Here, Timothy D. Taylor tracks the use of music in American advertising for nearly a century, from variety shows like 'The Clicquot Club Eskimons' to the rise of the jingle, from the postwar growth of consumerism, to the more complete fusion of popular music and consumption in the 1980s and after.

Stanford Wong is in big trouble--or as he would spell it, "trubble"--in this laugh-out-loud companion to the award-winning Millicent Min, Girl Genius. Stanford Wong is having a bad summer. If he flunks his summer-school English class, he won't pass sixth grade. If that happens, he won't start on the A-team. If that happens, his friends will abandon him and Emily Ebers won't like him anymore. And if THAT happens, his life will be over. Then his parents are fighting, his grandmother Yin-Yin hates her new nursing home, he's being "tutored" by the world's biggest nerdball, Millicent Min--and he's not sure his ballpoint "Emily" tattoo is ever going to wash off.But Stanford Wong has a few things going for him. He has Yin-Yin's fantastic dim sum. He has his magic jade pendant, source of all his basketball skill. He has this amazing new book called The Outsiders he's just discovered. He may even have Millicent. And Stanford realizes that that might just be enough to save his summer--if he can pull it all together in time.

Who would have thought being smart could be so hard (and funny)? Millicent Min is having a bad summer. Her fellow high school students hate her for setting the curve. Her fellow 11-year-olds hate her for going to high school. And her mother has arranged for her to tutor Stanford Wong, the poster boy for Chinese geekdom. But then Millie meets Emily. Emily doesn't know Millicent's IQ score. She actually thinks Millie is cool. And if Millie can hide her awards, ignore her grandmother's advice, swear her parents to silence, blackmail Stanford, and keep all her lies straight, she just might make her first friend.What's it going to take? Sheer genius.

Bobby inadvertently gets into a fight with his best friend Holly, and their disagreement develops into a boys versus girls war involving their whole fourth-grade class.