The American Colonel in command at Okinawa thought he might win General's stars if Okinawa had modern housing, schools, progressive organizations and profitable business. But the Colonel's plans laid an egg in Tobiki village. Captain Fisby, in charge there, just couldn't get "American" ideas across. Instead, in a weak moment, he accepted a gift of two geisha girls, who mobilized Tobiki--with explosive results for the Colonel, the Captain, and the community.

    Nothing can stand in his way. AMERICA, AMERICA is about immigration, the tyranny of our ancestors' homelands and the obsessive drive that brought our families to this country. It is difficult for us to imagine the realities of our heritage, but Elia Kazan shows us how the America we know today emerged from our forefathers' drive for a life of greater freedom and opportunity.

    And nowhere is his dramatic genius more apparent than in two of his probing early works, The American Dream and The Zoo Story.The New Yorker hailed The American Dream as "unique ... brilliant ... a comic nightmare, fantasy of the highest order." The story of one of America's most dysfunctoinal families, it is a ferocious, uproarious attack on the substitution of artificial values for real values-a startling tale of murder and morality that rocks middle-class ethics to its complacent foundations.The Zoo Story is a harrowing depiction of a young man alienated from the human race-a searing story of loneliness and the desperate need for recognition that builds to a violent, shattering climax. Together, these plays show men and women at their most hilarious, heartbreaking, and above all, human-and demonstrate why Edward Albee continues to be one of our greatest living dramatists.

    A voice totally free of anger and bitterness, a voice of someone who just tried to ride the waves to her best ability. It's a calming and rare voice in these times of recessionary gloom.Of course, a voice needs substance. Here you go: loss, love, life, guilt, hate, history, war and death. This little book covers it all, including an entire century and a complete life. When I finished reading it I felt as if there was nothing more to say.Admittedly, on the surface it sounds like any old country side story. The Catalan Pyrenees at the beginning of the last century: 13-year-old Conxa is sent to live and work for her childless aunt in another village. Years of hard work follow. Eventually she finds love and happiness with Jaume. But the civil war causes havoc and Conxa moves to Barcelona. It is here that she, now an old woman, sits down to tell us her story.We’ve heard such a story before, you say? Well, what Maria Barbal has managed to do with Conxa’s voice has few parallels in modern literature. She created the voice of a perceptive person but with no formal education. As a result she can’t use modern jargon. Instead she allows individual scenes to come to life making the reader see what, sometimes, Conxa herself does not understand. It’s a poetic, timeless voice, down to earth and full of contradictory nuances. It’s a voice that searches for understanding in a changing world but senses that ultimately there may be no such thing. She’s worth a listen.Translated from the Catalan by Laura McGloughlin andPaul Mitchell.

    Here men from all walks of life don the garb of their fantasies and act them out: a man from the gas company wears the robe and mitre of a bishop; another customer becomes a flagellant judge, and still another a victorious general, while a bank clerk defiles the Virgin mary. These costumed diversions take place while outside a revolution rages on which has isolated the brothel from the rest of the rebel-controlled city. In a stunning series of macabre, climactic scenes, Genet presents his caustic view of man and society.

    So Burt and Verona head out on the road, across America, looking for the right place to call home. Along the way they encounter a succession of strange and hilarious friends and relatives (played by a cast that includes Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Maggie Gyllenhall, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney, and Jim Gaffigan), most of whom have no idea what they’re doing. In the end—with and despite the help of those they meet on their journey—Burt and Verona come closer to an understanding of their own definition of home and family.

    Someone - or something - is leaving bite marks in the avocados, Clay and Kelly's little daughter has an itch, and Carol can't remember who played Gandhi. This work takes a look at phoney liberal values.

    In James Goldman’s classic play The Lion in Winter, domestic turmoil rises to an art form. Keenly self-aware and motivated as much by spite as by any sense of duty, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine maneuver against each other to position their favorite son in line for succession. By imagining the inner lives of Henry, Eleanor, and their sons, John, Geoffrey, and Richard, Goldman created the quintessential drama of family strife and competing ambitions, a work that gives visceral, modern-day relevance to the intrigues of Angevin England. Combining keen historical and psychological insight with delicious, mordant wit, the stage play has become a touchstone of today’s theater scene, and Goldman’s screenplay for the 1968 film adaptation won him an Academy Award. Told in “marvelously articulate language, with humor that bristles and burns” (Los Angeles Times), The Lion in Winter is the rare play that bursts into life on the printed page.

    It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting was resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years inbetween, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000. Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. --David Vincent

    The official novelisation of the biggest battle in movie history: Godzilla vs Kong, the latest film in the Monsterverse franchise, starring Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Kyle Chandler and Zhang Ziyi.Humanity fights for its future as Godzilla and Kong embark on a path of destruction that will see the two most powerful forces of nature on the planet collide in an all-out war!Writer Greg Keyes returns once again to the Monsterverse and takes readers deeper into the worlds of Monarch, the Titans, and so much more.

    His work has helped to shape a generation of writers, theatergoers, and thinkers. His plays are studied worldwide as texts that changed the face of theater. The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a parable inspired by the Chinese play Chalk Circle. Written at the close of World War II, the story is set in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. It retells the tale of King Solomon and a child claimed by and fought over by two mothers. But this chalk circle is metaphorically drawn around a society misdirected in its priorities. Brecht's statements about class are cloaked in the innocence of a fable that whispers insistently to the audience.No translations of Brecht's work are as reliable and compelling as Eric Bentley's. These versions are widely viewed as the standard renderings of Brecht's work, ensuring that future generations of readers will come in close contact with the work of a playwright who introduced a new way of thinking about the theater.

    

    And yet, the history of its making is so colorful, so chaotic, that one cannot help but marvel at the seemingly insurmountable odds it overcame to become a true cinematic masterpiece, a film that continues to captivate us decades after its release. Now, thirty-five years after The Godfather's highly anticipated debut, comes this fully authorized, annotated, and illustrated edition of the complete screenplay. Virtually every scene is examined including:Fascinating commentary on technical details about the filming and shooting locationsTales from the set, including the arguments, the accidents, and the practical jokesProfiles of the actors and stories of how they were castDeleted scenes that never made the final cutGoofs and gaffes that didAnd much more Interviews with former Paramount executives, cast and crew members—from the producer to the makeup artist—and director Francis Ford Coppola round out the commentary and shed new light on everything you thought you knew about this most influential film. The more than 200 photographs from the film, from behind-the-scenes, and from the cutting room floor make this a visual feast for every Godfather fan.

    In an unprecedented (for him) run of promiscuity, Ty has managed to impregnate three women in the span of one week: His ex-girlfriend, his 40-something married next-door neighbor, and his 18 year-old student. In this edgy comedy by playwright Rajiv Joseph, Ty's problems illuminate every triumph and failure of his life, and as the women

    Recalling his youth on the eve of his assassination - as if sensing his impending death - Caesar looks back over his early life up to his forty-third year and the conquest of Gaul. He analyzes and evaluates the worth of the great men he has known - Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cicero, Cato - and the great military deeds and political upheavals which marked his time. Caesar is a shrewd psychologist and he brilliantly penetrates the underlying causes of events as well as the factions and manoeuvres through which they were perpetrated by the leaders of Rome. Caesar is cynical yet kindly, patient, proud, watchful, a bitter defender of social justice. If the memory he displays in the narrative is keen and circumstantial, it is also particularly impressive in its sentient, purpose-ridden forcefulness and shapes these vital reflections of a major world figure at the height of his powers. The narrative (and one may hope that there will be a second volume describing Caesar's maturity) carries the validity and significance of an historical document; it is fictional biography of a high order. - from the Kirkus review of 1958