In 1995, journalist Frank Owen began researching a story on "Special K," a new designer drug that fueled the after-midnight club scene. He went to buy and sample the drug at the internationally-notorious Limelight, a decrepit church converted into a Manhattan disco, where pulse-pounding music, gender-bending dancers, and uninhibited sideshows attracted long lines of hopeful onlookers. Clubland is the story of Owen's six-year journey behind the velvet...

"Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure...

An essential, fully illustrated guidebook to day-to-day Goth living There's more to being a Goth than throwing on some black velvet, dyeing your hair, and calling it a day (or a night). How do you dress with morbid flair when going to a job interview? Is there such a thing as growing too old to be a Goth? How do you explain to your grandma that it's not just a phase? Jillian Venters, a.k.a. "the Lady of the Manners," knows how to be strange and...

Hip: The History is the story of how American pop culture has evolved throughout the twentieth century to its current position as world cultural touchstone. How did hip become such an obsession? From sex and music to fashion and commerce, John Leland tracks the arc of ideas as they move from subterranean Bohemia to Madison Avenue and back again. Hip: The History examines how hip has helped shape -- and continues to influence -- America's view of itself,...

The Wild Boys is a futuristic tale of global warfare in which a guerrilla gang of boys dedicated to freedom battles the organized armies of repressive police states.

Steeped in research, but reading like a fast-paced novel, Stevens' story begins with pioneering psychologists discovering the effects on the mind of mescaline and psilocybin, the role of the CIA in testing mind-control drugs, the evolution of Timothy Leary from Harvard research psychologist to the most "dangerous man in America", the wrenching changes from the repressed 50's to the upheavals of the 60s, and along the way giving us portraits of some...

The author of Welcome to the New World and Bad Paper discusses America's obsession with celebrity in this 2007 investigation. Why do more people watch American Idol than the nightly news? What is it about Paris Hilton's dating life that lures us so? Why do teenage girls-when given the option of "pressing a magic button and becoming either stronger, smarter, famous, or more beautiful" -predominantly opt for fame? In this entertaining and enlightening...

Devoted fans of Japanese anime, manga, and video games us the term moé to refer to the sense of emotional attachment that they develop for their favorite characters. Characters like Suzumiya Haruhi have cult followings, and fans of Hatsune Miku, a "virtual idol", have made her one of the biggest stars in Japan today. Moé is one of the driving forces behind the success of Japanese anime and manga throughout the world.

A "rock and roll Zola": short-listed for the International Man Booker Prize, a European bestseller, and the basis of a big-budget TV series From the provocative writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes comes volume one of her acclaimed trilogy of novels, Vernon Subutex-short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize. But who is Vernon Subutex? Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Paris, where his name...