Don's Book & DVD Selections for 2008 

I buy books on the internet & new media (SecondLife, Facebook, Myspace, podcasting, iPhone, iPod), game design, web design, news and tv, and other aspects of our media-saturated culture. These books are used by media arts classes, graphic design, web & game design, and many classes in the social sciences and also the writing classes. These classes especially like any media that carries a "message" about the American experience. In addition there are a few books in here just designed to grab students' attention!

Student audience: Writing, Literature, Media Studies, Game Design, Web Design, Community Education, General, Psychology

1. A designer's guide to Adobe InDesign and XML : harness the power of XML to automate your print and Web workflows / James J. Maivald with Cathy Palmer

2. Before & after page design / John McWade

3. Breaking news : a stunning and memorable account of reporting from some of the most dangerous places in the world / Martin Fletcher

4. Building a Web site with Ajax / by Larry Ullman

5. Building findable websites : web standards, SEO, and beyond / [Aarron Walter]

6. Bulletproof Ajax / Jeremy Keith

7. Common sense : intelligence as presented on popular television / edited by Lisa Holderman

8. Connect! : a guide to a new way of working from GigaOM's Web Worker Daily / Anne Truitt Zelenka with Judi Sohn

9. Convergence culture : where old and new media collide / Henry Jenkins

10. Dawson's Creek : a critical understanding / Lori Bindig

11. Dear Angela : remembering My so-called life / edited by Michele Byers and David Lavery

12. Defining visions : television and the American experience in the 20th century / Mary Ann Watson

13. Designing your Second Life : techniques and inspiration for you to design your ideal parallel universe within the online community, Second Life / Rebecca Tapley

14. Digital culture, play, and identity : a World of Warcraft reader / edited by Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg

15. Everyware : the dawning age of ubiquitous computing / by Adam Greenfield

16. Facebook : the missing manual / E.A. Vander Veer

17. Facebook for dummies / Carolyn Abram and Leah Pearlman

18. Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the Internet : new essays / edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse

19. Fandom : identities and communities in a mediated world / edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington ; with an afterword by Henry Jenkins

20. Fans : the mirror of consumption / Cornel Sandvoss

21. 5000 episodes and no commercials : the ultimate guide to TV shows on DVD 2007 / David Hofstede

22. From design into print : preparing graphics and text for professional printing / Sandee Cohen

23. Google Gmail / Steve Schwartz

24. Halo effect : an unauthorized look at the most successful video game of all time / edited by Glenn Yeffeth with Jennifer Thomason

25. Hanging out in the virtual pub : masculinities and relationships online / Lori Kendall

26. Inside prime time / Todd Gitlin

27. Jack Bauer for president : terrorism and politics in 24 / edited by Richard Miniter, with Leah Wilson

28. Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 / Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis

29. Maya character creation : modeling and animation controls / Chris Maraffi

30. Media worlds : anthropology on new terrain / edited by Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin

31. My ox is broken! : roadblocks, detours, fast forwards, and other great moments from TV's The amazing race / Adam-Troy Castro

32. MySpace unraveled : a parent's guide to teen social networking from the directors of BlogSafety.com / Larry Magid and Anne Collier

33. Poetic acts & new media / Tom O'Connor

34. Pro Tools for musicians and songwriters / Gina Fant-Saez

35. Professional techniques for video game writing / edited by Wendy Despain

36. Publishing a blog with Blogger / by Elizabeth Castro

37. Quality TV : contemporary American television and beyond / edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass

38. Radio cultures : the sound medium in American life / edited by Michael C. Keith

39. Regret the error : how media mistakes pollute the press and imperil free speech / Craig Silverman

40. Saving the world : a guide to Heroes / Lynnette Porter, David Lavery and Hillary Robson

41. Secrets of podcasting : audio blogging for the masses / Bart G. Farkas

42. Sell it on eBay : a guide to successful online auctions / by Jim Heid and Toby Malina

43. Seven up / Stella Bruzzi

44. Television entertainment / Jonathan Gray

45. Television truths / John Hartley

46. Television, cult and the fantastic / Sara Jones

47. The Avengers : the inside story / Patrick Macnee with Dave Rogers

48. The big switch : rewiring the world, from Edison to Google / Nicholas Carr

49. The essential science fiction television reader / edited by J.P. Telotte

50. The iPhone pocket guide / Christopher Breen

51. The iPod & iTunes pocket guide : all the secrets of the iPod, pocket sized / Christopher Breen

52. The iPod book : doing cool stuff with the iPod and the iTunes store / Scott Kelby

53. The psychology of Joss Whedon / edited by Joy Davidson ; with Leah Wilson

54. The psychology of Survivor : overanalyze, overemote, overcompensate : leading psychologists take an unauthorized look at the most elaborate psychological experiment ever conducted-- Survivor! / edited by Richard J. Gerrig

55. The trouble with nature : sex in science and popular culture / Roger N. Lancaster

56. Thinking television / Anandam Kavoori

57. Thirtysomething : television, women, men, and work / Albert Auster and Leonard Quart

58. This is my funniest : leading science fiction writers present their funniest stories ever / edited by Mike Resnick

59. This is my funniest 2 : leading science fiction writers present their funniest stories ever / edited by Mike Resnick

60. Title design essentials for film and video / Mary Plummer

61. Truth and rumors : the reality behind TV's most famous myths / Bill Brioux

62. 24 and philosophy : the world according to Jack / edited by Jennifer Hart Weed, Richard Davis, and Ronald Weed

63. Vocal tracks : performance and sound media / Jacob Smith

64. Wikipatterns : [a practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization] / Stewart Mader

65. You can't air that : four cases of controversy and censorship in American television programming / David S. Silverman