"The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan's first book of new writing since 2004's Chronicles: Volume One and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers a master class on the art and craft of songwriting. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan's unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work's transcendence. In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years, and like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement"

Hollywood historian and film reviewer Leonard Maltin invites readers to pull up a chair and listen as he tells stories, many of them hilarious, of 50+ years interacting with legendary movie stars, writers, directors, producers, and cartoonists. Maltin grew up in the first decade of television, immersing himself in TV programs and accessing 1930s and '40s movies hitting the small screen. His fan letters to admired performers led to unexpected correspondences, then to interviews and publication of his own fan magazine. Maltin's career as a free-lance writer and New York Times-bestselling author as well as his 30-year run on Entertainment Tonight, gave him access to Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Shirley Temple, and Jimmy Stewart among hundreds of other Golden Age stars, his interviews cutting through the Hollywood veneer and revealing the human behind each legend. Starstruck also offers a fascinating glimpse inside the Disney empire, and Maltin's tenure teaching USC's popular film course reveals insights into moviemaking along with access to past, current, and future stars of film, such as George Lucas, Kevin Feige, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro.

An inspiring memoir about love, race, identity, and contested narratives told with unflinching mettle. Through her childhood spent in 1940s New York being raised by two mothers, her work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement, and raising her own children in the coalfields of West Virginia, Faith S. Holsaert has been defined by the intertwined forces of race, activism, and family. As a young woman on the front line of the Civil Rights Movement, she learned the power of contested narratives and came to understand her whiteness, her queer identity, and her stakes in overturning racism. Later in life, she confronted sexual abuse and mental illness across three generations of women in her family to find that these painful histories have played a significant role in the development of her identity as a woman, activist, and mother. Through a lifetime laid bare in prose and poetry, Holsaert beautifully quilts memoir, social history, and historic events into a gripping and inspirational narrative. This powerful and structurally innovative work lends new categories of meaning to those who would strive to find their place, hope, and sense of belonging in efforts to fight against systemic racism and lead lives characterized by openness and love.

The oral history of a renowned Czech writer, whose optimism and faith in people survived grueling experiences under authoritarian regimes. Heda Margolius Kovály (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street --based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression--was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between Kovály and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestíková. In it, Kovály recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slánsky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovály, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity. Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestíková has made over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan.

An informative memoir of kibbutz life that reveal a piece of Israel's early story that should not be forgotten.

As the founder of financial futures and initiator of Globex, the world's first global electronic trading system, Leo Melamed revolutionized the finance industry. Man of the Futures, his definitive memoir, recounts Melamed's journey from Holocaust survivor and accidental runner at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), to one of the most prominent leaders in the world of finance. At 33, Melamed gave up a promising law career to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time pit-trader at the CME. He quickly ascended the ranks to become chairman. From there, he set out to disrupt the status quo and ultimately transform both the exchange itself and the broader finance industry. Through daring to embrace innovative ideas many considered absurd, Melamed was a pioneer, continually fighting for modernisation in the financial markets through diversification and the introduction of new technologies. Covering the internal battles waged within the CME, the launch of the International Monetary Market (IMM) and the rise of Globex, this enthralling autobiography details the struggles, scandals and triumphs of a visionary in his field. Together with behind-the-scenes reminiscences about the financial markets, this narrative delves into Melamed's philanthropic work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as his fascinating dealings with political figures at home in Chicago, at the White House, and around the world in China, Japan, Singapore, Great Britain, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil. . Man of the Futures offers exclusive access to the rationale behind some of the biggest financial decisions and dealings in the late 20th and early 21st century. Join Leo Melamed for this fascinating and revealing story of a life lived in pursuit of the future. --

"Defying the binary and Eurocentric view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ella Shohat's work, as a whole, dares to engage the deeper historical and cultural questions swirling around colonialism, Orientalism, and nationalism. Spanning several decades, Shohat's work has introduced conceptual frameworks that have fundamentally challenged the conventional understandings of Arabs and Jews, Palestine, Zionism, and the Middle East. Collected now in a single volume, this book gathers together some of her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies, and memoirs for the first time"--

"Defying the binary and Eurocentric view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ella Shohat's work, as a whole, dares to engage the deeper historical and cultural questions swirling around colonialism, Orientalism, and nationalism. Spanning several decades, Shohat's work has introduced conceptual frameworks that have fundamentally challenged the conventional understandings of Arabs and Jews, Palestine, Zionism, and the Middle East. Collected now in a single volume, this book gathers together some of her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies, and memoirs for the first time"--