The modern mammal metropolis of Zootopia is a city like no other. Comprised of habitat neighborhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, it’s a melting pot where animals from every environment live together—a place where no matter what you are, from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew, you can be anything.

But when optimistic Officer Judy Hopps arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isn’t so easy.

Determined to prove herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering with a fast-talking, scam-artist fox, Nick Wilde, to solve the mystery.

When a lanky, unpretentious, incredibly gifted, twenty-three-year-old Texan took Moscow by musical storm in 1958, it launched a sensational career that began at the age of thirteen and was to span over four decades. At the height of the Cold War, this friendly, open-hearted pianist enchanted the hearts of Americans and Russians alike with his playing that was more about "personal communications than exhibitionistic virtuosity." Winning the Soviet-sponsored Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition immediately thrust Van Cliburn into political as well as artistic pressures, attention, adulation, and scrutiny that might have sabotaged any young artist who lacked the confidence and conviction of Van Cliburn.

In a meteoric career that made Van Cliburn a cultural hero tantamount to the Beatles, the facts became stranger than the fiction that abounded about his career that "fizzled a year or two after the Tchaikovsky competition," or about the near loss of an arm, or about his eleven-year retreat into privacy beginning in the late '70s.

The myth that surrounded the name Van Cliburn in the '50s and '60s became legend with his triumphant re-entry in 1987―an event that was to epitomize the poetic nature of Van's entire life. Responding to an invitation to perform for Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev at a state dinner, Van once again proved that music is indeed the universal language of understandng capable of uniting our diverse cultures. Bounding off the platform after his performance to kiss Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev, Van responded to Raisa's request for more music by playing the beloved Soviet song, "Moscow Nights"―the same nostalgic song he had learned and performed during his first incredible journey to Moscow in 1958.

As millions of Americans watched on their television screens, the usual staid state dinner dissolved into a moving memory of Van singing along with the Gorbachevs as the whole room dissolved into tears. Russia and America joined hands and hearts in this one historical moment.

Disney's newest animated feature, Zootopia, is a comedy-adventure starring Officer Judy Hopps, a rookie bunny cop who has to team up with fast-talking scam-artist fox Nick Wilde to crack her first case in the all-animal city of Zootopia. This lushly illustrated book offers a behind-the-scenes view of the elaborate artistry involved in creating the film. Copyright (c)2016 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions he widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy."Although Bruce died when he was only forty, his influence on the worlds of comedy, jazz, and satire are incalculable. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People remains a brilliant existential account of his life and the forces that made him the most important and controversial entertainer in history.

In 1999, Robert T. Craig published the article "Communication theory as a field" and argued that the field of communication theory ought to be viewed as a practical discipline. In Practicing Communication Theory: Exploring, Applying, and Teaching the Constitutive Metamodel, editors Marc Howard Rich and Jessica S. Robles expand upon Craig's seminal contribution by assembling diverse and learned voices of international communication scholars to explore the practical, theoretical, and pedagogical implications of Craig's work. The chapters demonstrate how communication is practiced in the world and how scholars have incorporated Craig's theories into the classroom. Contributors share their experiences redefining, reworking, and complicating traditions of communication. Additional chapters focus on the international community and explore ways communication theory is practiced worldwide. The closing chapter, written by Craig, responds to the various perspectives presented throughout the book and provides new ideas and insight to further contribute to ongoing conversations about practicing communication theory. Demonstrating the practical nature of the communication discipline, Practicing Communication Theory is an excellent book for scholars in the field and for graduate courses in communication theory.

The acclaimed, definitive biography of the first jazz composer, based on newly discovered archival material. Jelly's Blues recounts the tumultuous life of Jelly Roll Morton (ca., 18851941). A virtuoso pianist with a larger-than-life personality, he composed such influential early jazz pieces as King Porter Stomp and New Orleans Blues. However, by the late 1930s, he was nearly forgotten. In 1992, the death of an eccentric memorabilia collector led to the unearthing of a startling archive, revealing Morton to be a much more complex and passionate man than many realized. An especially immediate and visceral look into the jazz worlds of New Orleans and Chicago, Jelly's Blues is a definitive biography, a long overdue look at one of the twentieth century's most important composers.