The Book of Cool: What is It? Who Decides It? and Why Do We Care So Much? - Tapa dura

From jazz music to wearing sunglasses indoors, "cool" has always been the ultimate social label. The craving for this acceptance has powered popular culture for the last hundred years. Fashion, music, cars, pop idols, attitudes, and even some schools and parents, have been labeled Cool. But by whom? The truth is: no one in particular. And then there is the whimsical nature of being Cool: The arbiters of taste and style are so eager to pronounce something Cool, that something immediately becomes uncool as the masses rush to adopt it, in order to be Cool first. Something or someone can be so "In" they quickly become "So Five Minutes Ago" before spiraling downward to "Out." And then, like nerds and bell-bottoms, something can be so "Out," it's "In." (That's cool.) Taylor details the history of Cool, spotlighting its current manifestations. She charts the evolution of Cool from the sidewalks to the boardrooms, separating who creates cool from who merely markets it.

Marianne Taylor was the winner of Ms. Magazine's 2005 Fiction Contest. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Review, The Ledge, and other publications. She's the coauthor of The Starving Artist's Survival Guide. She teaches Visual Art and Media Literacy in the public schools of Brookline, MA. She lives in Boston.