Make Believe Town


Book Description

Make-Believe Town brings together David Mamet's acute insights into everyday life, the arts, and politics. These pieces evidence Mamet's love of language, particularly the introductory essay, "Eight Kings", which celebrates the private languages of carpenters, carnival workers, and all crafts and trades, and "The Northern Novel", which propounds Mamet's affection for the line of American fiction exemplified by Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser. Some of the essays are prose portraits from Mamet's life: "Deer Hunting" and "The Diner" delineate worlds far from the public eye. Make-Believe Town also contains beautifully written recollections of Mamet's early days as a writer ("Girl Copy"), his start in the theater ("Memories of Off Broadway"), his education as a gambler ("Gems From a Gambler's Bookshelf"), and bygone days on Broadway ("Delsomma's"). Mamet's incisive thoughts about public issues - support for the arts, nudity in films, the roles given Jewish characters, even the posthumous rehabilitation of Richard Nixon - round out a far-reaching collection.




Peekaboo!


Book Description

EARLY LEARNING: FIRST EXPERIENCES. Peekaboo! is an adorable book for young children. Use the fold-out mirror to copy the range of funny faces in the book and see if you can find your own little ears or chubby cheeks! Adorable characters and simple, repetitive text will delight young children and adults alike. Ages 0+




Champtown


Book Description

Wesley Gurion has rearranged the geography of Los Angeles to create Champion Valley, a unique setting for a unique story. A humorous novel built upon a sturdy foundation of drama, with mystery added as flavor.




Peter, Paul & Mary - Deluxe Anthology


Book Description

Includes: * All My Trails * Blowin' in the Wind * Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? * Hush-A-Bye * It's Raining * Rolling Home (A Far Cry from Heaven) * Rocky Road * When the Ship Comes In * Leaving on a Jet Plane and more!




David Mamet


Book Description

The most complete record of a contemporary American dramatist available, David Mamet: A Resource and Production Sourcebook is the result of ten years' research by a widely published drama and theatre scholar and a university bibliographic specialist. Presenting a complete overview of all reviews and scholarshp on Mamet, the authors challenge assumptions about the playwright, such as the charge that he is an antifeminist writer. This comprehensive sourcebook is an essential purchase for Mamet scholars and students of American drama alike. David Mamet: A Resource and Production Sourcebook reflects the revolution underway in the study of drama, in which not only previous scholarship but performance reviews are a necessary part of research. It gives a complete listing and overview of over 250 scholarly articles and chapters of books on Mamet's plays. It also presents the complete production history of each play, including review excerpts. The authors have produced an invaluable guide to research into this key contemporary dramatist.




Universal Women


Book Description

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2011. Between 1912 and 1919, the Universal Film Manufacturing Company credited eleven women with directing at least 170 films, but by the mid-1920s all of these directors had left Universal and only one still worked in the film industry at all. Two generations of cinema historians have either overlooked or been stymied by the mystery of why Universal first systematically supported and promoted women directors and then abruptly reversed that policy. In this trailblazing study, Mark Garrett Cooper approaches the phenomenon as a case study in how corporate movie studios interpret and act on institutional culture in deciding what it means to work as a man or woman. In focusing on issues of institutional change, Cooper challenges interpretations that explain women's exile from the film industry as the inevitable result of a transhistorical sexism or as an effect of a broadly cultural revision of gendered work roles. Drawing on a range of historical and sociological approaches to studying corporate institutions, Cooper examines the relationship between institutional organization and aesthetic conventions during the formative years when women filmmakers such as Ruth Ann Baldwin, Cleo Madison, Ruth Stonehouse, Elise Jane Wilson, and Ida May Park directed films for Universal.




City of the Century


Book Description

“A wonderfully readable account of Chicago’s early history” and the inspiration behind PBS’s American Experience (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). Depicting its turbulent beginnings to its current status as one of the world’s most dynamic cities, City of the Century tells the story of Chicago—and the story of America, writ small. From its many natural disasters, including the Great Fire of 1871 and several cholera epidemics, to its winner-take-all politics, dynamic business empires, breathtaking architecture, its diverse cultures, and its multitude of writers, journalists, and artists, Chicago’s story is violent, inspiring, passionate, and fascinating from the first page to the last. The winner of the prestigious Great Lakes Book Award, given to the year’s most outstanding books highlighting the American heartland, City of the Century has received consistent rave reviews since its publication in 1996, and was made into a six-hour film airing on PBS’s American Experience series. Written with energetic prose and exacting detail, it brings Chicago’s history to vivid life. “With City of the Century, Miller has written what will be judged as the great Chicago history.” —John Barron, Chicago Sun-Times “Brims with life, with people, surprise, and with stories.” —David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of John Adams and Truman “An invaluable companion in my journey through Old Chicago.” —Erik Larson, New York Times–bestselling author of The Devil in the White City




The Wicked Deep


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller. “A wickedly chilling debut.” —School Library Journal “Complex and sweetly satisfying.” —Booklist “Prepare to be bewitched.” —Paula Stokes, author of Girl Against the Universe “A story about the redemptive power of love.” —Amber Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be “Eerie and enchanting.” —Jessica Spotswood, author of The Cahill Witch Chronicles Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic meets the Salem Witch trials in this haunting story about three sisters on a quest for revenge—and how love may be the only thing powerful enough to stop them. Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow… Where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town. Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under. Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into. Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets. The townspeople turn against one another. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters. But only Penny sees what others cannot. And she will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself.




The Shea Ernshaw Bindup


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw comes two enchanting romances, “wickedly chilling” (School Library Journal) The Wicked Deep and “spellbinding” (Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval series) Winterwood, in one magical volume. In The Wicked Deep, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery in the small coastal town of Sparrow, Oregon. Stones were tied to their ankles, and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding town. Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under. Out beyond the bay, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot tries to warn Bo Carter, a boy looking for work and a place to stay, unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into. But like many outsiders, he doesn’t truly believe there is danger hidden beneath the waves. Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets as townspeople turn against one another, Penny and Bo suspect the other of hiding secrets, and death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters. Penny will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself. In Winterwood, you must be careful of the dark, dark forest… Some say the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven are magical—haunted, even. Rumored to be a witch, Nora Walker knows the truth: she and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And this legacy leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing. Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And she realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.




LOS ANGELES


Book Description

The author turns his critical eye to the City of Angels, discussing L.A.'s gridlocked freeways, immigrant neighborhoods, posh Beverly Hills, popular culture, health consciousness, and more, and speculates on the city's future.