Black music has always expressed, consciously or not, its African oral heritage, reflecting the conditions of a minority culture in the midst of a white majority.

A New York Times Notable Book Arthur Gelb was hired by The New York Times in 1944 as a night copyboy—the paper’s lowliest position. Forty-five years later, he retired as its managing editor. Along the way, he exposed crooked cops and politicians, mentored a generation of our most-talented journalists, was the first to praise the as-yet-undiscovered Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, and brought Joe Papp instant recognition. From D-Day to the liberation of the concentration camps, from the agony of Vietnam to the resignation of a President, from the fall of Joe McCarthy to the rise of the “Woodstock Nation,” Gelb gives an insider’s take on the great events of this nation's history—what he calls “the happiest days of my life.”

The last quarter century has been an extraordinary and turbulent period in the art world. It was a time of creative intensity during which a handful of artists, like Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, managed, in their different ways, to cross over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture. It was also a time when other promising careers and even whole movements, like Graffiti, spurted to life and then just as suddenly disappeared. During the astonishing boom years of the 1980s, the newly vigorous art market transformed the role of dealers and collectors to give them unprecedented power as tastemakers and the dangerous glamour of Hollywood power agents. And then came the bust. Writer Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within the art world, known the players, and reported on the scene for this entire span of time. True Colors draws on two decades of reporting to deliver an authoritative and deliciously inside account of the contemporary art world that will be the most talked-about book on art since The Shock of the New. Haden-Guest gives vivid portraits of the art world's key players and dramatizes the pivotal moments in the always evolving scene. Skillfully conveying a sense of the intricate geography of the art world, he tells of its clashes of ambition, its intrigues, its power plays. This is how artists survive, or don't survive. True Colors is filled with telling anecdotes and expertly told stories that cohere to give a sense of how the art world works, its current state, and where it may be going.

"Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin was a caricature of the manhater in the popular imagination as well as a polarizing figure within the women's movement, infamous for her antipornography stance in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, more than a decade after her death, this timely collection of her writing showcases the prescience of her analyses: of the genocidal character of sexual violence; of the devastating nihilism of white male supremacy, and of the toll it takes--especially on those who resist. This rediscovery of Dworkin's work will serve as a flashpoint for crucial feminist conversations today. Why is the cost of speaking out against abuse and inequality still so high? Why is the problematic work of brilliant women forced into oblivion, when that of flawed great men is embraced? What can we learn from the bitter divisions and discarded ideas of previous generations?"--Page 4 of cover.

"'If we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think, ' as Woolf puts it in A Room of One's Own , writing like a woman simply means writing like what one actually is, in sickness and health, richer and poorer, belly and bowels, the consonants and the vowels too. We may have a general sense that women poets are more likely than men, at the present time, to write in detail about their bodies; to take power relationships as a theme; to want to speak with a strong rather than a subdued voice; are less likely to seek distance, more likely to seek intimacy, in poetic tone. But generalization would be foolish here. 'Woman poet, ' like 'American poet' or 'French poet' or 'Russian poet, ' allows--even insists on--diversity, while implying something valuable in common, some shared language and life, of tremendous importance to the poet and the poet's readers." --Alicia Ostriker

This is a moving, star-filled account of one of Hollywood’s true golden ages as told by a man in the middle of it all. Walter Mirisch’s company has produced some of the most entertaining and enduring classics in film history, including West Side Story , Some Like It Hot , In the Heat of the Night , and The Magnificent Seven . His work has led to 87 Academy Award nominations and 28 Oscars. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from his personal collection, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History reveals Mirisch’s own experience of Hollywood and tells the stories of the stars—emerging and established—who appeared in his films, including Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, and many others. With hard-won insight and gentle humor, Mirisch recounts how he witnessed the end of the studio system, the development of independent production, and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most gifted (and notorious) cultural icons. A producer with a passion for creative excellence, he offers insights into his innovative filmmaking process, revealing a rare ingenuity for placating the demands of auteur directors, weak-kneed studio executives, and troubled screen sirens. From his early start as a movie theater usher to the presentation of such masterpieces as The Apartment , Fiddler on the Roof , and The Great Escape , Mirisch tells the inspiring life story of his climb to the highest echelon of the American film industry. This book assures Mirisch’s legacy—as Elmore Leonard puts it—as “one of the good guys.” Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association

My American History contains pieces written between 1981 and 1992, that document the expectations and imaginations of activists as they struggled, under impossible odds and an ever-growing opposition, to articulate a movement for freedom and dignity during the Reign of Reaganism. Also included is the Lesbian Avengers Handbook.

Oscar« Fever is both history and appreciation, filled with insider stories and little-known facts, such as who came up with the idea of the Academy Awards«; who the youngest and oldest winners are; which film garnered the most nominations; who has been nominated the most times without ever winning and more. Included are all the latest anecdotes and statistics, as well as a selection of film stills from the greatest winners, nostalgic and new, to tell the inside story of Oscar«. .The Academy Awards ceremony is the single most anticipated and widely viewed spectacle in the world. It has close to one billion viewers every year. How has this event grown, in some seventy-five years, from an intimate gathering of directors and actors to a global phenomenon that dominates magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and the internet.Oscar« Fever is a completely new and far more popular rewriting of And the Winner Is...(1987;1990). It is both history and appreciation, chockablock with inside stories and little-known facts. Included are all the latest facts and statistics, as well as film stills, nostalgic and new, to tell the inside story of Oscar and what the awards really say about our times.

Focusing on the design and implementation of computer-based automatic machine tools, David F. Noble challenges the idea that technology has a life of its own. Technology has been both a convenient scapegoat and a universal solution, serving to disarm critics, divert attention, depoliticize debate, and dismiss discussion of the fundamental antagonisms and inequalities that continue to beset America. This provocative study of the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry—the heart of a modern industrial economy—explains how dominant institutions like the great corporations, the universities, and the military, along with the ideology of modern engineering shape, the development of technology. Noble shows how the system of "numerical control," perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and put into general industrial use, was chosen over competing systems for reasons other than the technical and economic superiority typically advanced by its promoters. Numerical control took shape at an MIT laboratory rather than in a manufacturing setting, and a market for the new technology was created, not by cost-minded producers, but instead by the U. S. Air Force. Competing methods, equally promising, were rejected because they left control of production in the hands of skilled workers, rather than in those of management or programmers. Noble demonstrates that engineering design is influenced by political, economic, managerial, and sociological considerations, while the deployment of equipment—illustrated by a detailed case history of a large General Electric plant in Massachusetts—can become entangled with such matters as labor classification, shop organization, managerial responsibility, and patterns of authority. In its examination of technology as a human, social process, Forces of Production is a path-breaking contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon in American society.

This companion discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike. --

After careful research and extensive interiviews, the authors have prepared this compelling and controversial portrait of the Mormon's organizational structure and economic empire-and the men who control both. Index.

Essays on individual artists and groups, as well as more general surveys in the musical genres of jazz, blues, country, and gospel.

Brings provocative, rigorous and controversial readings of literary and cultural texts to gay critical analysis. Lee Edelman rearticulates the politics of sexuality, addressing some of the most hotly debated issues of our time.

Rainbow Jews looks at the intersection of gay and Jewish identity in American and Israeli film and theater from the 1960s to the present. Through a close reading of the texts of numerous American and Israeli plays and films, Friedman evaluates some of the key conventions that have been employed to construct, critique, and reflect the connection between Jewishness and gay identity in the United States and Israel. Friedman also explores ways in which gay-Jewish playwrights and filmmakers have progressed the reevaluation of sexual norms within Judaism over the past three decades, inspiring and integrating Jewish members of the GLBT community into the overall Jewish historical narrative.

"In this first biography of Woody Allen in over a decade, David Evanier discusses key movies, plays and prose as well as Allen's personal life. Evanier tackles the themes that Allen has spent a lifetime sorting through in art: morality, sexuality, Judaism, the eternal struggle of head and heart. Woody will be the definitive word on a major American talent as he begins his ninth decade, and his sixth decade of making movies"--

Bergman analyzes the writings of such famous American writers as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, F. O. Matthiessen, and Larry Kramer. He considers the entire range of literature, including poetry and drama, and gives attention to African or Native American themes in the work of Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Francis Grierson, David Plante and others.

A study of the rise to power of the "theoconservatives" describes efforts to roll back the division between church and state in American life and to inject their religious ideas, deeply rooted in Roman Catholicism, into the nation's politics.

From the first drawing board sketch to wriggling TV character, Makin’ Toons illustrates the thrills and challenges of making animated cartoon movies as told by the industry’s most successful creators. Cartoon lovers everywhere will be treated to 47 personal interviews with animation artists and industry leaders ranging from Shrek director Andrew Adamson to Rugrats producer Gabor Csupo. These and dozens of other fascinating firsthand accounts chronicle the behind-the-scene antics and commercial dynamics behind such blockbusters as The Simpsons, South Park, Beauty and the Beast, and Dragon Tales, to name just a few. Author Allan Neuwirth—an accomplished animation artist and writer himself—spices the book with insightful comments, hilarious anecdotes, and a true “toon artist’s” sense of humor. He also includes 75 never-before-published concept drawings, character designs, storyboards, and much more. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.