This is an excellent book. It serves as both a source of insight into numerous specific aspects and phenomena of popular culture as well as a good general introduction to a more informed and philosophical approach to popular culture as a category. The various short essays each provide a glimpse below the surface, giving us the opportunity to meditate on the deeper meanings and subtle messages that run throughout the “everyday.” The music we hear on the radio, the places we visit and why we visit them, the turns-of-phrase we hear and use on a daily basis, and the movies we watch are more than mere entertainment, sidebar, and distraction. They are a means by which people like ourselves express their ideas, their perspectives, and their selves, sometimes without even realizing it – and, similarly, they are a means by which even the “consumer” or “audience” finds expression, meaning, and fulfillment, almost always without realizing it. This book makes the observations and ideas of the greatest minds of the modern and postmodern world, such as Marx, Derrida, and Camus, intimate, immediate, and practical. I highly recommend this book for anyone seeing a new appreciation of the “common” and for a deeper insight into the “everyday.” ( )