For many diehard music fans and critics, Oklahoma-born James Talley ranks among the finest of American singer-songwriters. Talley's unique style-a blend of folk, country, blues, and social commentary-draws comparisons with the likes of Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash. In this engaging, down-to-earth memoir, Talley recalls the highs and lows of his nearly fifty-year career in country music. Talley's story begins in the hardscrabble towns of eastern Oklahoma. As a young man, he witnessed poverty and despair and worked alongside ordinary Americans who struggled to make ends meet. He has never forgotten his Oklahoma roots. These experiences shaped Talley's artistic vision and inspired him to write his own songs. Eventually Talley landed in Nashville, where his first years included exciting brushes with fame but also bitter disappointments. As an early champion of social justice causes, his ideals did not fit neatly into Nashville's star-making machine. By his own admission, Talley at times made poor business decisions and trusted the wrong people. His relationship with the country music industry was-and still is-fraught, but he makes no apology for staying true to his core principles. Nashville City Blues offers hard-won wisdom for any aspiring artist motivated to work hard and handle whatever setbacks might follow. Readers will also gain valuable understanding about the country music industry and the inescapable links between commerce and artistry.

Brigid Brophy first published her passionate, profoundly original Mozart the Dramatist in 1964, revisiting it subsequently in 1988. Organised by theme, the text offers brilliant readings of Mozart's five most famous operas - Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and Die Zauberfloete - while a 1988 preface reconsiders Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito. Brophy's analysis is richly informed by her readings and interests in psychoanalysis, myth, and relations between the sexes, but her stress above all is on Mozart's 'unique excellence', his 'double supremacy' both as a 'classical' and 'psychological' artist. 'An illuminating, invigorating, thought-provoking and profoundly human book, of immense value to any lover of Mozart.' Jane Glover 'No one has ever written better on Mozart.' Peter Conrad, Observer 'Immensely enjoyable.' Peter Gay, London Review of Books

What distinguishes modern tragedy from other forms of drama? How does it relate to contemporary political and social conditions? To what ends have artists employed the tragic form in different locations during the 20th century? Partly motivated by the urgency of our current situation in an age of ecocidal crisis, Modern Tragedy encompasses a variety of drama from throughout the 20th century. James Moran begins this book with John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904), which shows how environmental awareness might be expressed through tragic drama. Moran also looks at Brecht's reworking of Synge's drama in the 1937 play Senora Carrar's Rifles, and situates Brecht's script in the light of the theatre practitioner's broader ideas about tragedy. Brecht's tragic thinking - informed by Hegel and Marx - is contrasted with the Schopenhauerian approach of Samuel Beckett. The volume goes on to examine theatre makers whose ideas were partly motivated by applying an understanding of the tragic narrative of Synge's Riders to the Sea to postcolonial contexts. Looking at Derek Walcott's The Sea at Dauphin (1954), and J.P. Clark's The Goat (1961), Modern Tragedy explores how tragedy, a form that is often associated with regressive assumptions about hegemony, might be rethought, and how aspects of the tragic may coincide with the experiences and concerns of authors and audiences of colour.

Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and The Secrets of the Jedi is the ultimate in-universe guide to the world of the Jedi, transporting young readers to a galaxy far, far away through interactive features, fascinating facts, and captivating insights. With thrilling original illustrations and amazing special features including lift-the-flaps, textures, and more, Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and The Secrets of the Jedi is guaranteed to thrill the saga's legions of young fans.

The Innocence of Memories is an important addition to the oeuvre of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Comprised of the screenplay of the acclaimed film by Grant Gee from 2015 (by the same name), a transcript of the author and filmmaker in conversation, and captivating colour stills, it is an essential volume for understanding Pamuk's work.

Drawing on the themes from Pamuk's best-selling books, The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul and The Black Book, this book is both an accompaniment to the author's previous publications and a wonderfully revelatory exploration of Orhan Pamuk's key ideas about art, love, and memory.

Take a tour through the colourful worlds of Marvel's Spider-Verse in this comprehensive guidebook detailing the lives of its many web-slingers. Follow Gwen Stacy-better known as Ghost-Spider-as she jumps between dimensions visiting the countless friendly (and some not-so-friendly) neighborhood Spider-folk whom she has met in her adventures across the Marvel Multiverse. From Peter Parker to Miles Morales, from Spider-Ham to Spider-Man 2099, more than 60 of Gwen's iconic wall-crawling colleagues are profiled here, each illustrated with amazing original art. Thrilling and vibrant, this arachnophile's treasury is a must-have collectible for every Spider-fan!

Two-time Peabody Award-winning writer and producer Ira Rosen reveals the intimate, untold stories of his decades at America's most iconic news show. It's a 60 Minutesstory on 60 Minutes itself. When producer Ira Rosen walked into the 60 Minutes offices in June 1980, he knew he was about to enter television history. His career catapulted him to the heights of TV journalism, breaking some of the most important stories in TV news. But behind the scenes was a war room of clashing producers, anchors, and the most formidable 60 Minutes figure: legendary correspondent Mike Wallace. Based on decades of access and experience, Ira Rosen takes readers behind closed doors to offer an incisive look at the show that invented TV investigative journalism. With surprising humor, charm, and an eye for colorful detail, Rosen delivers an authoritative account of the unforgettable personalities that battled for prestige, credit, and the desire to scoop everyone else in the game. As one of Mike Wallace's top producers, Rosen reveals the interview secrets that made Wallace's work legendary, and the flaring temper that made him infamous. Later, as senior producer of ABC News Primetime Live and 20/20, Rosen exposes the competitive environment among famous colleagues like Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, and the power plays between correspondents Chris Wallace, Anderson Cooper, and Chris Cuomo. A master class in how TV news is made, Rosen shows readers how 60 Minutes puts together a story when sources are explosive, unreliable, and even dangerous. From unearthing shocking revelations from inside the Trump White House, to an outrageous proposition from Ghislaine Maxwell, to interviewing gangsters Joe Bonanno and John Gotti, Jr., Ira Rosen was behind the scenes of some of 60 Minutes' most sensational stories. Highly entertaining, dishy, and unforgettable, Ticking Clock is a never-before-told account of the most successful news show in American history.

Steven Spielberg is responsible for some of the most successful films ever made: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and the 'Indiana Jones' series. Yet for many years most critics condescendingly regarded Spielberg as a child-man incapable of dealing maturely with the complexities of life. The deeper levels of meaning in his films were largely ignored. This changed with Schindler's List, his masterpiece about a gentile businessman who saves eleven hundred Jews from the Holocaust. For Spielberg, the film was the culmination of a long struggle with his Jewish identity - an identity of which he had long been ashamed, but now triumphantly embraced. Until the first edition of Steven Spielberg: A Biography was published in 1997, much about Spielberg's personality and the forces that shaped it had remained enigmatic, in large part because of his tendency to obscure and mythologize his own past. In his astute and perceptive biography, Joseph McBride reconciled Spielberg's seeming contradictions and produced a coherent portrait of the man who found a way to transmute the anxieties of his own childhood into some of the most emotionally powerful and viscerally exciting films ever made. In the second edition, McBride added four chapters to Spielberg's life story, chronicling his extraordinarily active and creative period from 1997 to 2010, a period in which he balanced his executive duties as one of the partners in the film studio DreamWorks SKG with a remarkable string of films as a director: Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A. I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, The Terminal and Munich -- films which expanded his range both stylistically and in terms of adventurous, often controversial, subject matter. This third edition brings Spielberg's career up to date with material on two recent films he directed, The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse, analyzing what they represent in terms of Spielberg's overall career development as an artist making both lighter and darker works alternately involving fantasy or history. The new sections also deal with the recent upheavals in Spielberg's position as a minimogul, his uneven but prolific work as a producer, and his upcoming projects. The original edition of Steven Spielberg: A Biography was praised by the New York Times Book Review as 'an exemplary portrait' written with 'impressive detail and sensitivity'; Time called it 'easily the finest and fairest of the unauthorized biographies of the director.' Of the second edition, Nigel Morris - author of The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light - wrote: 'With this tour de force, McBride remains the godfather of Spielberg studies.'

Adopting an innovative and theoretical approach, Greek Tragedy and the Digital is an original study of the encounter between Greek tragedy and digital media in contemporary performance. It challenges Greek tragedy conventions through the contemporary arsenal of sound masks, avatars, live code poetry, new media art and digital cognitive experimentations. These technological innovations in performances of Greek tragedy shed new light on contemporary transformations and adaptations of classical myths, while raising emerging questions about how augmented reality works within interactive and immersive environments. Drawing on cutting-edge productions and theoretical debates on performance and the digital, this collection considers issues including performativity, liveness, immersion, intermediality, aesthetics, technological fragmentation, conventions of the chorus, theatre as hypermedia and reception theory in relation to Greek tragedy. Case studies include Kzryztof Warlikowski, Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, Katie Mitchell, Georges Lavaudant, The Wooster Group, Labex Arts-H2H, Akram Khan, Urland & Crew, Medea Electronique, Robert Wilson, Klaus Obermaier, Guy Cassiers, Luca di Fusco, Ivo Van Hove, Avra Sidiropoulou and Jay Scheib. This is an incisive, interdisciplinary study that serves as a practice model for conceptualizing the ways in which Greek tragedy encounters digital culture in contemporary performance.

Helen Lewis' acclaimed memoir, A Time to Speak (Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1997), tells the story of the first thirty years of her life in Czechoslovakia, from childhood to her professional training as a choreographer and dancer. It also contains her devastating account of Nazi persecution, of loss and suffering in the Holocaust: Helen came very close to death. Maddy Tongue now completes the story of this extraordinary woman who overcame unimaginable suffering to become a creative force in Ireland. The author's friendship with Helen lasted for more than fifty years. As a dancer she performed in many of Helen's significant works. Shadows Behind the Dance describes Helen's creative approach, her struggle to overcome an Irish indifference to modern dance, her pursuit of perfection and her unshakeable belief in humanity. In Ireland today the presence of modern dance owes much to her innovative teaching and practice. Shadows Behind the Dance is supplemented with Chris Agee's 2002 interview with Helen, "An Irish Epilogue", and a folio of Holocaust poems and drawings by Michael Longley and Sarah Longley (who was a pupil of Helen's). Helen's sons, Robin and Michael, have also written a Foreword. The book has been generously funded through subscription by family, friends, colleagues and admirers of the unforgettable Helen Lewis.