Pop culture past and present This week, we present some of the best in popular culture and trends. In books, we’ve got a Twitter parody, a serious exploration on the meaning of the number 7, and a comprehensive approach to clay-pot cookery. In music, find the latest from pop sensation Lady GaGa as well as compendiums from Dolly Parton and the American roots-music sessions known as Texas Sheiks. For DVDs, we have box sets of TV gems such as It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Ally McBeal and sci-fi spectacular Farscape. And don’t miss our high-tech wine aerator in the Electronics and Gifts category. | | | Books | | | 
Kindle edition
$7.19 | | Featured on All Things Considered December 7 My Shorts R Bunching. Thoughts? The Tweets of Roland Hedley
By Gary Trudeau In March of 2009, Doonesbury’s intrepid journalist Roland Burton Hedley, III, opened a Twitter account and began to tweet. A lot. Four weeks later, a sampling of his 140-character missives was published in The New Yorker to great acclaim, and his posts were featured in a one-on-one “tweet-off” in the Columbia Journalism Review. Rushed into print, this groundbreaking volume is the first book-length Twitter collection by a single author. With dozens of Doonesbury strips and over 500 tweets, it presents the best of Hedley’s work: frontline micro-blogging from the self-anointed dean of Washington journotwits. (G.B. Trudeau’s Doonesbury has tracked and explored forty years of American culture through six wars and eight presidential administrations.) “Hilarious!” – Erin Moriarity, CBS News
Price: $8.99 *
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| | Featured on Fresh Air December 9 Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
By John Carlin After being released from prison and winning South Africa’s first free election, Nelson Mandela presided over a country still deeply divided by fifty years of apartheid. His plan was ambitious if not far-fetched: use the national rugby team—the Springboks, long an embodiment of white-supremacist rule—to embody and engage a new South Africa as it prepared to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup. The string of wins that followed not only defied the odds, but capped Mandela’s miraculous effort to bring South Africans together again in a hard-won, enduring bond. The new Clint Eastwood-directed film, Invictus, is based on this book. “This wonderful book describes Mandela’s methodical, improbable and brilliant campaign to reconcile resentful blacks and fearful whites around a sporting event, a game of rugby.” – The New York Times Book Review List Price: $16.00 *
Price: $10.88 *
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Kindle edition
$9.99 | | Featured on Talk of the Nation December 9 Seven: The Number for Happiness, Love and Success
By Jacqueline Leo What is it about the number seven that has such a hold on us? Why are there seven deadly sins? Seven days of the week? Seven wonders of the world, seven colors of the spectrum, seven ages of man and seven sister colleges? Why can we hold seven numbers or words in our working memory—but no more? Author Jackie Leo—who has led a long career as an editor and producer in magazine publishing and television, respectively—explores everything about this mystical, magical, useful and fun number in her new book. List Price: $23.99 *
Price: $16.31 *
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Kindle edition
$13.69 | | Featured on Morning Edition The Good Soldiers
By David Finkel In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it “the surge.” Among those listening were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them. Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home forever changed. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Baghdad almost every grueling step of the way. In telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, Finkel has also produced an eternal tale—not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time. “Finkel’s keen firsthand reportage, its grit and impact only heightened by the literary polish of his prose, gives us one of the best accounts yet of the American experience in Iraq.” – Publishers Weekly List Price: $26.00 *
Price: $15.21*
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Kindle edition
$19.22 | | Featured on The Splendid Table December 18 Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking: Traditional and Modern Recipes to Savor and Share
By Paula Wolfert Beginning with a simple premise—food tastes better cooked in clay—this cookbook is an illuminating treatise on a technique that’s used throughout the Mediterranean but is still relatively obscure in U.S. kitchens. James Beard Award–winner Paula Wolfert has become passionate about earthenware pots. She claims that all food cooked in unglazed vessels has an earthy sweetness. In addition to recipes, Wolfert provides vital care and cleaning instructions for keepers of clay pots. “Wolfert is a true cook’s author. … For those willing to tackle them, Wolfert’s clay pot dishes do indeed merit the hype.” – Publishers Weekly List Price: $34.95 *
Price: $23.07*
| | Music Box Sets | | | 
Sound Samples | | Featured on Morning Edition December 8 The Fame Monster
By Lady Gaga Lady Gaga is a theatrical dance and pop performer whose debut single, the international chart-topping hit “Just Dance,” established her as an up-and-coming superstar upon its release. “Just Dance” was released to radio in April 2008, and her full-length album debut, The Fame, followed in August. The Fame was still enjoying a spot on the Billboard Top 40 when its follow-up, The Fame Monster, appeared in November 2009. Although originally planned as a bonus disc (to be packaged alongside The Fame in a deluxe edition of Lady Gaga’s debut), The Fame Monster was quickly expanded to eight tracks, thus warranting its own release. Meanwhile, the leadoff single “Bad Romance” became Gaga’s fifth consecutive Top Ten single. “Lady Gaga isn’t flesh and blood like the rest of us. She is made of amazingness.” – Simon Price, The Independent (London)
List Price: $21.98 *
Price: $14.99 *
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Sound Samples | | Featured on Fresh Air December 10 I Dreamed a Dream
By Susan Boyle Inspirational and breathtaking, I Dreamed a Dream is the highly anticipated album from Susan Boyle, a global phenomenon whose dream has become reality. Boyle captured the hearts of millions and became a worldwide YouTube phenomenon with more than 300 million views. I Dreamed a Dream, crafted by acclaimed producer Steve Mac, demonstrates Boyle’s great talent and extensive musical ability. Featuring her signature songs, “I Dreamed a Dream” and “Cry Me a River,” the album also includes a haunting rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” plus stunning covers of Madonna’s “You'll See” and The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer.” Notably, the album contains the premiere of “Who I Was Born To Be,” an original song written specially for Boyle. “All 12 cuts on the debut album … offer variations on the same aural concept: Boyle’s impressively clear, steady voice with barely a catch in the throat and plain, unadorned phrasing, emanating from what sounds like the center of a large cathedral.” — Stephen Holden, New York Times List Price: $11.98 *
Price: $10.99 *
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Sound Samples | | Texas Sheiks
By Geoff Muldaur & The Texas Sheiks U.S. roots music legend Geoff Muldaur called, and everyone came to join him: Stephen Bruton, Johnny Nicholas, Cindy Cashdollar, Suzy Thompson, Bruce Hughes and special guest Jim Kweskin, jugband music-man extraordinaire. Reflecting the golden era of traditional American music, the Austin “Texas Sheiks” sessions turned into a unique and moving event. Irresistible and obscure pieces of classic blues, string band, Texas swing and jump blues repertoire, were sung and played with masterful expertise, great authority and captivating joy. “The Texas Sheiks’ record is traditional American music of extremely high caliber. I think of it as modernist classical music.” – T-Bone Burnett List Price: $19.99 *
Price: $14.99 *
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| | Dolly (Box Set)
By Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton has few peers, and no one in music will deny her powers as a singer, a storyteller and a pop star. This collection is Parton’s first-ever multi-label, career-spanning box set. On four CDs, you’ll find more than 100 songs, including not only her biggest hits (such as “Jolene”, “9 to 5”, “Coat of Many Colors”, “Joshua” and “I Will Always Love You”), but rarities and duets from Monument, RCA Victor and Columbia—plus seven previously unreleased songs. The box set features an introduction written by singer-songwriter Laura Cantrell and new liner notes written by noted Dolly Parton historian Holly George-Warren. A scrapbook includes never-before-seen photos and rare memorabilia.
List Price: $49.98 *
Price: $36.49 *
| | | A Bit of Fresh Air - Television Gift Picks | | | 
| | On the Road with Charles Kuralt
For 20 years beginning in 1967, Charles Kuralt wandered America’s byways in search of the unusual and the overlooked. He and his small crew logged more than a million miles and wore out six motor homes. For his homespun vignettes of everyday life, Kuralt won an Emmy® and became a household name. Kuralt traveled through all 50 states, talking with horse traders, worm hunters, singing mailmen, and sharecroppers who put nine children through college. No topic was too small, no person too insignificant. Kuralt once said, “There are sights in this country and people in this country to banish any gloom you ever may feel and to fill you instead with wonder.” By noticing the ordinary and celebrating originality, he exalted all of America. This DVD includes special features, including an On The Road documentary and a Kuralt biography.
List Price: $39.99 *
Price: $34.99 *
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| | It’s Garry Shandling’s Show: The Complete Series
A surreal look at the daily life of a young single man who is a comedian, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was not a typical sitcom: Shandling would break the fourth wall to include the studio audience and the viewers at home in the actual making of the show. Experimenting with the sitcom format meant inviting the audience onto the set, playing with the passage of time and generally exploding the genre and making art of the debris. Over the years, guest stars (playing themselves) included Tom Petty, Rob Reiner, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Mull, Gilda Radner (in her last TV performance), Chevy Chase, Jeff Goldblum, Don Cornelius, The Turtles, former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and more. From its unforgettable theme song to its closing credits, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was award-winning, mind-bending television for four seasons, and its influence is clearly seen in the best TV comedies through the decades to follow. “Audacious, satirical, hip, sophisticated and wonderfully silly, and often miraculously all of the above at the same time.” – TV Guid
List Price: $159.99 *
Price: $140.99 *
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| | Ally McBeal: The Complete Series
FOX’s hit dramatic and humorous show tells the story of the trials and tribulations of a 28-year-old lawyer, Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart), who is fresh out of Harvard Law School. Ally was harassed at the firm where she was originally working, and when she told the firm’s partners, she ended up losing her job. She then runs into an old friend and he offers her a new job at his brand new firm where she meets tons of new people—and reconnects with her old boyfriend, Billy, with whom she’ll lead her new cases. The Complete Series collection includes all five seasons of this groundbreaking show on 32 discs, including all the original music from the broadcast episodes. List Price: $199.98*
Price: $109.99 *
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| | Farscape: The Complete Series
Astronaut John Crichton is flung through a wormhole and lost in a galaxy far from home. He finds himself in the middle of a prison break, surrounded by hostile aliens, soaring through space inside a glorious living spaceship called Moya. Hunted by the relentless Peacekeepers, Crichton allies himself with his unimaginably alien fellow refugees and searches for a way home. So begins the epic sci-fi classic Farscape. A fusion of live action, state-of-the-art puppetry, prosthetics and CGI, Farscape features mind-boggling alien life forms, dazzling special effects, edge-of-your-seat thrills, irreverent humor and unforgettable characters—all brought to life by the creative minds at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. No wonder it’s been called the most imaginative sci-fi series in television history. This package contains amazing surprises including hours of bonus materials, making-of featurettes, commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes and much more. List Price: $149.95 *
Price: $57.99 *
| | | | Electronics & Gifts | | | 
| | Apple iPod touch 16 GB (2nd Generation) The iPod touch has always been an amazing iPod. And with its groundbreaking technologies — including a Multi-Touch screen, the accelerometer, and 3D graphics — and access to hundreds of games, iPod touch puts an amazing gaming experience in the palm of your hand. It comes in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB models with new volume controls and a built-in speaker. Play hours of music. Create a Genius Playlist of songs that go great together. Watch a movie. Surf the web. View rich HTML email. Find your location and get directions with Google Maps. Browse YouTube videos. And shop the App Store for games and applications.
List Price: $279.99 *
Price: $234.99 *
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| | Vinturi Wine Aerator As wine breathes, it releases its intended aromas and flavors. Unlike time-consuming decanters, Vinturi’s simple gadget makes the aerating process easy and convenient. Simply hold it over a glass and pour the wine through, mixing the proper amount of air in the right amount of time. The result is a better bouquet, richer flavor, and smoother finish. Vinturi’s acrylic aerator stands six inches tall and two inches wide, is dishwasher safe, and comes with a no-drip stand and travel pouch.
List Price: $40.00 *
Price: $38.21*
| | * Price as listed by Amazon.com at time of this mailing and subject to change. | | | | | 
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