In David Mamet’s latest play, a male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and in a terrifyingly short time become the participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition. Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse. From the Trade Paperback edition.

"Described as 'America's greatest living playwright' (Wall Street Journal), Kenneth Lonergan is internationally acclaimed for his trademark humour and his genius for capturing the real heart and soul of human interactions. This volume gathers together three of his landmark plays. This Is Our Youth (1996) is a wildly funny, bittersweet and lacerating look at three days in the lives of three affluent young Manhattanites in the 1980s. Its West End premiere in 2002 was notable for its successive casts of young Hollywood stars, including Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anna Paquin and Summer Phoenix. 'A rambunctious and witty play... caustic, cruel, compassionate' The New York Times. The Waverly Gallery (1999) is a poignant, generous and frequently hilarious play about a feisty grandmother's last battle against Alzheimer's disease. More than a memory play, it captures the humour and strength of a family in the face of crisis. It was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and revived on Broadway in 2018 to widespread acclaim. 'Both one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see in a Broadway theatre and one of the most profoundly sad' Chicago Tribune. Lobby Hero (2001) tells the story of a luckless young security guard trying to get his life together after being thrown out of the navy. But working in a lobby proves to be no sanctuary from the world, as he is unwittingly drawn into a murder investigation. The play received its British premiere at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2002, and was also revived on Broadway in 2018. 'Artfully intertwines private and public issues... [Lonergan] has the lightest of touches and writes with deft humour' Guardian. Kenneth Lonergan is an American film director, playwright and screenwriter. He wrote and directed the films You Can Count On Me, Margaret and Manchester by the Sea, for which he won the 2017 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. This collection, published alongside the UK premiere of Lonergan's The Starry Messenger in 2019, also features an exclusive introduction by the author."--Provided by publisher.

In this rich and savvy collection of commentaries on the events, people and issues that shape and define our world, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and "New York Times" bestselling author Ellen Goodman cuts to the heart of the stories and controversies that helped to define our times. For over twenty-five years, nationally syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman has been training her lens on contemporary American life. A marvelously direct writer with keen insight into what makes the average American tick, laugh and occasionally boil with rage, Goodman takes her measure of the national psyche in a voice that is at once perceptive, witty and deeply humane. "Paper Trail," her first collection in more than ten years, journeys through an era that has been golden in its advances and bleak in its disappointments. In a voice both reasoned and impassioned, she makes sense of the cultural debates that have captured our attention and sometimes become national obsessions. She wrestles with the close-to-the-bone issues of abortion, working mothers and gay marriage, the struggles for civil liberties and equal rights, and the moral complexity of assisted suicide and biotech babies. As she wends through the era of the Clinton scandals and the "amBushing" of America, the dot-com boom and bust, the horrors of September 11 and the War on Terrorism, Goodman pauses to celebrate some of our lost icons, including Jackie Onassis, Princess Diana and Doctor Spock. She reminds us as well of the fleeting fame of such instant celebrities as Elian Gonzalez and Lorena Bobbitt. The lines that separate public and private life dissolve under Goodman's scrutiny as she shows us how Washington politics, SiliconValley technology and the national media culture infiltrate our jobs, relationships and minds. With the trademark clarity that readers count on, she walks us through the dilemmas posed by new technologies that range from cloning to cell phones and makes us laugh at the vagaries of Viagra and Botox and unreality TV. And in a world that sometimes seems to be stuck on fast forward, she holds on to values as timeless as a family Thanksgiving and a summer porch in Maine. Including more than 160 of Ellen Goodman's lively and stylish columns, this timely collection walks us along the paper trail in a voice that is both crystal clear and original.

Reissued in a new trade paperback format and design, "This richly researched, sensitively edited, annotated volume portrays indelibly, in their own words, the lives of American black women before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. . . ". Following a successful run in New York, an acclaimed stage adaptation of this work is touring nationally in 1997. Photos.

In these mordant, elegant, and often disquieting essays, the internationally acclaimed dramatist creates a sort of autobiography by strobe light, one that is both mysterious and starkly revealing. The pieces in The Cabin are about places and things: the suburbs of Chicago, where as a boy David Mamet helplessly watched his stepfather terrorize his sister; New York City, where as a young man he had to eat his way through a mountain of fried matzoh to earn a night of sexual bliss. They are about guns, campaign buttons, and a cabin in the Vermont woods that stinks of wood smoke and kerosene -- and about their associations of pleasure, menace, and regret. The resulting volume may be compared to the plays that have made Mamet famous: it is finely crafted and deftly timed, and its precise language carries an enormous weight of feeling. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

A master of the art of the essay, Mary McCarthy's 'On the Contrary' offers a thoughtful and incisive exploration of the issues and ideas that defined mid-century America. Whether reflecting on the challenges of feminism, the contradictions of politics, or the complexities of art and culture, McCarthy brings her trademark wit and erudition to bear on a wide range of topics. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic groups. Drawing on a wide range of materials in four languages as well as on her lifetime study of slave groups in the New World, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall explores the persistence of African ethnic identities among the enslaved over four hundred years of the Atlantic slave trade. Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared culture. Hall concludes that recognition of the survival and persistence of African ethnic identities can fundamentally reshape how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the elements of common African ethnic traditions that influenced regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.

With his dynamic on-air personality and his trademark cry of "Burn, baby! BURN!" when spinning the hottest new records, Magnificent Montague was the charismatic voice of soul music in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. In this memoir Montague recounts the events of his momentous radio career, which ran from the era of segregation to that of the civil rights movement; as he does so, he also tells the broader story of a life spent in the passionate pursuit of knowledge, historical and musical. Like many black disc jockeys of his day, Montague played a role in his community beyond simply spreading the music of James Brown, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and other prominent artists. Montague served as an unofficial spokesman for his black listeners, reflecting their beliefs and acting as a sounding board for their concerns. Montague was based in Los Angeles in 1965 when the Watts rioters seized on his incendiary slogan, turning the shout of musical appreciation into a rallying cry for racial violence. In Burn, Baby! BURN! Montague recalls these tumultuous times, including the personal struggle he faced over whether to remain true to his listeners or bend to political pressure and stop shouting his suddenly controversial slogan. Since the mid-1950s Montague had also expressed his passion for African American culture by becoming a zealous collector of artifacts of black history. He has built a monumental collection, taking time out from his collecting to become only the second African American to build his own radio station literally from the ground up. A compelling account of a rich and varied life, Burn, Baby! BURN! gives an insider's view of half a century of black history, told with on-the-air zest by the DJ/historian who was there to see it unfold.

Bloch Chana..~ THE SECRETS OF THE TRIBE: Poems..~ New York:: The Sheep Meadow Press,, 1980.~ Very good+ in stiff glossy wrappers (some curling to the cover, inconspicuous black line on bottom edge.). First printing, a trade paperback, issued simultaneously with hardcover. An uncommon and very early collection by this award winning poet and translator. 59 pp.