Estante de Recomendaciones: Recomendaciones

Tamir Bar-On utilizes soccer to provide insights into worldwide politics, religion, ethics, marketing, business, leadership, philosophy, and the arts.

En apariencia una canción es algo muy simple. Una combinación de letra y música que produce y evoca una serie de sensaciones e imágenes mentales en la persona que la escucha. Algo que nos agrada, nos disgusta o simplemente provoca indiferencia en nosotros. Sin embargo, tras este manto de sencillez se esconde todo un universo por descubrir repleto de anécdotas, significados ocultos, profundas reflexiones filosóficas, dobles sentidos y guiños al oyente tanto o más importantes e interesantes que la canción que los contiene.

En este libro el lector podrá adentrarse en esta apasionante excursión por las entrañas de la música popular contemporánea, enrolándose en una exploración intensa de la psique humana. Todo el que se acerque a esta obra será capaz de asomarse a ese intrincado paraje multicolor con el que no dejará de sorprenderse y, a buen seguro, cambiará en su forma de escuchar e interpretar temas de los que muy probablemente jamás se había llegado a plantear ciertos aspectos.

Addresses the band's resounding impact on how we think about gender, popular culture, and the formal and poetic qualities of music.

Although investigations of Hispanic popular culture were approached for decades as part of folklore studies, in recent years scholarly explorations--of lucha libre, telenovelas, comic strips, comedy, baseball, the novela rosa and the detective novel, sci-fi, even advertising--have multiplied. What has been lacking is an overarching canvas that offers context for these studies, focusing on the crucial, framing questions: What is Hispanic pop culture? How does it change over time and from region to region? What is the relationship between highbrow and popular culture in the Hispanic world? Does it make sense to approach the whole Hispanic world as homogenized when understanding Hispanic popular culture? What are the differences between nations, classes, ethnic groups, religious communities, and so on? And what distinguishes Hispanic popular culture in the United States? In ¡Muy Pop!,Ilan Stavans and Frederick Luis Aldama carry on a sustained, free-flowing, book-length conversation about these questions and more, concentrating on a wide range of pop manifestations and analyzing them at length. In addition to making Hispanic popular culture visible to the first-time reader, ¡Muy Pop!sheds new light on the making and consuming of Hispanic pop culture for academics, specialists, and mainstream critics.

Stand Up addresses the growing need for women to enter the narrative of how American culture is presently being shaped and leave their mark on a world screaming for relevance, excellence, and truth. Divisiveness and double standards have overrun our culture. If everyone stands up and models decency, courage, and good manners, communities and families will flourish. Stand Up is a battle cry for women to take a posture of readiness and action, determine their purpose, plan for successes, and overcome the loneliness that threatens this silent majority. René Banglesdorf, an entrepreneur, encourages women to exemplify good behavior in the areas of temptation, forgiveness, and hypocrisy--three areas that threaten especially Christian women's credibility in a searching world. Stand Up explains how women who want to leave a legacy can repurpose their fears, recover from failures, get what they want out of life, and press on to fulfill their destiny. The unique perspective from a female executive in a 99-percent-male-dominated role--who spent many of her career-development years as a stay-at-home mom--compels women of all ages to believe the best can be ahead of them if they indeed stand up, stand out, and stand firm in their beliefs.

A history of the Hollywood film industry as a modern system of labor, this book reveals an important untold story of an influential twentieth-century workplace. Ronny Regev argues that the Hollywood studio system institutionalized creative labor by systemizing and standardizing the work of actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers, meshing artistic sensibilities with the efficiency-minded rationale of industrial capitalism. The employees of the studios emerged as a new class: they were wage laborers with enormous salaries, artists subjected to budgets and supervision, stars bound by contracts. As such, these workers--people like Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, and Anita Loos--were the outliers in the American workforce, an extraordinary working class. Through extensive use of oral histories, personal correspondence, studio archives, and the papers of leading Hollywood luminaries as well as their less-known contemporaries, Regev demonstrates that, as part of their contribution to popular culture, Hollywood studios such as Paramount, Warner Bros., and MGM cultivated a new form of labor, one that made work seem like fantasy.

A volume of essays exploring some of the best genre fiction of the last 40 years.

'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.' Addressed to Frodo as he prepared to travel from Lothlórien to Mordor to destroy the One Ring, the prophetic words of Galadriel in the film The Fellowship of the Ring are just as pertinent to J R R Tolkien's own fiction. For decades, hobbits, elves, dwarves, dragons and the other fantastical creatures of Middle-earth have captured the imaginations of a fiercely loyal tribe of readers, all enhanced by the immense success of Peter Jackson's films: first The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and now his new The Hobbit. But for all Tolkien's global fame and the familiarity of modern culture with Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and Sam, the sources of the great mythmaker's own mythmaking have been neglected. Mark Atherton here explores the chief influences on The Hobbit: Tolkien's boyhood in the West Midlands; the landscapes and seascapes which shaped hismythologies; his formative experiences in the First World War; his studies in Norse mythology and medieval English literature; his love of language and dialect, and proverb and saying; his literary friendships, especially with C S Lewis and the Oxford-based Inklings; and the relevance of his themes, especially ecological themes, to the present-day.There and Back Again offers a unique guide to the varied inspirations behind Tolkien's life and work, and sheds new light on how a legend is born. Essential reading for all those who love and admire the rich and complex topographies of Middle-earth, the book will also have great appeal to students of literature, history and myth. It is the first to show in depth from where Tolkien drew creativity, and how these myriad resources inspired him to craft the mostremarkable fantasy novels ever written, densely packed with fauna from another world.

Interdisciplinary in approach, Tolkien the Medievalist provides a fresh perspective on J. R. R. Tolkien's Medievalism. In fifteen essays, eminent scholars and new voices explore how Professor Tolkien responded to a modern age of crisis - historical, academic and personal - by adapting his scholarship on medieval literature to his own personal voice. The four sections reveal the author influenced by his profession, religious faith and important issues of the time; by his relationships with other medievalists; by the medieval sources that he read and taught, and by his own medieval mythologizing.

Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review presents the growing body of critical commentary and scholarship on both J. R. R. Tolkien's voluminous fiction and his academic work in literary and linguistic fields.

One wonders whether there really is a need for another volume of essays on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Clearly there is. Especially when the volume takes new directions, employs new approaches, focuses on different texts, or reviews and then challenges received wisdom. This volume intends to do all that. The entries on sources and analogues in The Lord of the Rings, a favorite topic, are still able to take new directions. The analyses of Tolkien's literary art, less common in Tolkien criticism, focus on character-especially that of Tom Bombadil-in which two different conclusions are reached. But characterization is also seen in the light of different literary techniques, motifs, and symbols. A unique contribution examines the place of linguistics in Tolkien's literary art, employing Gricean concepts in an analysis of The Lay of the Children of Hurin. And a quite timely essay presents a new interpretation of Tolkien's attitude toward the environment, especially in the character of Tom Bombadil. In sum, this volume covers new ground, and treads some well-worn paths; but here the well-worn path takes a new turn, taking not only scholars but general readers further into the complex and provocative world of Middle-earth, and beyond.

La narrativa de mundos épicos imaginarios es un fenómeno paradigmático de la cultura contemporánea, un género tremendamente productivo dentro y fuera del marco de la literatura al que apenas se han dedicado estudios especializados en al ámbito de la teoría de la literatura o la literatura comparada, pese a su enorme impacto y relevancia, y a su potencial generador de nuevos espacios expresivos como los videojuegos narrativos o los juegos de rol. Algunos de los autores más importantes, como Erik R. Eddisson, son prácticamente desconocidos. Otros, como J. R. R. Tolkien o G. R. R. Martin, a pesar de su enorme popularidad, son considerados exclusivamente como destacados fenómenos de la cultura de masas e ignorados desde el punto de vista crítico y teórico. El presente libro pretende subsanar este vacío ofreciendo un análisis riguroso y sistemático del género, describiéndolo a partir de sus características y rasgos elementales y explicando sus relaciones intertextuales con la tradición épica y la literatura fantástica. Devolviendo el género al lugar que le corresponde dentro de los estudios literarios como uno de los fenómenos más importantes de la modernidad.

Simulating Good and Evil shows that the moral panic surrounding violent videogames is deeply misguided, and often politically motivated, but that games are nevertheless morally important. Simulated actions are morally defensible because they take place outside the real world and do not inflict real harms. Decades of research purporting to show that videogames are immoral has failed to produce convincing evidence of this. However, games are morally important because they simulate decisions that would have moral weight if they were set in the real world. Videogames should be seen as spaces in which players may experiment with moral reasoning strategies without taking any actions that would themselves be subject to moral evaluation. Some videogame content may be upsetting or offensive, but mere offense does not necessarily indicate a moral problem. Upsetting content is best understood by applying existing theories for evaluating political ideologies and offensive speech.  

Many Kentuckians and fans of intercollegiate athletics are familiar with the name Jim Host. As founder and CEO of Host Communications, he was the pioneer in college sports marketing. Host's prevailing innovation in collegiate sports was the concept of bundled licensing, which encouraged corporate partners to become official sponsors of athletic programs across media formats. Host and his team developed the NCAA Radio Network and introduced what became known as the NCAA Corporate Partner Program, employing companies such as Gillette, Valvoline, Coca-Cola, and Pizza Hut to promote university athletic programs and the NCAA at large. Host was involved with the construction of Rupp Arena, the Kentucky Horse Park, and the KFC Yum! Center. But few know his full story. Changing the Game is the first complete account of Host's professional life, detailing his achievements in sports radio, management, and broadcasting; his time in minor league baseball, real estate, and the insurance business; and his foray into Kentucky politics, including his appointments under governors Louie B. Nunn and Ernie Fletcher. This memoir provides a behind-the-scenes look at the growth of big-time athletics and offers solutions for current challenges facing college sports.

After debuting in 1938, Superman soon became an American icon. But why has he maintained his iconic status for nearly 80 years? And how can he still be an American icon when the country itself has undergone so much change? Superman: Persistence of an American Icon examines the many iterations of the character in comic books, comic strips, radio series, movie serials, feature films, television shows, animation, toys, and collectibles over the past eight decades. Demonstrating how Superman's iconic popularity cannot be attributed to any single creator or text, comics expert Ian Gordon embarks on a deeper consideration of cultural mythmaking as a collective and dynamic process. He also outlines the often contentious relationships between the various parties who have contributed to the Superman mythos, including corporate executives, comics writers, artists, nostalgic commentators, and collectors.      Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of Superman's appearances in comics and other media, Gordon also digs into comics archives to reveal the prominent role that fans have played in remembering, interpreting, and reimagining Superman's iconography. Gordon considers how comics, film, and TV producers have taken advantage of fan engagement and nostalgia when selling Superman products. Investigating a character who is equally an icon of American culture, fan culture, and consumer culture, Superman thus offers a provocative analysis of mythmaking in the modern era.  

Marvel Studios has provided some of the biggest worldwide cinematic hits of the last eight years, from Iron Man (2008) to the record-breaking The Avengers (2012), and beyond. Having announced plans to extend its production of connected texts in cinema, network and online television until at least 2028, the new aesthetic patterns brought about by Marvel's 'shared' media universe demand analysis and understanding. The Marvel Studios Phenomenon evaluates the studio's identity, as well as its status within the structures of parent Disney. In a new set of readings of key texts such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the thematics of superhero fiction and the role of fandom are considered. The authors identify milestones from Marvel's complex and controversial business history, allowing us to appraise its industrial status: from a comic publisher keen to exploit its intellectual property, to an independent producer, to successful subsidiary of a vast entertainment empire.

Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and helps to imagine different ways of being in the world. Working from the premise that the theoretical mode of the uncanny, with its interest in what is simultaneously known and unknown, ordinary and extraordinary, opens new ways to think about categories and markers of identity, Uncanny Bodies explores how continuums of ability in superhero comics can reflect, resist, or reevaluate broader cultural conceptions about disability. The chapters focus on lesser-known characters--such as Echo, Omega the Unknown, and the Silver Scorpion--as well as the famous Barbara Gordon and the protagonist of the acclaimed series Hawkeye, whose superheroic uncanniness provides a counterpoint to constructs of normalcy. Several essays explore how superhero comics can provide a vocabulary and discourse for conceptualizing disability more broadly. Thoughtful and challenging, this eye-opening examination of superhero comics breaks new ground in disability studies and scholarship in popular culture. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Sarah Bowden, Charlie Christie, Sarah Gibbons, Andrew Godfrey-Meers, Marit Hanson, Charles Hatfield, Naja Later, Lauren O'Connor, Daniel J. O'Rourke, Daniel Pinti, Lauranne Poharec, and Deleasa Randall-Griffiths.

Sisters Kim and Kathy Hodges are born sixteen months apart in a middle-class existence parented by Linda and David Hodges of Houston, Texas. The happy couple welcomes their “lucky daughter” Kim, who is physically and mentally advanced. Following several miscarriages, Linda delivers “unlucky” Kathy at twenty-nine weeks, ensuring a life of cognitive and physical disabilities. Kathy enters public school as a special education student, while Kim is recognized as gifted.Both sisters face life and death decisions as Houston is caught in the rip current of Hurricane Harvey. Kim learns the capricious nature of luck, while Kathy continues to make her own luck, surviving Hurricane Harvey, as she has survived all undertows with the ethereal courage of the resolute.Sisters of the Undertow examines the connotations of lucky and unlucky, the complexities of sibling rivalry, and the hand fate delivers without reason.

The fantastic has been particularly prolific in Hispanic countries during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, largely due to the legacy of short-story writers as well as the Latin-American boom that presented alternatives to the model of literary realism. While these writers'works have done much to establish the Hispanic fantastic in the international literary canon, women authors from Spain and Latin America are not always acknowledged, and their work is less well known to readers. The aim of this critical anthology is to render Hispanic female writers of the fantastic visible, to publish a representative selection of their work, and to make it accessible to English-speaking readers. Five short stories are presented by five key authors. They attest to the richness and diversity of fantastic fiction in the Spanish language, and extend from the early twentieth to the twenty-first century, covering a range of nationalities, cultural references and language specificities from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Argentina.

Lesbian relationships rarely survive the death of a parent, Ali Liebegott's therapist tells her in the pages of this novel-in-verse. Despite Ali's defiance, the prediction comes true. In Summer of Dead Birds, she explores the toll of mental illness and grief on romantic partnerships - fragile things anyway - through a lesbian lens.In this chronicle of mourning and survival, Ali Liebegott wallows in loneliness and over-assigns meaning to everyday circumstance, clinging to an aging dog and obsessing over dead birds. But these unpretentious vignettes are laced with compassion, as she learns to balance the sting of death with the tender strangeness of life.

Superhero adventure comics have a long history of commenting upon American public opinion and government policy, and the surge in the popularity of comics since the events of September 11, 2001, ensures their continued relevance. This critical text examines the seventy-year history of comic book superheroes on film and in comic books and their reflections of the politics of their time. Superheroes addressed include Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Superman, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and topics covered include American wars, conflicts, and public policy. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Eduardo Ovalle, curador y profesor de artes, recibe en su apartamento un misterioso guacal con una máquina derruida, cruel en su dimensión estética. A partir de allí su vida se convertirá en un delirio, porque un mundo conflictivo que estimó superado, hecho escombros y ceniza, ahora emerge como pesadilla en su presente inestable. Una madre posesiva y severa; un exótico museo de barrio; una desaparición enigmática, y una relación paranoica con la literatura son algunos de los elementos que nutren la vida compleja de un individuo acorralado por su propia sensibilidad y expuesto a los intereses de unas fuerzas enemigas veladas. ¿Qué busca encubrir Ovalle de su relación con la madre? ¿Qué sucedió realmente al interior del museo una noche de luna? ¿Por qué una máquina, un objeto intervenido, resulta para el curador un germen de la perversión? ¿Podrá serenar al fin su conciencia de habitante marginal? Para aventurar respuestas a estos interrogantes, se sugiere visitar, al caer la tarde, el museo de la calle Donceles.

For the first time in Britain, an all-black cast present Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. Denmark, a Black Empire of modern England, where an intelligent young student discovers the world he once knew has crumbled. Implored to defend what is left of his father's decaying legacy, Hamlet now faces the greatest moral challenge - to kill or not to kill.

Hay pocos libros tan conocidos en el mundo como Las mil y una noches, una recopilación de cuentos y leyendas del Oriente Medio medieval narrados por la bella Scheherezade con el fin de entretener al sultán Shahryar y evitar así que mandara decapitarla. La influencia de esta obra en la cultura occidental ha sido constante, con innumerables versiones en novela, teatro, cine y, ahora, manga. Poco después, el rey ordenó poner por escrito todas las historias que su entonces esposa le había contado (…). Y tales son las historias espléndidas llamadas Las mil y una noches, con lo que en ellas hay de cosas extraordinarias, enseñanzas, maravillas, prodigios, asombros y belleza.

Pip is a young orphan who wants nothing more than to become a gentleman and be worthy of the beautiful but snobby Estella. So when he receives a large fortune from an unknown benefactor to undergo training, he's ecstatic and convinced it must be from Miss Havisham, Estella's strange guardian. However, the culture of wealth breeds changes in Pip that his loyal friends find insulting. It may take the unsavory criminal from Pip's childhood to help him get his priorities in order and reset his expectations. Taken from the 1867 copyright edition, this is an unabridged version of English author Charles Dickens's classic tragic comedy.

"Hey, doctor, I want to tell you something!" For 54 years, kids have shared with pediatrician Arnold Tanis stories, questions, and bold pronouncements about their childhood worlds. In between treating them, the good doctor wrote many of them down. Three generations of patients offer memorable and downright funny observations and opinions about all sorts of things: shots, school, their brothers and sisters, growing up, and even Dr. Tanis himself and whether he can sing as well as he thinks he does. The parents also chime in, both to complain about all their kids put them through and to celebrate how well they eventually turn out. A tireless, lifelong advocate of child safety, Dr. Tanis's impact on his patients and their families spans decades. This book is a testament to his career and a memorable glimpse of the warm and sometimes crazy world of a singing pediatrician.