Popular Culture: A Broadview Topics Reader is an accessible collection of non-fiction writing for composition students and students of popular culture. The anthology takes an expansive view of its subject, encompassing advertising, code-switching, social media, emerging technologies, the body positivity movement, cultural appropriation, and more. A wide variety of genres are represented, from personal and literary essays to journalism and academic writing.

Selections are arranged by theme; the book also includes an alternative table of contents listing material by genre and rhetorical style, as well as suggested pairings of pieces that complement each other. Headnotes, explanatory notes, and discussion questions facilitate student engagement with each piece. A selection of color images features advertisements, journalistic photography, and other materials that aim to prompt classroom discussion.

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Don LePan, founder and CEO of academic publishing house Broadview Press, is the author of several non-fiction books and of two other works of fiction; his novel Animals (2010) has been described by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee as “a powerful piece of writing and a disturbing call to conscience.”

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“This reader provides a versatile range of selections that engage with current trends and issues in North American popular culture. The topics addressed—particularly in a cluster of articles on [topics such as] Facebook and social media, and in another on controversies in the NFL—will be appealing to students. … The brief, efficient headnotes provide just enough context to introduce the readings, and essays are followed by a set of generative questions to engage readers.” — Bridget M. Marshall, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

“Popular Culture: A Broadview Topics Reader offers both breadth and depth to students and instructors. It includes both now-classic texts of cultural criticism (by authors ranging from James Baldwin to Roland Barthes to Gloria Anzaldúa) and more recent interventions (including work by Laila Lalami, Zadie Smith, and Eden Robinson). Divided into seven sections that cover different cultural sites and forms (advertising, technology, sports), the text also focuses on the entanglement of identity and popular culture, with material examining language, race, and Indigeneity, among other areas of vital concern. Of special interest are the groups of essays on particular themes: protest and the US national anthem, as well as social media, democracy, and the self. Instructors will still find the freedom to wander through the volume for other connections, making this a valuable and adaptable work for the classroom.” — Jason Haslam, Dalhousie University