Thomas W. Hodgkinson

How to Be Cool: The 150 Essential Idols, Ideals and Other Cool S***

by Thomas W Hodgkinson
Icon Books, May 2017

What does it mean to be cool? Where did it come from? And who is the coolest person who ever lived? 

These and other mysteries are revealed in this suave compendium of all things super-cool. After explaining how the quality arose in the 1930s as a value system to rival those of money and morality, it takes the reader on a light-touch tour of the people and practices that have defined it, from Byron and tattoos to Björk and base jumping. 

Seriously. What could be cooler?