A witty cultural and culinary education, Immoveable Feast is the charming, funny, and improbable tale of how a man who was raised on white bread--and didn't speak a word of French--unexpectedly ended up with the sacred duty of preparing the annual Christmas dinner for a venerable Parisian family.

Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast"--a city ready to embrace you at any time in life. For Los Angeles-based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with a French woman and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his skeptical in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet--for eighteen people in their ancestral country home. Baxter's memoir of his yearlong quest takes readers along his misadventures and delicious triumphs as he visits the farthest corners of France in search of the country's best recipes and ingredients. Irresistible and fascinating, Immoveable Feast is a warmhearted tale of good food, romance, family, and the Christmas spirit, Parisian style.

Averitable smorgasbord of sin, John Baxter's "Carnal Knowledge" is a delightfully unabashed education in sex and erotic culture. Would you ever consent to a knee-trembler at a love hotel? Would you enjoy a hot lunch while watching "kinbaku"? Would you consider wearing a French tickler, a merkin, a strap-on, or pasties . . . or would you rather just go commando at the Mine Shaft? From "Deep Throat" to "Debbie Does Dallas," from the mile-high club to the Emperor's Club, John Baxter explains it all to you in this decadently definitive work on the many ins and outs of s-e-x, guaranteed to tantalize, edify, and titillate whether you're a novice or an expert in the arts of eros.

Discover one of the world s most fascinating and beautiful cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning the rich history of Paris. John Baxter takes readers through 2,000 years of French history with tales of the kings, queens, saints, and sinners who shaped the city. Essays explore the major historic events from the martyrdom of Saint Denis near today s Abbesses Metro station to the epic romances of Heloise and Abelard, Josephine and Napoleon, and George Sand and Frederic Chopin. Learn about the labyrinth of catacombs snaking under all of Paris and the artists who called the seedy Montmartre home in the 19th century. Then see it all for yourself with guided walking tours of each of Paris s historic neighborhoods, illustrated with color photographs and period maps."

The hey-day of the British gypsy caravan was short, only about 70 years, during which period it grew from a simple utility vehicle, blossomed and flourished as a mobile work of art, then disappeared from common sight. These caravans were masterpieces of woodcraft and design, and the best of them cost as much as a small house. Unlike any small house, almost half the cost was in the decoration. This beautifully illustrated book presents the different types of caravan and the great variety of art which was carved and painted upon them and their brothers-in-transport, the old narrowboats. While there were certain rules and conventions of style, the decoration on and in all the types was ultimately governed only by how much money could be spent. The caravan in particular was the supreme status symbol among travelling people and its art the prime means for expressing where one stood in the world.

First published in 1980. At their most successful, Shakespeare's styles are strategies to make plain the limits of thought and feeling which define the significance of human actions. John Baxter analyses the way in which these limits are reached, and also provides a strong argument for the idea that the power of Shakespearean drama depends upon the co-operation of poetic style and dramatic form. Three plays are examined in detail in the text: The Tragedy of Mustapha by Fulke Greville and Richard II and Macbeth by Shakespeare.

Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat writer provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years.

In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and long- time Paris resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past. Along the way, he tells the history of Paris through a brilliant cast of characters: the favorite cafes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce; Pablo Picasso's underground Montmartre haunts; the bustling boulevards of the late-nineteenth-century flaneurs; the secluded "Little Luxembourg" gardens beloved by Gertrude Stein; the alleys where revolutionaries plotted; and finally Baxter's own favorite walk near his home in Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

Following the popular Chronicles of Old Paris, in The Golden Moments of Paris, John Baxter has uncovered more fascinating true stories about the characters that gave Paris its character in the years between World War I and World War II. Explore more about one of the world's most beautiful and loved cities in twenty-six fact-filled, humorous, and dramatic stories about the famed Annees Folles--the Crazy Years at the turn of the 20th century in Paris. Learn about Gertrude Stein and her famous writers' salon, Salvador Dali and the Surrealists, the birth of Chanel No. 5, and the antics of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the lost generation. Then see what these areas look like today by following along on the guided walking tours of Paris's historic neighborhoods and the cafes, clubs, and brothels that were home to the intellectuals, artists, and Bohemians, illustrated with color photographs and period maps. If you enjoyed Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris, you'll love this book.

Get swept up in the glitz and glamour of the French Riviera as author and filmmaker John Baxter takes readers on a whirlwind tour through the star-studded cultural history of the Cote d Azur that s sure to delight travelers, Francophiles, and culture lovers alike. Readers will discover the dramatic lives of the legendary artists, writers, actors, and politicians who frequented the world s most luxurious resort during its golden age. In 25 vivid chapters, Baxter introduces the iconic figures indelibly linked to the South of France artist Henri Matisse, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Chanel, and many more. Along the way, Baxter takes readers where few people ever get to go: the alluring world of the perfume industry, into the cars and casinos of Monte Carlo, behind-the-scenes at the Cannes Film Festival, to the villa where Picasso and Cocteau smoked opium, and to the hotel where Joseph Kennedy had an affair with Marlene Dietrich. These luminaries celebrated life and created art amid paradise and this book is the ultimate guide to the Riviera s golden age."

For generations of film and theatre audiences, Charles Boyer was the archetypal Frenchman - cultured, courteous, seductive, yet never quite at home in a culture not his own. Even his murmuring baritone voice echoed that loss, giving him the very essence of romance. While one might have expected that the real-life Boyer was a playboy and serial seducer, in reality, he was intensely private, thoughtful, and fidelitous in love - and very professionally astute. The Great Lover is the first biography of Boyer to exist in English in almost forty years. In an insightful analysis of Boyer's choice of roles during and after World War II, author John Baxter reveals how Boyer, realizing his accent would always mark him as an outsider, both embraced and subverted that identity. Baxter relates how Boyer established himself in the theatre and cinema of France, confidently transitioning from silent film to sound and making a name for himself as a romantic leading man in Hollywood through the early 1940s. During World War II, Boyer put his career on hold to become politically active on behalf of his occupied home country. Upon returning to acting, Baxter shows how Boyer adapted effortlessly to postwar character roles in both Europe and the United States. He entered television in the 1950s as producer and performer, and then remade himself as a comedy performer in the 1960s. A four-time Academy Award nominee, he was honored by the Academy only once for his activities on behalf of France during World War II. Far from clinging to the performances that made him famous, Boyer showed a readiness to break the mold. Yet above all, Baxter argues that Boyer's greatest achievement lies in being the embodiment of exiles everywhere.

First published in 1980. At their most successful, Shakespeare's styles are strategies to make plain the limits of thought and feeling which define the significance of human actions. John Baxter analyses the way in which these limits are reached, and also provides a strong argument for the idea that the power of Shakespearean drama depends upon the co-operation of poetic style and dramatic form. Three plays are examined in detail in the text: The Tragedy of Mustapha by Fulke Greville and Richard II and Macbeth by Shakespeare.

The most complete account yet of one of the most original and stimulating film-makers of the post-war years: Paths of Glory, Dr Strangelove, Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Barry Lindon, Full Metal Jacket ... A biography of this pre-eminent cultural figure is long overdue. Few film-makers have managed to maintain their mystique over forty years; Kubrick succeeded by preparing his films for years, so that each distilled the essence of the zeitgeist. To the generation of the 1950s, he was one of the few directors to achieve, with Paths of Glory, the dignity and stature of the European cinema in an American film. To 1960s audiences, he's the man who made both Dr Strangelove, the ultimate anti-war movie, and the counter-culture classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the 1970s he created that archetypal hymn to urban violence, A Clockwork Orange. In the 1980s, he put Stephen King on screen in The Shining. In continental Europe especially, Kubrick is regarded as one of the handful of great living film-makers. Born in the Bronx in 1928 of Central European stock, Kubrick still lives in moody seclusion in Borehamwood, where he bought a house soon after moving to the UK in 1961.

Why Do So Many Kids HATE School?
A Paradigm Shift Is Necessary In Education. And Now, A Colledge Football Coach Offers Such Reform.
As coaches, we have opportunities that teachers do not. Coaching is a performance based working relationship that relies on the mastery of fundamentals and technique to create a competitive advantage. Coaches are held accountable for an athlete's performance on and off the field. This leads us very quickly to a fork in the road. We can bend the rules academically, and manipulate the system so that they can get through and stay eligible, or we can invest deeply in them and help them technically and fundamentally so that they can become legitimate, independent performers in all areas of life.
I see myself at the center of the paradigm shift, which is based on skills and ideas, not subjects and orders. Study hall, medication, tutoring and other conventional forms of intervention aren't what we need. They aren't the long-term solution. We need sustained performance based change that is built on fundamentals and technique. If we are going to effect permanent, long-lasting, fundamental change, the paradigm shift has to begin somewhere other than in the schools. Therefore, parents and educators must pursue such change individually through a program like Academic Gameplan.
Academic Gameplan is a coaching based program that teaches the rules, fundamentals and techniques to the game of school. The life skills we teach are SOLID, SIMPLE, and REPEATABLE. AGP is the ROCK upon which students are building lifelong success

Despite his frank dislike of directing, George Lucas has made himself one of the most important figures in the history of film-making. His production company, Lucasfilm, is phenomenally successful, and his Industrial Light and Magic is the finest special effects studio in the world.

Yet, for all his achievements, Lucas remains an elusive, almost anonymous figure, shunning the limelight and spending much of his time on his isolated Skywalker Ranch complex in northern California. Now John Baxter, acclaimed biographer of Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen, sheds new light on the originator of the 'New Hollywood.', tracing his small-town origins in Modesto, California (brilliantly recreated in his first major film as director, American Graffiti) and his subsequent phenomenal success with 'Star Wars', its successors and the tree 'Indana Jones' films. Together, these comprise the most popular group of films ever made.

John Baxter has compiled the most complete portrait to date of a man who has done as much to shape popular culture as anyone alive.

'This book is undoubtedly the best that could be written on the inventor of Luke Skywalker, the Force and trans-global product merchandising.'
NIGEL ANDREWS 'Finacial Times'

'Baxter reveals in his mastery of the anecdotal stuff that shows he has researched his subject as fastidiously as ever.'
BIRMINGTON POST

'Detailed and informative.'
IRISH INDEPENDENT

Robert De Niro is the pre-eminent Hollywood character performer of our time: film portraits like the young Don Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER II, Jake La Motta in RAGING BULL and Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER are some of the most vivid ever put on celluloid. De Niro cannot be cast to type, prefers to work for old friends like Martin Scorsese, and (apart from FRANKENSTEIN) has never played anything but 20th-century roles.

John Baxter calls him ?the archetypal empty bottle which only becomes visible when it?s filled by a role?: which makes him such a tempting subject for one of Hollywood?s finest historian/biographers.

As well as his film roles, Baxter examines De Niro?s often controversial private life, his collaborations with directors like Martin Scorsese and performers like Harvey Keitel and Meryl Streep, and his increasingly ambitious off-screen activities.

In the third portrait of his series Great Parisian Neighborhoods, award-winning raconteur John Baxter takes readers on a dazzling excursion of Montparnasse. By the IACP Award-winning author of the national bestseller The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, MONTPARNASSE reveals the history and present delights of the iconic neighborhood that is best associated with the vibrant 1920-30s-era Paris-a romantic time and place evoked in Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. From the first meeting of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to their friendship's bitter conclusion; from the courage of the anti-Nazi resistance to the clubs where German generals partied; from the attempted murder of Samuel Beckett to the rise of Josephine Baker to stardom; from the high life of the Coupole and the Cafe du Dome to the bawdy music halls of rue de la Gaite; no Paris quarter has witnessed more tumultuous events than Montparnasse. In a ground-breaking reappraisal of this most glamorous of Paris's districts, Baxter looks beyond the nostalgia to the secret history of Montparnasse, a district where desire effaced memory and every taste could be satisfied-even those which were unexpressed. If, as Oscar Wilde suggested, all good Americans went to Paris when they died, it was Montparnasse that brought them back to life.

The preeminent expat writer on Paris and author of The Most Beautiful Walk in the World takes you on an unforgettable nocturnal stroll through five iconic Parisian neighborhoods and his own memories. John Baxter enchanted readers with his literary tour of Paris in The Most Beautiful Walk in the World. Now, this expat who has lived in the City of Light for more than twenty years introduces you to the city's streets after dark, revealing hidden treasures and unexpected delights. As he takes you through five of the city's greatest neighborhoods-Montmartre, Montparnasse, the Marais, and more-Baxter shares pithy anecdotes about his life in France, as well as fascinating knowledge he has gleaned from leading literary tours of the city by dark. With Baxter as your guide, you will discover the City of Light as never before, walking in the ghostly footsteps of Marcel Proust, the quintessential night owl for whom memory was more vivid than reality; Hungarian photographer Gyula Halasz, known as Brassai, who prowled the midnight streets, camera in hand, with his friend Henry Miller; Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault, who shared the Surrealists' taste for the city's shadowed, secret world; and Josephine Baker and other African-American performers who dazzled adventurous Parisians at late-night jazz clubs. A feast for the mind and the senses, Five Nights in Paris takes you through the haunts of Paris's most storied artists and writers to the scenes of its most infamous crimes in a lively off-the-beaten-path tour not found in any guidebook.

Just as species of plants and animals are expiring at an alarming rate, so are the traditional ingredients and techniques of classic cooking and eating. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in France, where the heart of the world's most revered and complex national cuisine is in danger of disappearing, as old ways of agriculture, butchering, and cooking are withering - leaving us with only a small fraction of the astonishing delights and surprises French cuisine has to offer. In this charming culinary travel memoir, the bestselling author of "The Most Beautiful Walk in the World" goes on the hunt for the most delicious and bizarre endangered foods of France, including: Ortolans - Tiny birds, drowned in armagnac, sauteed in butter and eaten whole, bones and all, ideally with a large napkin draped over your head to conserve the aroma; Bouillabaisse - Seafood stew that only tastes right if you eat it by the Mediterranean. The secret is an ugly fish called the rascasse that lurks around wrecks; 100 Year-Old Cognac - The old stuff never gets to the shops, but Baxter's wife is friendly with one of the big distillers, so readers get a taste tour of what only millionaires can afford to drink; Confiture Vieux Garcon - Literally, Old Boy's Preserves. Soft fruit in season is placed in a crock, covered in brandy and left to marinate for a year. Traditionally served on ice cream, but a few spoonsful in the morning really set you up. Ox. The book culminates in Baxter's participation in a traditional ox roast, in which an enormous whole ox is cooked on a spit over coals. The recipe begins on a practical note: First, catch your ox...

A preeminent writer on Paris, John Baxter brilliantly brings to life one of the most dramatic and fascinating periods in the city's history. From 1914 through 1918 the terrifying sounds of World War I could be heard from inside the French capital. For four years, Paris lived under constant threat of destruction. And yet in its darkest hour, the City of Light blazed more brightly than ever. It's taxis shuttled troops to the front; its great railway stations received reinforcements from across the world; the grandest museums and cathedrals housed the wounded, and the Eiffel Tower hummed at all hours relaying messages to and from the front. At night, Parisians lived with urgency and without inhibition. Artists like Pablo Picasso achieved new creative heights. And the war brought a wave of foreigners to the city for the first time, including Ernest Hemingway and Baxter's own grandfather, Archie, whose diaries he used to reconstruct a soldier's-eye view of the war years. A revelatory achievement, Paris at the End of the World shows how this extraordinary period was essential in forging the spirit of the city beloved today.