Rua Kenana, John A. Lee, George Wilder, Tim Shadbolt and Sandra Coney all spent time in its dank cells. Its interior has been the scene of mass riots, daring escapes and hangings.
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Will to Win : New Zealand Netball Greats on Team Culture and Leadership by Andy MartinA fascinating deep-dive into the development of the Silver Ferns' traditions, the evolution of team culture and the nuts-and-bolts of leadership at an elite sporting level. The 12 legendary players and coaches interviewed - including Lois Muir, Leigh Gibbs, Sandra Edge, Bernice Mene, Ruth Aitken and Casey Williams - candidly discuss the highs and lows of their careers, and of the Silver Ferns, the effect of the intense rivalry with Australia, coping with gut-wrenching losses, and the resilience of players and coaches. For the first time the perspective of these key actors is the subject of serious analysis, and the book is a real insight into the psychology of a women's high-performance team. As such, it provides a practical guide for developing team culture and leadership for netball coaches at all levels. It also includes comments from Farah Palmer and Noeline Taurua on women in sport and leadership, and a brief history of New Zealand netball, including the gains and losses as netball moved into a semi-professional era, and the struggles for sponsorship and for media recognition, despite it being New Zealand's most popular team sport.
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Marilyn Monroe : the private life of a public icon by Charles CasilloBased on new interviews and research, this groundbreaking biography explores the secret selves behind Marilyn Monroe's public façades. Marilyn Monroe. Her beauty still captivates. Her love life still fascinates. Her story still dominates popular culture. Now, drawing on years of research and dozens of new interviews, this biography cuts through decades of lies and secrets and introduces you to the Marilyn Monroe you always wanted to know: a living, breathing, complex woman, bewitching and maddening, brilliant yet flawed. Charles Casillo studies Monroe's life through the context of her times--in the days before feminism, and before there was adequate treatment for bipolar disorder, which Marilyn struggled with. Starting with her abusive childhood, this biography exposes how--in spite of her fractured psyche--Marilyn's extreme ambition inspired her to transform each celebrated love affair and each tragedy into another step in her journey towards immortality. Casillo fully explores the last two years of her life, including her involvement with both John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, and the mystery of her last day. Just a few of the revelations in [this book]: Despite reports of their bitter rivalry, Elizabeth Taylor secretly reached out and tried to help Marilyn during one of her darkest moments; the existence of Marilyn's semi-nude love scene with Clark Gable--long thought to be lost; a few nights before she died, Marilyn encountered Warren Beatty at a party and disclosed some of the reasons for her final despair; a meticulously detailed account of the events of her last day, revealing how a series of miscommunications and misjudgments contributed to her death.
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Wait, what? : and life's other essential questions
by James E. Ryan
The dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education presents a thought-provoking book in which he builds upon commencement address to the graduating class of 2016, offering further insights into the art of asking good questions that are highlighted by hilarious and surprising anecdotes from his personal and professional life.
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| You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Trainwrecks, & Other Mixed... by Carina ChocanoWhat it is: a witty and incisive collection exploring the limitations of pop culture portrayals of women characters.
What's inside: essays on Bewitched, the Real Housewives franchise, Sex and the City, Pretty Woman, Frozen, and many more.
Awards buzz: You Play the Girl won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. |
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Play anything : the pleasure of limits, the uses of boredom, and the secret of games by Ian Bogost Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games. Play Anything, reveals that games appeal to us not because they are fun, but because they set limitations. Soccer wouldn't be soccer if it wasn't composed of two teams of eleven players using only their feet, heads, and torsos to get a ball into a goal; Tetris wouldn't be Tetris without falling pieces in characteristic shapes. Such rules seem needless, arbitrary, and difficult. Yet it is the limitations that make games enjoyable, just like it's the hard things in life that give it meaning. Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances- like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints-as sources for meaning and joy. We can "play anything" by filling our days with attention and discipline, devotion and love for the world as it really is, beyond our desires and fears. Ranging from Internet culture to moral philosophy, ancient poetry to modern consumerism, Bogost shows us how today's chaotic world can only be tamed-and enjoyed-when we first impose boundaries on ourselves.
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Bad girls throughout history : 100 remarkable women who changed the world
by Ann Shen
"Bad Girls Throughout History features some of the fiercest women of all time - the famous, the infamous, and the ones you haven't even heard of yet. Explore the notable works, impressive feats, and striking portraits of these wild women from around the globe who challenged the status quo"
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Pop! : the world of pop art
by John Finlay
Traces the origins of pop art to 1950s London and looks at the work of the movement's prominent practitioners, including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Claes Oldenburg, as well as overlooked female artists on the scene
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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