As the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have proven, Americans are mad as hell about the problems facing our country. George Noory hears these problems every night, all night, and this is how he would deal with them. This is Mad as Hell. --- I'm angry because sometimes I feel like a stranger in America. We live in a dangerous world that is sorely in need of an effective political system that deals with the ongoing destruction of the middle class, an aging population, permeable borders, technology out of control, and shocking, mindless violence and wars. But we can bring back the America that makes us proud. It will take hard work and pulling together as a society. People are stressed because they don't know where the world is heading or where it is taking them. With a radio show heard by millions, I consider myself not an entertainer or someone to dictate how we should live, but a facilitator who can help guide the path chosen. I have been called a voice in the darkness. The concepts I deal with are not only on the cutting edge of science and technology, but with subjects as provocative as aliens and angels, as challenging as supervolcanos and the fire and brimstone of the End Time. Join me by reading why I am mad . . . and maybe you will get as angry as I am about conditions in the country we love.

In 2018, after receiving a life-changing diagnosis, broadcaster Gareth O'Callaghan retired from full-time work and gave up the career that he had loved for decades. In this deeply personal and inspiring memoir he tells that story, from the moments after his doctor uttered the words Multiple System Atrophy - a progressive and incurable neurological disease that ultimately carries a fatal prognosis - to his struggle to come to terms with a life unplanned. Recounted with insight and searing honesty, What Matters Now reveals how, regardless of circumstance, we can choose how we live, to the fullest. A stunning and life-affirming account of the power of the human spirit, and the potential for hope even in the darkest times. "For me, this is not a choice. It's all I want, namely a full and loving life that I strive to choose every day over everything else - considering that maybe the big odds are heavily stacked against that. But I don't care what the odds might be; I'll keep defying them for as long as I can keep fighting and living."

In Australian Theatre after the New Wave, Julian Meyrick charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian theatre companies, the Paris Theatre (1978), the Hunter Valley Theatre (1976-94) and Anthill Theatre (1980-94). In the years following the controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam's Labor government in 1975, these 'alternative' theatres struggled to survive in an increasingly adverse economic environment. Drawing on interviews and archival sources, including Australia Council files and correspondence, the book examines the funding structures in which the companies operated, and the impact of the cultural policies of the period. It analyses the changing relationship between the artist and the State, the rise of a managerial ethos of 'accountability', and the growing dominance of government in the fate of the nation's theatre. In doing so, it shows the historical roots of many of the problems facing Australian theatre today. "This is an exceptionally timely book... In giving a history of Australian independent theatre it not only charts the amazing rise and strange disappearance of an energetic, radical and dynamically democratic artistic movement, but also tries to explain that rise and fall, and how we should relate to it now." - Prof. Justin O'Connor, Monash University "This study makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Australian theatre and, more broadly... to the global discussion about the vexed relationship between artists, creativity, government funding for the arts and cultural policy." - Dr. Gillian Arrighi, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Studs Terkel was an American icon who had no use for America's cult of celebrity. He was a leftist who valued human beings over political dogma. In scores of books and thousands of radio and television broadcasts, Studs paid attention - and respect - to "ordinary" human beings of all classes and colours, as they talked about their lives as workers, dreamers, survivors. Alan Wieder's Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, But Mostly Conversation is the first comprehensive book about this man. Drawing from over fifty interviews of people who knew and worked with Studs, Alan Wieder creates a multi-dimensional portrait of a run-of-the-mill guy from Chicago who, in public life, became an acclaimed author and raconteur, while managing, in his private life, to remain a mensch. We see Studs, the eminent oral historian, the inveterate and selfless supporter of radical causes, especially civil rights. We see the actor, the writer, the radio host, the jazz lover, whose early work in television earned him a notorious place on the McCarthy blacklist. We also see Studs the family man and devoted husband to his adored wife, Ida. Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, But Mostly Conversation allows us to realize the importance of reaching through our own daily realities - increasingly clogged with disembodied, impersonal interaction - to find value in actual face-time with real humans. Wieder's book also shows us why such contact might be crucial to those of us in movements rising up against global tyranny and injustice. The book is simply the best introduction available to this remarkable man. Reading it will lead people to Terkel's enormous body of work, with benefits they will cherish thr