100 Books Like Hot Stuff

DIY. Do-it-yourself. An ethos that seems simple enough now, but it was a revolution that started in underground music and eventually changed popular culture.

These in-the-trenches perspectives by bands that were immensely influential spoke directly to the eco-system of clubs, stores, bands, labels, and artists that I later tapped into with my label.

An almost inadvertent “How-To” primer for someone like me, who was disinterested in what the arbiters of popular culture were trying to sell.

Before getting to radio, alternative scenes came together in the 1970s and 1980s through informal networks of shared tapes, backyard concerts, and zines. These scenes had politics all to themselves, which revolved around concepts of “authenticity.”

Duncombe’s book not only captures the range and meaning of zines in all their forms, but it unravels the deeper meaning of these DIY publications. As he writes, “Zinesters believe that authenticity can be found only in a person unshackled by the contrivances of society.” Zines thus offered the purest expressions of self, in theory, but soon, the zine scene developed its own codes of conduct and traditions – practices though that would inform the sound and practice of college radio.

What I love about this book is that it delves into theory (zinesters were like Rousseau? Who knew?!) but remains accessible, using the theory only to enlighten underappreciated aspects of zine culture.

Before delving into the business and culture of college radio, I had to think through the complicated relationships between universities and their surrounding communities. Davarian Baldwin helped me do just that.

The FM signals emanating from inside the walls of the ivory tower occupied the public’s airwaves, and so surrounding residents not affiliated with institutions had legitimate claims to these signals, which usually operated on licensed signals requiring public service and educational functions. While these signals often did provide valuable culture and information for wide and diverse communities, they sometimes replicated the more complicated politics of these institutions and the destructive role they played in communities.

Baldwin’s engaging and enraging exploration of town and gown provides a critical lens to use when thinking through the relationship between universities, nearby music scenes, cultural service, and radio.

No one combines the business of indie scenes – from production to labels to distribution – better than Holly Kruse. In this accessible yet rich book, she details the complicated structure of the alternative system that Azerrad nods to in his history of the bands that occupied the airwaves and whose products circulated through these systems.

To say that these independent music labels and distributors operated completely absent of the corporate music industry from the beginning is a canard, as Kruse demonstrates, but she also reveals the personal and particular practices that shaped these emerging commercial relationships and consumption patterns that undergirded music fans’ ability to participate in music scenes locally, as well as to access sounds from across the nation, and indeed the world. 

David’s book came out while I was still searching for the truth about Uncle Lev, and it provided a useful and entertaining overview of the effort to censor comic books—catching Lev directly in its cross-hairs—and the industry code that was implemented as a result. Ultimately, David argues, “the generation of comic-book creators whose work died with the Comics Code helped give birth to the popular culture of the postwar era.”

I’m a fan of history. A storyline that revolves around such a long-term contract intrigued me. This one is set back in the 1960s, with scenes that jump back to World War II and then the fifties.

Griffin’s style was smooth. She brought me along in the story, giving me little hints as to what was really going on. There are secrets galore here and plenty of surprises. The characters are well-drawn. The timeframe of the story works perfectly with some of the twists.

If you’ve ever wondered (or haven’t) what Richard Nixon, Jane Fonda, Linda Ronstadt, All in the Family, and the films Chinatown and Shampoo share in common, and why it matters, author and political correspondent Ronald Brownstein connects the dots in a compelling examination of how the seismic cultural upheavals we attribute to the late 60s were in fact late bloomers, leaving their mark only in the early 70s.  

Part nostalgia, part pop and TV history, part political analysis, this book zeros in on the cast of personalities and classic artistic works that collectively made 1974 the pivotal year in the modern American zeitgeist. Something for everyone who lived through that time—I can attest to that—and a timely cultural history lesson for those who didn’t.

My introduction to world mythology was Joseph Campbell, who described a nearly universal narrative – or monomyth – in which a young man (such as Christ, Percival, or the Buddha) ventures from his land, defeats opponents or temptations and returns with a critical gift for his people.

America, however, inverted this myth in profoundly important ways. In our story, repeated over three centuries in thousands of sermons, novels, movies, television, and video games, an innocent and racially pure community is threatened by evil (usually non-white).

When democratic institutions fail to suppress the threat, a selfless superhero arrives – from elsewhere – to defeat the villains and restore the community to harmony. Then, however, disdaining the feminine values of community and relationship, this hero disappears (often into the West).

I realized that he is the model for both our ideas of distant fathering as well as our unshakable belief in American… show more.

Hanawalt's trademark watercolor style is a perfect match for rendering food, especially her whimsical observations. Whether it's an illustrated taxonomy of NYC street food or a page dedicated to her anxious “incorrect” opinions on how she likes her eggs, the vibrant shapes and colors invite you to stop and think about your usual meals in an offbeat way.

Weaving together the influence of film, television, sport, and punk rock, Horten’s book describes how Western media or, specifically, how the East German population’s desire for Western media and consumer culture and the regime’s efforts to satisfy those desires contributed to the peaceful revolution in 1989.

Despite assumptions that the socialist dictatorship in East Germany was omnipresent, this book, like many others about everyday life under communism, undermines that notion. Horten shows the regime locked in a downward spiral. Faced with economic crises and increasingly unable to afford domestic television and film production, the regime turned to Western imports.

This fed the people’s desire for Western media while increasing that appetite and exposing the regime’s weaknesses in the process.