Neil LaBute: A Casebook is the first book to examine one of the most successful and controversial contemporary American playwrights and filmmakers. While he is most famous, and in some cases infamous, for his early films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, Labute is equally accomplished as a playwright. His work extends from the critique of false religiosity in Bash to examinations of opportunism, irresponsible art, failed parenting, and racism in later plays like Mercy Seat, The Shape of Things, The Distance From Here, Fat Pig, Autobahn, and the very recent This Is How It Goes and Some Girls. Like David Mamet, an acknowledged influence on him, and Conor McPhereson, with whom he shares some stylistic and thematic concerns, LaBute tends to polarize audiences. The angry voices, violent situations, and irresponsible behavior in his works, especially those focusing on male characters, have alienated some viewers. But the writer's religious affiliation and refusal to condone the actions of his characters suggest he is neither exploitive nor pornographic. This casebook explores the primary issues of the writer's style, themes, and dramatic achievements. Contributors describe, for example, the influences (both classical and contemporary) on his work, his distinctive vision in theater and film, the role of religious belief in his work, and his satire. In addition to the critical introduction by Wood and the original essays by leading dramatic and literary scholars, the volume also includes a bibliography and a chronology of the playwright's life and works.

"Neil LaBute: A Casebook "is the first book to examine one of the most successful and controversial contemporary American playwrights and filmmakers. John Lahr has written of him, "There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute." While he is most famous, and in some cases infamous, for his early films "In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors," Labute is equally accomplished as a playwright. His work extends from the critique of false religiosity in Bash to examinations of opportunism, irresponsible art, failed parenting, and racism in later plays like "Mercy Seat," "The Shape of Things, The Distance From Here, Fat Pig, Autobahn," and the very recent "This Is How It Goes and Some Girls," In films he has also directed adaptation of his play The Shape of Things, as well as the more commercial Nurse Betty and Possession. His collection of short stories, reminiscent of the ethical concerns in his plays, is titled Seconds of Pleasure.
Like David Mamet, an acknowledged influence on him, and Conor McPhereson, with whom she shares some stylistic and thematic concerns, LaBute tends to polarize audiences. The angry voices, violent situations, and irresponsible behavior in his works, especially those focusing on male characters, have alienated some viewers. But the writer's religious affiliation (he is a Mormon) and refusal to condone the actions of his characters suggest he is neither exploitive nor pornographic. As Ben Brantley identifies, LaBute's plays and films make a consistent attack on "the moral flabbiness, selfishness and all-around nastiness of the male species, whether at work, at home or at play" which indicates a "probingmoralism as fierce as that of Nathaniel Hawthorne."
This casebook explores the primary issues of the writer's style, themes, and dramatic achievements. Contributors describe, for example, the influences (both classical and contemporary) on his work, his distinctive vision intheater and film, the role of religious belief in his work, and his satire. In addition to the critical introduction by Russell and the original essays by leading dramatic and literary scholars, the volume will also include a bibliography and a chronology of the playwright's life and works.

This study is the first general critical introduction to the writing of Horton Foote, recipient of two Academy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. These original essays survey Foote's career, his work for theater, television, and film, with analysis of Foote's major themes and characteristic style in all three media. The casebook concludes with a list of Foote's produced work, as well as a selective annotated bibliography of primary criticism on the playwright. This book demonstrates the influence of personal biography and Southern literature on Foote's career. The essayists also investigate the writer's contribution to American dramatic realism and independent filmmaking, emphasizing his experimentation with musical structure, dedramatization, and complex subtexts. Foote's disarmingly simple stories, with their radically understated language, are explained in many articles as the product of the subtle influence of the psychological and religious views of the author.

WINNER OF THE 2014 SEYMOUR MEDAL sponsored by the Society for American Baseball Research and finalist for 2014 SABR Larry Ritter Award Though his pitching career lasted only a few seasons, Howard Ellsworth "Smoky Joe" Wood was one of the most dominating figures in baseball history-a man many consider the best baseball player who is not in the Hall of Fame. About his fastball, Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson once said: "Listen, mister, no man alive can throw harder than Smoky Joe Wood." Smoky Joe Wood chronicles the singular life befitting such a baseball legend. Wood got his start impersonating a female on the National Bloomer Girls team. A natural athlete, he pitched for the Boston Red Sox at eighteen, won twenty-one games and threw a no-hitter at twenty-one, and had a 34-5 record plus three wins in the 1912 World Series, for a 1.91 ERA, when he was just twenty-two. Then in 1913 Wood suffered devastating injuries to his right hand and shoulder that forced him to pitch in pain for two more years. After sitting out the 1916 season, he came back as a converted outfielder and played another five years for the Cleveland Indians before retiring to coach the Yale University baseball team. With details culled from interviews and family archives, this biography, the first of this rugged player of the Deadball Era, brings to life one of the genuine characters of baseball history.

Though his pitching career lasted only a few seasons, Howard Ellsworth "Smoky Joe" Wood was one of the most dominating figures in baseball history--a man many consider the best baseball player who is "not" in the Hall of Fame. About his fastball, Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson once said: "Listen, mister, no man alive can throw harder than Smoky Joe Wood."

"Smoky Joe Wood" chronicles the singular life befitting such a baseball legend. Wood got his start impersonating a female on the National Bloomer Girls team. A natural athlete, he pitched for the Boston Red Sox at eighteen, won twenty-one games and threw a no-hitter at twenty-one, and had a 34-5 record plus three wins in the 1912 World Series, for a 1.91 ERA, when he was just twenty-two. Then in 1913 Wood suffered devastating injuries to his right hand and shoulder that forced him to pitch in pain for two more years. After sitting out the 1916 season, he came back as a converted outfielder and played another five years for the Cleveland Indians before retiring to coach the Yale University baseball team. Joe's final reward for courageously enduring the eccentricities of his father, his sister's polio, the 1926-27 baseball scandal, and the loss of his beloved wife and a son was an honorary doctorate in 1985 from Yale and its president, Bart Giamatti.

With details culled from interviews and family archives, this biography, the first of this rugged player of the Deadball Era, brings to life one of the genuine characters of baseball history.