Books like American Plastic by Jeffrey L. Meikle

Jon Ronson's investigative inquiry into psychopathy examines the tools, practitioners, and personalities behind the science—and reveals how the lines between study and madness can blur.

Tim Wu examines the evolution of attention harvesting—from early advertising to digital algorithms—exploring how the pursuit of human focus reshapes society, culture, and commerce.

A detailed examination of how American housing patterns, especially the rise of suburbia, have shaped social behavior, economic mobility, and racial segregation across the 20th century.

Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It is a collective portrait of our times, woven from the voices of seventy very different people, the youngest of whom is seventy and the oldest ninety-nine. Together they give us an extraordinary panorama of American life and work throughout this century and underscore the ways in which the times have changed. Coming of Age is also, in many ways, a sequel to Terkel's acclaimed Working (1974), for it traces the extraordinary ways our working lives have changed in the past few decades - often beyond recognition. We meet politicians and preachers, advertising men and hucksters. Here is the partner in a large law firm, suing the colleagues who have forced him out; here, too, is the carpenter, accepting as inevitable the replacement of his skilled tasks by machine. But this is not a group of disgruntled Luddites; most accept - indeed welcome - the new technologies, yet they all deplore the degree to which human contact has declined and how traditional hopes and aspirations have been superseded by the often ruthless demands of the modern corporation.

Explores the Great Books mania, in an entertaining and strangely poignant portrait of American popular culture on the threshold of the television age.

An informal and personal description of the rise and fall of comic books in the '40s and '50s, with a focus on the Educational Comics (E.C.) company run by Gains, father then son (M.C. then William). The fall came in two steps, the first in the '40s and aimed at crime comics, and the second in the '50s and aimed at almost all comics, but with emphasis on horror comics.

A social critique of the Internet, the economic downturn, and post‑industrial culture, examining the human costs and unintended consequences for artists and cultural workers amid the shuttering of bookstores, collapsing newspapers, and music piracy.