Miami, 1963. A young boy from Louisville, Kentucky, is on the path to becoming the greatest sportsman of all time. Cassius Clay is training in the 5th Street Gym for his heavyweight title clash against the formidable Sonny Liston. He is beginning to embrace the ideas and attitudes of Black Power, and firebrand preacher Malcolm X will soon become his spiritual adviser. Thus Cassius Clay will become 'Cassius X' as he awaits his induction into the Nation of Islam. Cassius also befriends the legendary soul singer Sam Cooke, falls in love with soul singer Dee Dee Sharp and becomes a remarkable witness to the first days of soul music. As with his award-winning soul trilogy, Stuart Cosgrove's intensive research and sweeping storytelling shines a new light on how black music lit up the sixties against a backdrop of social and political turmoil - and how Cassius Clay made his remarkable transformation into Muhammad Ali.

This book is my journey, from listening to the music my older brother listened to in the mid-1950s to working with bands and entertainers from the '60s to the '80s. It is filled with stories regarding bands and entertainers I worked with, managed, and knew. I learned a lot of lessons over the years, from some very high-level entertainment businesspeople and artists that helped and inspired me in today's business world. I hope you enjoy the book.

This book is written for those who suffer from severe and persistant mental illness. It is about the trials of a man with the illness and how he reached from poverty and despair to the heights of obtaining an MSW and LCSW. It is also written for Literary students with a specific style of writing. Students of Counseling, Social Work, Psychology, and Psychiatry will get a realistic view of what the illness is like and can do. It is an autobiographical, educational, and inspirational experience that needs told

Steven Spielberg is hailed as one of the most influential and commercially successful film directors in motion picture history. Through his role in developing, directing, and driving the special effects of many of the biggest blockbusters in movie history, includingJaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and Minority Report, Spielberg changed the way movies are made and left an indelible mark on popular culture. This biography traces his rise from shooting films as a shy young boy with the family's 8 mm camera to his first unpaid job at Universal Studios, to the rise of DreamWorks, the studio Spielberg founded and quickly turned into a filmmaking powerhouse. While Spielberg's best work may lie ahead, this compelling biography puts his legendary career and work to date into perspective by offering analysis and commentary from fans and critics alike. Whether about an alien lost in suburbia or the battles of World War II, Spielberg has directed and produced many of the most talked about movies of the past 30 years. Students interested in the history of film and the filmmaking industry will find this biography endlessly fascinating. A timeline of significant events, a bibliography of print and electronic resources, and photographs round out this biography.

(FAQ). Although countless books and articles have been written about Lucille Ball, most people know only the surface details of her personal life and some basic facts about her popular television series. Lucille Ball FAQ takes us beyond the "Lucy" character to give readers information that might not be common knowledge about one of the world's most beloved entertainers. It can be read straight through, but the FAQ format also invites readers to pick it up and dig in at any point. Background information and anecdotes are provided in such categories as * People Lucy found funny * Lucy at home: her various residences throughout the years * Movie/television/radio/theater projects that never materialized * Lucy's off-camera romantic attachments James Sheridan and Barry Monush go beyond the well known facts, making this an indispensable book for all Lucille Ball fans

Fanny Elssler was one of the most brilliant stars of the Romantic ballet. The accepted rival of Taglioni, she represented the passionate expression of the dance. Theophile Gautier distinguished the two ballerinas by describing Elssler as a pagan dancer and Taglioni as a Christian dancer. There was no doubt that it was Elssler he preferred. Her style found its true expression in her famous Spanish character dance: the Cachucha, but even more, it was her dramatic genius that conquered the audiences before whom she appeared. She approached, more closely than any other ballerina of her time, the ideal of the complete dancer-actress, and her example lives on today in the tradition which modern ballerinas follow in the role of Giselle. In Ivor Guest's biography her performances come vividly to life through eye-witness accounts, and the story of her life is told with a wealth of detail, much of it hitherto unpublished. Among the highlights are Elssler's adventurous tour of the United States (she was the first great ballerina to cross the Atlantic), her fantastic triumphs in Russia, her sentimental friendship with the great publicist, Gentz, and the persistent legend of her liaison with the son of Napoleon. Based on wide research, this is a definitive study of one of the greatest figures in the history of ballet.

Rocking the Wall explores the epic Bruce Springsteen concert in East Berlin on July 19, 1988, and how it changed the world. Erik Kirschbaum spoke to scores of fans and concert organizers on both sides of the Berlin Wall, including Jon Landau, Springsteen's long-time friend and manager, to unearth this fascinating story. With lively behind-the-scenes details from eyewitness accounts, magazine and newspaper clippings, TV recordings, and even Stasi files, as well as photos and memorabilia, this gripping book transports you back in the middle of those heady times shortly before the Berlin Wall fell and gives you a front-row spot at one of the biggest and most exciting rock concerts ever, anywhere. It takes you to an unforgettable journey with Springsteen through the divided city, to his hotel, and his dressing room at the open air concert grounds in Weissensee, where The Boss, live on stage, delivered a courageous speech against the Wall to a record-breaking crowd of more than 300,000 delirious young East Germans full of joy and hope. Their thunderous reaction to his speech was so intense that it even briefly brought tears to Springsteen's eyes. And their tremendous, powerful cry for freedom became the "final nail in the coffin" of the Communist regime and subsequently helped fuel the uprising that brought down the Wall.

Erik Kirschbaum, a native of New York City and long-time Springsteen fan, has lived in Germany for more than twenty-five years and in Berlin since 1993. He is a correspondent for the Reuters international news agency and has written about entertainment, politics, sports, economics, as well as disasters and climate change in nearly thirty countries. He is a devoted father of four, an enthusiastic cyclist, a solar power entrepreneur and an unabashed crusader for renewable energy. Rocking the Wall is his third book.

Praise for Rocking The Wall

Inside this book is as clear a statement of the power of this music as anyone, ever, has come up with." -Dave Marsh

"An illuminating and impressively detailed examination of a frequently overlooked moment in the nexus of rock music and political liberation. I learned a great deal and enjoyed doing so." -Eric Alterman

Just a Boy from Home With songs, stories and recipes Bill Bourke shared this entire book from memory. It contains stories and historical facts about the Catholic Church, the striping of the land after the South gained independence and the words to an IRA song, The Dublin Trials that his father sang. There are many more songs of Mayo, poems and expressions that otherwise could possibly be forgotten or lost if he had not agreed to sit for many hours reminiscing. You will read about Patrick Shannon, a Mayo man who was a hero in World War I. Also, how his good friend Michael Fitzpatrick received his American citizenship 52 years after his untimely death in Korea. Bill tells of the Irish camaraderie that was already present in Chicago upon his arrival and how he got a job being Just a Boy from Home. The singing and dancing that was found in the neighborhood pubs and said, "Oh, the fun we had " But, still the innate loneliness that could be felt in a room full of people for the mother he left behind in the tiny cottage, at the end of the road, in the Village of Ballymacredmond, near the town of Ballina, in the County of Mayo, Ireland. Bill married Kitty Morley, a young girl form County Mayo and continues his training as to be an Engineer Santa Fe Railroad. It has taken a lifetime of trials, errors and successes to create the foundation for his family that is now continuing to flourish in the great city of Chicago in the United States of America.

The authoritative Beethoven biography, endorsed by and produced in close collaboration with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, is timed for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. With unprecedented access to the archives at the Beethoven House in Bonn, renowned Beethoven conductor and scholar Jan Caeyers expertly weaves together a deeply human and complex image of Beethoven-his troubled youth, his unpredictable mood swings, his desires, relationships, and conflicts with family and friends, the mysteries surrounding his affair with the "immortal beloved," and the dramatic tale of his deafness. Caeyers also offers new insights into Beethoven's music and its gradual transformation from the work of a skilled craftsman into that of a consummate artist. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast scholarship on this iconic composer, Caeyers brings Beethoven's world alive with elegant prose, memorable musical descriptions, and vivid depictions of Bonn and Vienna-the cities where Beethoven produced and performed his works. Caeyers explores how Beethoven's career was impacted by the historical and philosophical shifts taking place in the music world, and conversely, how his own trajectory changed the course of the music industry. Equal parts absorbing cultural history and lively biography, Beethoven, A Life paints a complex portrait of the musical genius who redefined the musical style of his day and went on to become one of the great pillars of Western art music.

For forty years, Jackie Frame stood at the center of business, entertainment, and publicity in Classic Hollywood. This stunning collection of never before told vignettes reveals that lost world in all its splendor and with all its quirks. No scholar of the period will be able to reconstruct its dynamics, and no fan will be able to appreciate the film and music of those exciting times, without a careful consideration of these scintillating and revelatory memoirs by a true Hollywood insider. Jackie Frame's journey from suburban England to the entertainment capital of the world is itself a truly remarkable twentieth-century tale.