"Essays in direct line from Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Brecht" —Mike Nichols A collection of essays from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet adressing many issues in contemporary American theater Temporarily putting aside his role as playwright, director, and screen-writer, David Mamet digs deep and delivers thirty outrageously diverse vignettes. On subjects ranging from the vanishing American pool hall, family vacations, and the art of being a bitch, to the role of today's actor, his celebrated contemporaries and predecessors, and his undying commitment to the theater, David Mamet's concise style, lean dialogue, and gut-wrenching honesty give us a unique view of the world as he sees it.

In this riveting account of the explosive relationship between Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover, renowned journalist and author Burton Hersh sets their highly publicized clashes in the context of Joe Kennedy's ongoing manipulation of Congress and his children's careers, and his lifelong connections to organized crime. Theirs was a unique triumvirate, marked by conflict and betrayal, and culminating in a near-Shakespearean tragedy. Based on compelling new research, and told in gripping anecdotal style, Hersh chronicles the complex relationship between the two antagonists, from their early brushes during the McCarthy years to their controversial deaths.

"Riveting."— Science A Forbes , Physics Today , Science News , and Science Friday Best Science Book Of 2018 Cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment, Brian Keating tells the inside story of the mesmerizing quest to unlock cosmology’s biggest mysteries and the human drama that ensued. We follow along on a personal journey of revelation and discovery in the publish-or-perish world of modern science, and learn that the Nobel Prize might hamper—rather than advance—scientific progress. Fortunately, Keating offers practical solutions for reform, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may finally be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.

Genet...Beckett...Burroughs...Miller...Ionesco, Oe, Duras. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Hubert Selby Jr. and John Rechy. The legendary film I Am Curious (Yellow) . The books that assaulted the fort of propriety that was the United States in the 1950s and '60s, Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Tropic of Cancer. The Evergreen Review. Victorian "erotica." The Autobiography of Malcolm X . A bombing, a sit-in, and a near-fistfight with Norman Mailer. The common thread between these disparate elements, a number of which reshaped modern culture, was Barney Rosset. Rosset was the antidote to the trope of the "gentleman publisher" personified by other pioneering figures of the industry such as Alfred A. Knopf, Bennett Cerf and James Laughlin. If Barney saw a crowd heading one way--he looked the other. If he knew something was forbidden, he regarded it as a plus. Unsurprisingly, financial ruin, along with the highs and lows of critical reception, marked his career. But his unswerving dedication to publishing what he wanted made him one of the most influential publishers ever. Rosset began work on his autobiography a decade before his death in 2012, and several publishers and a number of editors worked with him on the project. Now, at last, in his own words, we have a portrait of the man who reshaped how we think about language, literature--and sex. Here are the stories behind the filming of Norman Mailer's Maidstone and Samuel Beckett's Film ; the battles with the US government over Tropic of Cancer and much else; the search for Che's diaries; his romance with the expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, and more. At times appalling, more often inspiring, never boring or conventional: this is Barney Rosset, uncensored. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs; includes index

For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it? In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who--in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written--helps him master his own demons. Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life--and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.

Vintage paperback

Much has been written about Albert Einstein, technical and biographical, but very little remains as valuable as this unique hybrid of a book written by Einstein's colleague and contemporary. Both rich in personal insights and grounded in a deep knowledge of twentieth-century science, Phillip Frank's biography anchors the reader with a lucid overview of physics and draws an intimate portrait of the Nobel Prize–winner.

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh reveals the inner life of Susan Sontag.Providing a unique insight into the mind of one of the leading intellectuals of the modern age, Susan Sontag's As Conscious is Harnessed to Flesh chronicles the cultural, moral, and political journeys of this renowned critic and artist at the height of her powers.As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh follows Sontag through the turbulent years of the late 1960s - from her trip to Hanoi at the peak of the Vietnam War to her time making films in Sweden - up to 1980, just before the beginning of the Reagan era. This is an invaluable record of the inner workings of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power. It is also a remarkable document of on individual's political and moral awakening.'More true to life, both intellectual and emotional, than the most artful novel or careful biography' Sunday Telegraph'Gold dust' Sunday Times'A powerful self-portrait emerges. In its fragmentation . . . and passion, its combination of the erudite and the everyday, it is more true to life, both intellectual and emotional, than the most artful novel or careful biography. It may well be that Sontag's diaries will come to be seen as just as brilliant and important as anything she wrote' Sunday Telegraph'Mesmerising, fascinating' Guardian'Express the fullness and diversity of her intellectual curiosity. Revelatory in the most profound sense: they are existential fragments, self-selected thoughts, emotions, reactions . . . arising in one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century' The TimesOne of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

A comprehensive anthology bringing together more than one thousand of the best American and English song lyrics of the twentieth century; an extraordinary celebration of a unique art form and an indispensable reference work and history that celebrates one of the twentieth century’s most enduring and cherished legacies. Reading Lyrics begins with the first masters of the colloquial phrase, including George M. Cohan (“Give My Regards to Broadway”), P. G. Wodehouse (“Till the Clouds Roll By”), and Irving Berlin, whose versatility and career span the period from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to “Annie Get Your Gun” and beyond. The Broadway musical emerges as a distinct dramatic form in the 1920s and 1930s, its evolution propelled by a trio of lyricists—Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart—whose explorations of the psychological and emotional nuances of falling in and out of love have lost none of their wit and sophistication. Their songs, including “Night and Day,” “The Man I Love,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” have become standards performed and recorded by generation after generation of singers. The lure of Broadway and Hollywood and the performing genius of such artists as Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Ethel Merman inspired a remarkable array of talented writers, including Dorothy Fields (“A Fine Romance,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”), Frank Loesser (“Guys and Dolls”), Oscar Hammerstein II (from the groundbreaking “Show Boat” of 1927 through his extraordinary collaboration with Richard Rodgers), Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, Andy Razaf, Noël Coward, and Stephen Sondheim. Reading Lyrics also celebrates the work of dozens of superb craftsmen whose songs remain known, but who today are themselves less known—writers like Haven Gillespie (whose “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” may be the most widely recorded song of its era); Herman Hupfeld (not only the composer/lyricist of “As Time Goes By” but also of “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” and “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba”); the great light versifier Ogden Nash (“Speak Low,” “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” and, yes, “The Sea-Gull and the Ea-Gull”); Don Raye (“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Mister Five by Five,” and, of course, “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet”); Bobby Troup (“Route 66”); Billy Strayhorn (not only for the omnipresent “Lush Life” but for “Something to Live For” and “A Lonely Coed”); Peggy Lee (not only a superb singer but also an original and appealing lyricist); and the unique Dave Frishberg (“I’m Hip,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Van Lingo Mungo”). The lyricists are presented chronologically, each introduced by a succinct biography and the incisive commentary of Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball.

Mel Tormé is world renowned as a leading jazz vocalist. He has performed in MGM musicals, co-written one of the enduring Christmas classics, "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," and was recently profiled in Life magazine as one of the greatest living jazz singers. But Tormé has also written five books, including The Other Side of the Rainbow, Tormé's account of his year working on the Judy Garland television show--considered the best portrait of Garland ever written. In this book, Tormé writes a brilliant biography of his friend of forty years--the drummer Buddy Rich. Buddy Rich was one of the most famous drummers of the Swing Era, having starred in the Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey bands. After World War II he successfully led several of his own bands. Born into a vaudeville family, Buddy performed on the drums in his parents' act before he was two years old--where he was billed as "Traps, the Drum Wonder"--and became the highest paid child performer in the world by age four. This early fame--and Buddy's abusive father--left psychological scars on Rich, who developed an abrasive personality, and would beat his drums as an outlet for his frustrations. Although a close friend and admirer, Tormé pulls no punches when it comes to describing Rich's occasional outbursts and his sometimes childish pranks. But, as Tormé shows, Buddy could also be charming, affectionate, and funny, as he demonstrated during his frequent appearances as a guest on the Tonight show. We also find tales of Buddy's stormy friendship with Frank Sinatra, and his romance with Lana Turner (Buddy's first serious love affair). More than anything, of course, Rich was a brilliant musician, and he earned many tributes from jazz musicians. Torme shows a deep understanding of the life of a jazzman, and the many challenges and vicissitudes that are involved with it. We learn of the problems of holding a swing band together during an era when bebop ruled, follow Buddy in his search for the perfect snare drum, and observe the many "drum-offs" when Rich proved his unmatchable talent in friendly competition with other talented drummers, such as Gene Krupa. The Buddy Rich story is a fascinating one, as much for what it says about the world of American music and entertainment as for the remarkable life it portrays. Drawing from magazines and many personal reminiscences, Torme's personal touch and his in-depth knowledge of jazz make for a moving, insightful, and often hilarious biography.

THE STORY: HANK WILLIAMS: LOST HIGHWAY is the spectacular musical biography of the legendary singer-songwriter frequently mentioned alongside Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Elvis and Bob Dylan as one of the great innovators of Ame

'Freud's Women' probes biography and case history, mines dreams, correspondence and journals and examines theory to chart Freud's views on the feminine. It also tells the many stories of the women in Freud's life and explores their influences on him.

(Richmond Music Folios). This expanded, revised edition of the Oliver! Vocal Selections contains clean engravings of all the songs from the show, three of which were added new for this publication. Also includes a Lionel Bart biography, plot synopsis, show facts, and background, with many photographs.

In this remarkable book, Jack Rakove offers a new and revealing perspective on the men who shaped the idea of an American nation. Each portrait brims with fresh and fascinating insights- Washington as a flawed tactician but expert manager; Jack Laurens as a slave trader's son who developed a plan to recruit black soldiers; Jefferson as a powerful critic of Europe's social order but a voracious consumer of its culture. Spanning the most crucial decades of the country's birth, Revolutionaries uses the stories of famous (and not so famous) men to capture - in a way no single biography ever could - the intensely creative period of the republic's founding. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Original Meanings- Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.

Fast’s stunning account of the brutal winter at Valley Forge, where thousands of American revolutionaries made a harrowing sacrifice for freedomGeneral George Washington’s twelve thousand soldiers march into Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, under-fed and under-clothed, their frozen feet leaving bloody tracks in the snow. Shortly after the soldiers establish quarters for the cold months ahead, disease begins to rip through the camp. The men, helpless against sickness and despair, are facing the longest winter of their lives—and their survival will determine the fate of their young nation. Passionate and unforgettable, Conceived in Liberty is one of Fast’s rawest accounts of the brutality of the Revolutionary War, and of the heroism of its soldiers. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

On August 2, 1940, as on every other morning for weeks before, a long line of Jewish refugees waited outside the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. Many had already witnessed Nazi atrocities in Poland and other Axis-occupied lands, and they were desperate to escape. To leave Europe they needed foreign transit visas. And at the window, the smiling Japanese consul was issuing them. Before his government closed down the consulate and reassigned him to Berlin, he would issue thousands of such visas.This is the story of Chiune Sugihara, a diplomat and spy who saved as many as 10,000 Jews from deportation to concentration camps and almost certain death, Because of his extreme modesty, Sugihara's tremendous act of moral courage is only now beginning to become widely known.Unlike Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat whose government sent him to Hungary with the express purpose of saving Jews, and Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who at least initially had a vested economic interest in protecting the lives of his Jews, Sugihara had no apparent reason to perform his acts of rescue. Indeed, he acted in direct violation of official Japanese policy, which directed all government and military personnel to cooperate with the murderous policies of their Nazi allies. Examining Sugihara's education and background -- a background shared with the colonial administrators and military men who committed the rape of Nanjing -- author Hillel Levine finds nothing that explains his extraordinary behavior.Levine's search has taken him from the old Japanese consul building in Kaunas (now Kovno), Lithuania, to the Australian outback; across Japan from the rice fields of Sugihara's native town to the boardrooms of conglomerates where his younger schoolmates still hold power. But the more Levine sought answers to Sugihara's puzzling behavior, the more he encountered questions. Remarkably, Chiune Sugihara was not the only Japanese official to save Jews. Yet none was ever punished for insubordination. Was there a secret Japanese plan to save Jews from Nazi genocide?Much Holocaust scholarship focuses on the perpetrators of evil, trying to illuminate what drove ordinary men and women to commit horrifying and murderous acts. But perhaps as difficult to understand is the phenomenon of rescue: what inspired courageous individuals to swim against the tide of cruelty and indifference. This sensitive and nuanced biography concludes that there is no link between a person's background and his moral inclinations. Mercy remains a divine mystery despite our human craving to reduce it to behavioristic formulas.This book does not attempt to explain man's humanity to man. Instead Levine has woven a fascinating narrative of one man's heroic efforts to save lives, in the midst of so many seeking to destroy them.

A "skillful and literate" ( New York Times Book Review ) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer. To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide. With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity?his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor?and elegantly explains his work and its implications.

Theodor Herzl was the founder of modern Zionism. His early life, however, gave little inkling of this. Until 1895 he was no more than a 'boulevardier', a moderately successful playwright, and the Paris correspondent for Vienna's leading newspaper, Die Neue Freie Presse. This biography presents his life.

The son of a prominent Japanese mathematician who came to the United States after World War II, Ken Ono was raised on a diet of high expectations and little praise. Rebelling against his pressure-cooker of a life, Ken determined to drop out of high school to follow his own path. To obtain his father's approval, he invoked the biography of the famous Indian mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan, whom his father revered, who had twice flunked out of college because of his single-minded devotion to mathematics. Ono describes his rocky path through college and graduate school, interweaving Ramanujan's story with his own and telling how at key moments, he was inspired by Ramanujan and guided by mentors who encouraged him to pursue his interest in exploring Ramanujan's mathematical legacy. Picking up where others left off, beginning with the great English mathematician G.H. Hardy, who brought Ramanujan to Cambridge in 1914, Ono has devoted his mathematical career to understanding how in his short life, Ramanujan was able to discover so many deep mathematical truths, which Ramanujan believed had been sent to him as visions from a Hindu goddess. And it was Ramanujan who was ultimately the source of reconciliation between Ono and his parents. Ono's search for Ramanujan ranges over three continents and crosses paths with mathematicians whose lives span the globe and the entire twentieth century and beyond. Along the way, Ken made many fascinating discoveries. The most important and surprising one of all was his own humanity

A biography of the famous Danish writer of fairy tales, interspersed with excerpts from his stories.