Nevin Nollop left the islanders of Nollop with the treasured legacy of his pangram the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. But as the letters begin to crumble on the monumental inscription, the island's council forbids the use of the lost letters and silence threatens Ella and her family.

Modeling of weakly nonlinear systems by means of Volterra series analysis is presented. Necessary conditions for representing nonlinearities by a Volterra series are developed analytically as well as heuristically. A two-condition convergence criterion for Volterra series and a method for determining Volterra transfer functions are established. For systems with multiple nodes, an extension of Volterra series analysis; method of nonlinear currents is developed and applied to a MESFET amplifier. Finally, methods of quantifying nonlinear behavior are discussed.

Chaos arises when letters begin to fall from a town monument and government officials ban them one by one. The community depends on the strength of a determined teenage girl to fight for their freedom of speech. Adapted from Mark Dunn's 2001 award-winning debut novel, Ella Minnow Pea, this unique musical is part romance, part clever word game, and part adult fable that reminds us how precious our liberties are and how important it is to have the courage to stand up for what we believe.

The play revolves around an ad hoc meeting of a North Georgia women's social club called "The Glitter Girls," convened by its richest member - one Trudy Tromaine - who is supposedly at death's door and wishing to bequeath some of her millions to one lucky "Sister of the Gleam and Sparkle." The hitch is that it's the members themselves who must decide to whom to award the small fortune (with hopes that the Glitter Girl they select will see it in her heart to share the money with the rest of her "sisters"). The play can be economically described as Steel Magnolias meets Survivor, with a big dose of quirky Mark Dunn humor thrown in for good measure.

Twenty-five years have passed since we last visited the six Walker sisters from Memphis, Tennessee, and they're all back on the phone again for another crisis-filled weekend. The most immediate concern: Mama has taken off all her clothes in the community room of her nursing room and the sisters must put their heads together and decide what to do with her. And that's just for starters: oldest sister Peggy has been bilked out of all her money by a ne'er-do-well boyfriend. Aneece and Paige's marri

Three actors. One desk. Three chairs. Theatre at its most elemental. "Seven Interviews" offers up seven different short plays, each with an interview format, and each of which illuminates some aspect of the human condition. The seven pieces range from the broadly comic to the achingly tragic. Among the situations set up in the seven pieces are a job interview to replace a secretary who is giving her employer nightmares, a biographer's horrible realization that she doesn't know her subject at all, the matter of a baseball team mascot who is frightening children at the ballpark, a dialogue between psychiatrist and patient with an unexpected outcome, a conference between parent and school principal over the expulsion of the woman's son; along with pieces about a very unlikely customer for a professional hit-man, and an office cleaning lady caught red-handed on Christmas Eve.

Mom, apple pie, and The $64,000 Question. Nothing was more American in the 1950s than the TV quiz show, which both illuminated and mirrored all the hopes, dreams, fads and faults of a nation-come-of-age. Using the quiz show as unique video roadmap into the soul and zeitgeist of a proud republic, Mark Dunn playfully captures in [1950s Game Shows and American Culture] aspects of the iconography of a mid-century United States within the context of TV game playing, prize-winning, and collective self-examination. Dunn devotes the book's chapters to the various ways in which the country viewed women, minorities, gays, and teens, the eccentricities of the American worker, New York City, the onslaught of Communism and the country's over-reactive response to it, the news-making events of the day, shadowed by events of the past, all within the parameters of the 1950s television game show-a phenomenon that had become cultural touchstone for the decade. [1950s Game Shows and American Culture] also visits the scandals that marred the genre's reputation, and drew back the curtain on the propensity for both gullibility and winking cynicism among Americans-a cynicism that would color (but not too harshly), the way the country viewed its magic, rabbit-eared box, and the wonderful, whimsical games people played inside it.

Dramatic Comedy / 9m, 8f (cross casting and double casting possible) Inspired by Pygmalion, Shaw's classic drawing room tale of language and class division, and its musical incarnation, My Fair Lady, the play tells the story of one Eliza Doolittle-the daughter of a hardscrabble Mississippi pig farmer-who sells homemade pork rinds at the Tri-Counties Fair and Livestock Show, and dreams of someday working as a waitress at "one of those nice downtown barbecue restaurants where all the tourists go." With the support of her best friend, a sassy Transgender firecracker named Miss Tiffany Box, patroness Ida Hill and her daughter Clara; and with Ida's instantly enamored son Freddy nipping romantically at Eliza's heels, Delta-drawlin' Eliza engages the services of a "Kudzu-league" college prof named Henry Higgins to take the country out of her speech and give her some semblance of class. Devotees of Shaw's original will delight in the transplantation of Eliza and Professor Higgins and his colleague Pickering to the American South. But this gentle, warm-hearted comedy gives us something else as well, a question for which everyone in the play must find the answer: how do we reconcile the way we present ourselves on the outside with who we truly are on the inside?

The United States is a nation of counties--3,071 of them, to be exact. This reference book offers a brief profile and history of each and every one of them. The authors provide the following information for each county: name, county seat, population, land area, location and prominent geographical features, name derivation, date of establishment, and products and industries. Selected entries include history, a sampling of famous residents, interesting facts or oddities, population and area rankings and name comparatives. Connecticut and Rhode Island's counties were officially abolished a few years ago, but information about the former counties is included. Louisiana's parishes are also included. Alaska does not have counties, but its organized boroughs are listed in an appendix.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet

Thirteen-year-old twins Rodney and Wayne McCall and their friend Professor Johnson are the only people in Pitcherville who can see that all the natural laws of the universe have stopped applying to their town. When everyone in Pitcherville wakes up twelve years in the past, baby Rodney and baby Wayne must locate the Professor and find a way to get back to the present.
The first in an exciting new series from the beloved author of "Ella Minnow Pea."

From 1983 to 1987, author Mark Dunn worked as a court clerk for a justice of the peace in Travis County, Texas, where, he says, "I learned more about human nature . . . than I could have learned in any other job I might have taken up as a bushy-tailed kid from Tennessee." Based on interviews with 200 justices of the peace from all parts of Texas, Texas People's Court promises to take readers on a tour of what it means to be a Texas justice of the peace: an experience that is by turns hilarious, sobering, heart-wrenching, and, from one end to the other, fascinating.Here in the Texas justice court, wrongs can be righted and lives changed in profound ways. A priceless family necklace might finally be restored to the rightful owner; an occupational driver's license fortuitously granted. A death inquest may become an opportunity for family reflection and valediction, with the attending judge as sympathetic witness. In each of its chapters, Texas People's Court takes up a different aspect, duty, or area of thought related to the profession of justice of the peace taken from conversations with JPs throughout the state of Texas-from those who serve in its most populous municipalities to rural county JPs-putting a human face on the responsibilities, attitudes, and perspectives that motivate their judgments. The result is a thoroughly entertaining, sympathetic view of what Dunn calls "the day-to-day observation of human conflict in microcosm."

Modeling of weakly nonlinear systems by means of Volterra series analysis is presented. Necessary conditions for representing nonlinearities by a Volterra series are developed analytically as well as heuristically. A two-condition convergence criterion for Volterra series and a method for determining Volterra transfer functions are established. For systems with multiple nodes, an extension of Volterra series analysis; method of nonlinear currents is developed and applied to a MESFET amplifier. Finally, methods of quantifying nonlinear behavior are discussed.

Only Mark Dunn, author of the acclaimed Ella Minnow Pea, would attempt to write a novel entirely in footnotes-and succeed so triumphantly. Ibid is the off-the-wall fictional biography of Jonathan Blashette, a three-legged circus performer and deodorant entrepreneur. Dunn, a character in his own novel, is Blashette's esteemed biographer. But when Dunn's editor destroys the manuscript in an unfortunate bathtub accident, all that remains are the footnotes, which they arrange to publish in a consummate portrait of Blashette's strangely hilarious life story, one that offers some infinitely interesting morsels of American cultural history. Of course, as endnotes go, these are the tidbits, the marginalia: snippets of commentary, correspondence, court transcripts, song lyrics, and even a recipe for Boston baked beans. But in the topsy-turvy world of Ibid, the footnotes tell the truest story of all.

From "Geronimo " to "gesundheit" to "haminahamina" to "holy" "mackerel," and from "abracadabra" to "zoinks," Mark Dunn and Sergio Aragones show you interjections like you've never seen them before.
Often thought of as unnecessary verbal fringe or simply linguistic decoration, interjections ("ahem," "howdy," "mamma" "mia," "pshaw," " tally-ho," " whoop-de-do") may well be the most overlooked part of speech in the English language. "ZOUNDS A Browser's Dictionary of Interjections" focuses the spotlight on this most deserving (and sometimes most demented) grammatical group. A light-hearted look at more than 500 interjections, "ZOUNDS " explores the origins of these essential words and highlights the contributions of these previously unheralded parts of speech.
Perfect for both word lovers and the casual reader, "ZOUNDS "brings together the linguistic talents of Mark Dunn, author of the award-winning novel "Ella Minnow Pea," and the graphic hilarity of Sergio Aragones, the legendary cartoonist and contributor to Mad Magazine, for a delightful romp through grammar, culture, and the English language.
Famous interjections include:
"Eureka "
-Archimedes
"Badabing-badaboom"
-Tony Soprano
"Stuff and nonsense "
-Alice, "Alice in Wonderland"
"Bah Humbug "
-Scrooge
"Fiddle-dee-dee "
-Scarlett O'Hara
"Leapin' lizards "
-Little Orphan Annie
"Nanoo, nanoo"
-Mork, from "Mork & Mindy"
"Dyn-O-Mite "
-Jimmie Walker, "Good Times"
"Bully "
-President Theodore Roosevelt