The Penguin Classics debut that inspired a classic film and a current Broadway revival
Reginald Rose's landmark American drama was a critically acclaimed teleplay, and went on to become a cinematic masterpiece in 1957 starring Henry Fonda, for which Rose wrote the adaptation. A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, "Twelve Angry Men" holds at its core a deeply patriotic belief in the U.S. legal system. The story's focal point, known only as Juror Eight, is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their personal biases. Rose deliberately and carefully peels away the layers of artifice from the men and allows a fuller picture of America, at its best and worst, to form.

The complete third season of the action drama series featuring a covert team of Special Forces operatives risking their lives on undercover missions in far-flung locations. Episodes comprise: 'Pandemonium: Part 1', 'Pandemonium: Part 2', 'Always Kiss Them Goodbye', 'Every Step You Take', 'Inside Out', 'M.P.s', 'Five Brothers', 'Play 16', 'Binary Explosion', 'Gone Missing' and 'Side Angle Slide'.

Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this is a classic work on the power and importance of drama by renowned American playwright, screenwriter and essayist David Mamet. In this short but arresting series of essays, David Mamet explains the necessity, purpose and demands of drama. A celebration of the ties that bind art to life, Three Uses of the Knife is an enthralling read for anyone who has sat anxiously waiting for the lights to go up on Act 1. In three tightly woven essays of characteristic force and resonance, Mamet speaks about the connection of art to life, language to power, imagination to survival, public spectacle to private script. Self-assured and filled with autobiographical touches Three Uses of the Knife is a call to art and arms, a manifesto that reminds us of the singular power of the theatre to keep us sane, whole and human.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "Savagery appeased can only grow. Once you give in to it, it must escalate, like a fire searching for air." The man who won the Pulitzer Prize for GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, who wrote the classic films THE VERDICT and WAG THE DOG sounds his alarm about the Visigoths at our gates. In RECESSIONAL he calls out, skewers, mocks, and, most importantly, dissects the virus of conformity which is now an existential threat to the West. A broad-ranging journey through history, the Bible, and literature, RECESSIONAL examines how politics and cultural attitudes about rebellion have shifted in the United States in the last generation. By screaming down freedom of thought and expression, Mamet explains, we kill invention and democracy - the foundations of security and growth. A wickedly funny, wistful and wry appeal to the free-thinking citizen, RECESSIONAL is a vital warning that if we don't confront the cultural thuggery now, the commissars and their dupes will transform the Land of the Free into the dictatorship at which they aim.

A big-shouldered, big-trouble thriller set in mobbed-up 1920s Chicago--a city where some people knew too much, and where everyone should have known better--by the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Untouchables and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross. Mike Hodge--veteran of the Great War, big shot of the Chicago Tribune, medium fry--probably shouldn't have fallen in love with Annie Walsh. Then, again, maybe the man who killed Annie Walsh have known better than to trifle with Mike Hodge. In Chicago, David Mamet has created a bracing, kaleidoscopic page-turner that roars through the Windy City's underground on its way to a thunderclap of a conclusion. Here is not only his first novel in more than two decades, but the book he has been building to for his whole career. Mixing some of his most brilliant fictional creations with actual figures of the era, suffused with trademark Mamet Speak, richness of voice, pace, and brio, and exploring--as no other writer can--questions of honor, deceit, revenge, and devotion, Chicago is that rarest of literary creations: a book that combines spectacular elegance of craft with a kinetic wallop as fierce as the February wind gusting off Lake Michigan.

Mamet's ground-breaking and controversial play on the male-female power struggle, annotated with an introduction, notes and commentary. "An ear for reproducing everyday language has long been David Mamet's hallmark and he has now employed it to skewer the dogmatic, puritannical streak which has become commonplace on and off the campus. With Oleanna he continues an exploration of male-female conflicts begun with Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974. Oleanna cogently demonstrates that when free thought and dialogue are imperilled, nobody wins." (Michael Wise, Independent) In Oleanna "John and Carol go to it with hand-to hand combat that amounts to a primal struggle for power. As usual with Mamet, the vehicle for that combat is crackling, highly distilled dialogue unencumbered by literary frills or phony theatrical ones." (Frank Rich, International Herald Tribune)

Calling on his unique perspective as playwright, screenwriter, and director of his own critically acclaimed movies, House of Games and Things Change, David Mamet illuminates how a film comes to be. He looks at every aspect of directing--from script to cutting room--to show the many tasks directors undertake in reaching their prime objective: presenting a story that will be understood by the audience and has the power to be both surprising and inevitable at the same time.

Based on a series of classes Mamet taught at Columbia University's film school, On Directing Film will be enjoyed not only by students but by anyone interested in an overview of the craft of filmmaking.

A student edition of Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play First staged in Britain in 1983, Glengarry Glen Ross is the tale of four real-estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and was made into a film, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin, in 1992. "The finest American playwright of his generation" Sunday Times "A chillingly funny indictment of a world in which you are what you sell" Guardian "Nobody alive writes better American...Here at last, carving characters out of language, is a play with real muscle" Observer "David Mamet, screenwriter of The Verdict and The Postman Always Rings Twice, is alongside Sam Shepard and Michael Weller, one of the most distinctive voices on the contemporary American stage" Michael Coveney, Financial Times

David Mamet is one of America's most celebrated playwrights. The author of plays, screenplays, poetry, essays, and children's books, he has won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross.
The Obie award-winning Sexual Perversity in Chicago is about two office workers, Danny and Bernie, on the make in the swinging singles scene of the early 1970s. Danny meets Deborah in a library and soon they are not only lovers but roommates, and their story quickly evolves into a modern romance in all its sticky details.
The Duck Variations is a dialogue between two old men sitting on a park bench. The conversation turns to the mating habits of ducks, but soon begins to reveal their feelings about natural law, friendship, and death. New York magazine has called The Duck Variations "a gorgeously written, wonderfully observant piece whose timing and atmosphere are close to flawless."

The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, director and teacher has written a blunt, unsparingly honest guide to acting. In True and False David Mamet overturns conventional opinion and tells aspiring actors what they really need to know. He leaves no aspect of acting untouched: how to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright; the right way to undertake auditions and the proper approach to agents and the business in general. True and False slaughters a wide range of sacred cows and yet offers an invaluable guide to the acting profession.

David Mamet has been a controversial, defining force in nearly every creative endeavor-now he turns his attention to politics.
In recent years, David Mamet realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview.
In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the "Village Voice," "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'," in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book "True and False."
Now Mamet employs his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming. The legendary playwright, author, director, and filmmaker pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, Mamet will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.

Duck Variations: "A brilliant little play...about two old men sitting on a park bench discussing ducks" (Guardian); Sexual Perversity in Chicago, bar-room banter and sexual exploits in Mamet's home town "sweet sad understanding and utterly believable" (Chicago Daily News); Squirrels is a sequence of philosophising between a younger writer, an older writer and a cleaning lady which "memorably captures the agony of the creative process" (Daily Telegraph); American Buffalo, one of Mamet's most famous plays, is set in a junk shop where Three small-time crooks plot to carry out the midnight robbery of a coin collection - in the hours leading up to the heist, friendship becomes the victim in a conflict between loyalty and business. The Water Engine is "a propulsive, kaleidoscopic nightmare" and Mr Happiness is a short ironic monologue by a Radio DJ commenting on the letters from his listeners.

6 working actors describe their methods and philosophies of the theater. All have worked with playwright David Mamet at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

"The finest American playwright of his generation" (Sunday Times) Glen Garry Glen Ross (also made in to a film starring Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino) "his superb play about real estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition" (New Society); in Prairie du Chien a railway carriage speeding through the Wisconsin night is the setting for a violent story of obsessive jealousy, murder and suicide, told within shooting distance of a card-hustler and his victim. "A short poignant study in violence and the twin drives of love and money, told with hypnotic power thorugh a travelling raconteur" (City Limits); The Shawl shows a clairvoyant wondering whether to cheat a bereaved woman of her inheritance and "confirms Mamet's place as about the best living writer of vivid American dialogue" (Daily Telegraph). Set in the cut-throat world of Hollywood, Speed-the-Plow sees two old-time movie collaborators manipulate the aspirations of a young woman who will do anything to attain her dream of success "a brilliant black comedy, a dazzling dissection of Hollywood cupidity." (Newsweek)

A literary jeu d'esprit, a modern-day Tristram Shandy, a hilarious satire on false scholarship, Wilson is David Mamet at his best and most mischievous. When the internet - and the collective memory of the twenty-first century - crashes, the past is reassembled from the downloaded memories of Ginger, wife of ex-President Wilson. The transcripts take the reader on an intellectually breathtaking tour. In Mamet's baroque, fragmented world, nothing is certain except the certainty of academics. His customary bilious playfulness has created a trompe l'oeil for the mind's eye. In playing with the ideas of perception, understanding, accuracy, he dares to doubt them all.

William Esper, one of the most celebrated acting teachers of our time, takes us through his step-by-step approach to the central challenge of advanced acting work: creating and playing a character.

If theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, "many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical." As always, Mamet delivers on his promise: in "Theatre," the acclaimed author of "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed the Plow "calls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. For Mamet, either actors are good or they are non-actors, and good actors generally work best without the interference of a director, however well-intentioned. Issue plays, political correctness, method actors, impossible directions, Stanislavksy, and elitists all fall under Mamet's critical gaze. To students, teachers, and directors who crave a blast of fresh air in a world that can be insular and fearful of change, "Theatre" throws down a gauntlet that challenges everyone to do better, including Mamet himself.

Comic Drama

Characters: 7 male

2 interior sets

This scalding comedy took Broadway and London by storm and won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize. Here is Mamet at his very best, writing about small-time, cutthroat real estate salesmen trying to grind out a living by pushing plots of land on reluctant buyers in a never-ending scramble for their share of the American dream. Revived on Broadway in 2006 this masterpiece of American drama became a celebrated film which starred Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin and Alan Arkin.

"Crackling tension...ferocious comedy and drama."-The New York Times

"Wonderfully funny...A play to see, remember and cherish."-New York Post

Bobby Gould in Hell by David Mamet

Short Play, Comedy

Characters: 3 male, 1 female

Interior Set

This is Bobby Gould's day of reckoning. The conniving movie mogul from Speed the Plow awakes in a strange room. A loquacious interrogator in fishing waders enters. Gould argues his case. A woman he has wronged appears and gets so carried away that she says some sassy things to the Interrogator. In the end, Bobby is damned for being "cruel without being interesting."

"Funny and pungent."-N.Y. Times

"Lifts the soul."- N.Y. Daily News "Hilarious ... with flashy magic tricks."-Newsday

Published with The Devil and Billy Markham by Shel Silverstein

Short Play, Comedy

Characters: 1 male

Bare stage

In this amazing rendition of a tall tale written in rhymed couplets, Billy Markham loses a sucker's bet with the Devil but ultimately outwits him.

"A tour de force with the jokes coming Faust and furious."-N.Y. Post. "A rip snorting, raunchy delight. Very, very funny."-Associated Press

Drama / Characters: 3 males, 1 female / Interior set / Multiple Award-winning playwright/director David Mamet tackles America's most controversial topic in a provocative new tale of sex, guilt and bold accusations. Two lawyers find themselves defending a wealthy white executive charged with raping a black woman. When a new legal assistant gets involved in the case, the opinions that boil beneath explode to the surface. When David Mamet turns the spotlight on what we think but can't say, dangerous truths are revealed, and no punches are spared. "Scapel-edged intelligence " -New York Times "Provocative and profane " -NY-1 "Mamet is most concerned with the power and treachery of language: a line of dialogue vital to the prosecution case is cynically rewritten by the defense. Mamet's larger contention is that attempts to create a more equal and tolerant society have made race an unsayable word...brilliantly contrives here a moment in which the single most taboo sexual expletive is ignored by an audience which then gasps at the word "black..".Mamet remains American theatre's most urgent five-letter word." -The Guardian Intellectually salacious...Gripping...rapid-fire Mametian style...Mamet's new play argues, everything in America - and this play throws sex, rape, the law, employment and relationships into its 90 minutes of stage wrangling - is still about race." -Chcago Tribune "There is intrigue within intrigue, showing how personal prejudice and individual missteps govern the course of things...Mamet adroitly mixes comic darts with tragic arrows." -Bloomberg News

Comedy / 2m / Simple Set School is a brief comic discourse on recycling, poster design and the transmission of information. Premiered with Keep Your Pantheon as Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet at the Atlantic Theater Company, NYC in the fall of 2009. "A textbook example of the style that made its author famous. Featuring characters identified only as A and B, as if they were points on a diagram, this merry little sketch moves with the show-off alacrity of a calculus prodigy whizzing through equations at the blackboard." - The New York Times

"An ear for reproducing everyday language has long been David Mamet's hallmark and he has now employed it to skewer the dogmatic, puritannical streak which has become commonplace on and off the campus. With Oleanna he continues an exploration of male-female conflicts begun with Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974. Oleanna cogently demonstrates that when free thought and dialogue are imperilled, nobody wins." (Michael Wise, Independent) In Oleanna "John and Carol go to it with hand-to hand combat that amounts to a primal struggle for power. As usual with Mamet, the vehicle for that combat is crackling, highly distilled dialogue unencumbered by literary frills or phony theatrical ones." (Frank Rich, International Herald Tribune)