"Drawing from both pop culture and science, Charles Yu is an observer of contemporary society, and in Sorry Please Thank You he fills his stories with equal parts humor and insight into the human condition. A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date. A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly...

Literature professor Dr. Addie Cox is contacted by Harris Lang, the famously eccentric billionaire tech genius, for an unusual job: He wants her to guide a mercenary strike team sent to infiltrate his island retreat off the northwest coast of the United States. There Lang has built Insula Mirabilis, an isolated resort where tourists will one day pay big bucks for a convincing, high-tech-powered fantasy-world experience, complete with dragons, unicorns,...

"For fans of Interior Chinatown and American War, a surreal, hilarious, and sneakily profound debut novel that casts our current climate of gun violence and environmental destruction in a surprising new mold. Erin is a plastic girl living in a plastic world. Every day she eats a breakfast of boiled chicken, then coveys her articulated body to Tablet Town, where she sells other figurines Smartbodies: wearable tech that allows full, physical immersion...

Race has long shaped shopping experiences for many Americans. Retail exchanges and establishments have made headlines as flashpoints for conflict not only between blacks and whites, but also between whites, Mexicans, Asian Americans, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups, who have at times found themselves unwelcome at white-owned businesses. Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often...

A survey of over 500 movies--from The Jazz singer to Kramer vs. Kramer--giving an account of the story line along with an examination of the directing, acting, cinematography, editing, etc. in each.