Hollywood Enigma


Book Description

The story of Dana Andrews (1909-1992)




Alan Turing: The Enigma


Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades—all before his suicide at age forty-one. This New York Times bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing’s royal pardon in 2013, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. Capturing both the inner and outer drama of Turing’s life, Andrew Hodges tells how Turing’s revolutionary idea of 1936—the concept of a universal machine—laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. The book also tells how this work was directly related to Turing’s leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during World War II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory in the Atlantic. At the same time, this is the tragic account of a man who, despite his wartime service, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program—all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime. The inspiration for a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, Alan Turing: The Enigma is a gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution.




Hollywood Enigma


Book Description

Dana Andrews (1909–1992) worked with distinguished directors such as John Ford, Lewis Milestone, Otto Preminger, Fritz Lang, William Wyler, William A. Wellman, Mervyn Le Roy, Jean Renoir, and Elia Kazan. He played romantic leads alongside the great beauties of the modern screen, including Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Greer Garson, Merle Oberon, Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward, Maureen O'Hara, and most important of all, Gene Tierney, with whom he did five films. Retrospectives of his work often elicit high praise for an underrated actor, a master of the minimalist style. His image personified the “male mask” of the 1940s in classic films such as Laura, Fallen Angel, and Where the Sidewalk Ends, in which he played the “masculine ideal of steely impassivity.” No comprehensive discussion of film noir can neglect his performances. He was an “actor's actor.” Here at last is the complete story of a great actor, his difficult struggle to overcome alcoholism while enjoying the accolades of his contemporaries, a successful term as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and the love of family and friends that never deserted him. Based on diaries, letters, home movies, and other documents, this biography explores the mystery of a poor boy from Texas who made his Hollywood dream come true even as he sought a life apart from the limelight and the backbiting of contemporaries jockeying for prizes and prestige. Called “one of nature's noblemen” by his fellow actor Norman Lloyd, Dana Andrews emerges from Hollywood Enigma as an admirable American success story, fighting his inner demons and ultimately winning.




Hollywood Enigma


Book Description

She’s a legal shark—sleek and deadly—but doesn’t trust anyone beyond her small circle of family and friends. He’s internationally famous—and yet a mystery to the world as he cloaks himself in privacy. Can they shed their fears and open their hearts to one another? Actor Wynn Gallagher is at the peak of his fame, playing superhero Carbon Man in the Alpha Tharra Universe film franchise. While the role has made him wealthy, he’s ready to move on to newer challenges—but his ironclad contract will keep him tied to the role for years to come. Seeking legal advice, he approaches Scarlett Corrigan, one of the top entertainment attorneys in Los Angeles. Scarlett is the younger sister of Hollywood’s highest paid actor, Rhett Corrigan, but she’s made a name for herself in entertainment law. She thrives on challenges and readily accepts Wynn as a client, but she puts the brakes on the strong attraction between them, not wanting to mix business with pleasure. Eventually, Wynn and Scarlett become involved but tragedy strikes not once, but twice, threatening to end their relationship before it has a chance to grow and flourish. Can Wynn and Scarlett overcome overwhelming odds and find lasting love?




Hollywood and the CIA


Book Description

This book investigates representations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Hollywood films, and the synergies between Hollywood product, U.S. military/defense interests and U.S. foreign policy. As probably the best known of the many different intelligence agencies of the US, the CIA is an exceptionally well known national and international icon or even "brand," one that exercises a powerful influence on the imagination of people throughout the world as well as on the creative minds of filmmakers. The book examines films sampled from five decades - the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s - and explores four main issues: the relative prominence of the CIA; the extent to which these films appeared to be overtly political; the degree to which they were favorable or unfavorable to the CIA; and their relative attitude to the "business" of intelligence. A final chapter considers the question: do these Hollywood texts appear to function ideologically to "normalize" the CIA? If so, might this suggest the further hypothesis that many CIA movies assist audiences with reconciling two sometimes fundamental opposites: often gruesome covert CIA activity for questionable goals and at enormous expense, on the one hand, and the values and procedures of democratic society, on the other. This interdisciplinary book will be of much interest to students of the CIA/Intelligence Studies, media and film studies, US politics and IR/Security Studies in general.




The Enigma of Room 622


Book Description

The Enigma of Room 622 has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.




X, Y and Z


Book Description

December, 1932 In the bathroom of a Belgian hotel, a French spymaster photographs top-secret documents – the operating instructions of the cipher machine, Enigma. A few weeks later a mathematician in Warsaw begins to decipher the coded communications of the Third Reich and lays the foundations for the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. The co-operation between France, Britain and Poland is given the cover-name 'X, Y & Z'. December, 1942 It is the middle of World War Two. The Polish code-breakers have risked their lives to continue their work inside Vichy France, even as an uncertain future faces their homeland. Now they are on the run from the Gestapo. People who know the Enigma secret are not supposed to be in the combat zone, so MI6 devises a plan to exfiltrate them. If it goes wrong, if they are caught, the consequences could be catastrophic for the Allies. Based on original research and newly released documents, X, Y & Z is the exhilarating story of those who risked their lives to protect the greatest secret of World War Two.




Alan Turing: The Enigma


Book Description

The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley Alan Turing was the mathematician whose cipher-cracking transformed the Second World War. Taken on by British Intelligence in 1938, as a shy young Cambridge don, he combined brilliant logic with a flair for engineering. In 1940 his machines were breaking the Enigma-enciphered messages of Nazi Germany’s air force. He then headed the penetration of the super-secure U-boat communications. But his vision went far beyond this achievement. Before the war he had invented the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer. Turing's far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing took his own life.




Cryptology


Book Description

Cryptology: Classical and Modern, Second Edition proficiently introduces readers to the fascinating field of cryptology. The book covers classical methods including substitution, transposition, Alberti, Vigenère, and Hill ciphers. It also includes coverage of the Enigma machine, Turing bombe, and Navajo code. Additionally, the book presents modern methods like RSA, ElGamal, and stream ciphers, as well as the Diffie-Hellman key exchange and Advanced Encryption Standard. When possible, the book details methods for breaking both classical and modern methods. The new edition expands upon the material from the first edition which was oriented for students in non-technical fields. At the same time, the second edition supplements this material with new content that serves students in more technical fields as well. Thus, the second edition can be fully utilized by both technical and non-technical students at all levels of study. The authors include a wealth of material for a one-semester cryptology course, and research exercises that can be used for supplemental projects. Hints and answers to selected exercises are found at the end of the book. Features: Requires no prior programming knowledge or background in college-level mathematics Illustrates the importance of cryptology in cultural and historical contexts, including the Enigma machine, Turing bombe, and Navajo code Gives straightforward explanations of the Advanced Encryption Standard, public-key ciphers, and message authentication Describes the implementation and cryptanalysis of classical ciphers, such as substitution, transposition, shift, affine, Alberti, Vigenère, and Hill




The Persistence of Hollywood


Book Description

While Hollywood’s success – its persistence – has remained constant for almost one hundred years, the study of its success has undergone significant expansion and transformation. Since the 1960s, Thomas Elsaesser’s research has spearheaded the study of Hollywood, beginning with his classic essays on auteurism and cinephilia, focused around a director’s themes and style, up to his analysis of the "corporate authorship" of contemporary director James Cameron. In between, he has helped to transform film studies by incorporating questions of narrative, genre, desire, ideology and, more recently, Hollywood’s economic-technological infrastructure and its place within global capitalism. The Persistence of Hollywood brings together Elsaesser’s key writings about Hollywood filmmaking. It includes his detailed studies of individual directors (including Minnelli, Fuller, Ray, Hitchcock, Lang, Altman, Kubrick, Coppola, and Cameron), as well as essays charting the shifts from classic to corporate Hollywood by way of the New Hollywood and the resurgence of the blockbuster. The book also presents a history of the different critical-theoretical paradigms central to film studies in its analysis of Hollywood, from auteurism and cinephilia to textual analysis, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and post-industrial analysis.