It ran for five years, won 15 Emmys and set the pace for the sophisticated sitcom. Written with the full cooperation of Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner and Mary Tyler Moore, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book is the first and only authorized backstage history of TV's most enduring comedy, an ultimate viewer guide to the dhow, both on and off camera. The book reads like a great dramatic script itself, beginning with the task of getting the show on its feet, moving on to the struggles to keep it alive.The first and only complete, fully authorized "biography" of one of TV's most beloved sitcoms, including the first complete viewer's guide to all 158 episodes, including a rare look at Carl Reiner's Head of the Family, the pilot film that started it all, as well as special behind-the-scenes trivia and a full chapter concordance. 50 black and white photos.

    The #1 bestseller in England tells the story of the obsessive pursuit of the secret formula to 18th-century Europe's most precious commodity -- fine porcelain.

    Word soon got out about the fun-house mummy, about whom so little was known that the autopsy took on the character of an archaeological dig. The body looked like something pulled out of a peat bog, or an ice cave high in the Andes. The brain was mummified and like a rock, as were all the other organs....Late in the autopsy came the biggest surprise of all. Removing the jaw, the coroner pulled from the back of the mouth a single green corroded copper penny, dated 1924, and several ticket stubs, one that read "Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime, 524 South Main Street, Los Angeles." After all the careful speculation and surmise, after the body had been completely dismantled, the biggest clue to its identity came straight from the corpse's mouth.Praise for Mark Svenvold: "Mark Svenvold writes with the top down, and his sleek late-model imagination in fifth gear. Honk if you love first books that can cruise or race with full-throated elegance. Here's one!" --J. D. McClatchy

    His dialogue--abrasive, rhythmic--illuminates a modern aesthetic evocative of Samuel Beckett. His plots--surprising, comic, topical--have evoked comparisons to masters from Alfred Hitchcock to Arthur Miller. Here are two screenplays demonstrating the astounding range of Mamet's talents.         The Spanish Prisoner, a neo-noir thriller about a research-and-development cog hoodwinked out of his own brilliant discovery, demonstrates Mamet's incomparable use of character in a dizzying tale of twists and mistaken identity. The Winslow Boy, Mamet's revisitation of Terence Rattigan's  classic 1946 play, tells of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and the tug of war for truth that ensues between his middle-class family and the Royal Navy. Crackling with wit, intelligent and surprising, The Spanish Prisoner and The Winslow Boy celebrate Mamet's unique genius and our eternal fascination with the extraordinary predicaments of the common man.

    Coined by Roger Cardinal in 1972, the term in English derived from Jean Dubuffet's "art brut"--literally "raw art," "uncooked" by culture, unaffected by fashion, unmoved by artistic standards. In this indispensable book Colin Rhodes surveys the history and reception of Outsider Art--first championed by Dubuffet and the Surrealists, now appreciated by a wide public--while providing insight into the achievements of both major figures and newly discovered artists. From spirit-guided Madge Gill to schizophrenic Adolf WÜlfli, these individuals passionately and obsessively pursue the pictorial expression of their vision.

    Enter Nothing Nice to Say. Mitch Clem's Nothing Nice to Say leaves no mohawked, leather-jacket-clad stone unturned in its mission to expose the awesomeness and the absurdity of punk culture. Sometimes esoteric and always hilarious, Nothing Nice is so punk you'd think the book was bound with safety pins.

    A personal selection of the best interviews from eight classic books by America's much-loved pre-eminent oral historian, Studs Terkel.

    Including poets as diverse as John Betjeman and Ted Hughes, Siegfried Sassoon and Allan Ahlberg, and subjects from all avenues of life - war, family life, love, death, religion, the countryside, animals and comedy - the whole breadth of the nation's life during the 20th century is encapsulated here. Compiled and edited by Griff Rhys Jones as part of the successful The Nations Favourite Poems series, this book brings together the wealth of new and innovative poetry styles that flourished in the 20th Century.

    Loren Rhoads, creator and editor of the magazine, has compiled some of her favorite stories from all ten issues in this sometimes shocking, occasionally gruesome, always fascinating anthology. This quirky book is filled with tales from ordinary people -- who just happen to have eccentric, peculiar interests. Ranging from the outrageous (attending a Black Mass, fishing bodies out of San Francisco Bay, making fake snuff films) to the more "mundane" (visiting a torture museum, tracking real vampires through San Francisco), this curiously enjoyable collection of stories, complete with illustrations and informative asides, will entertain and haunt readers long after the final page is turned.

    Much of it is drawn from the oral testimony of countrymen (including poachers) still living when the book was written.'Here, from stubble to stewing pot, are all the facts that can be assembled; science, literature, mythology, superstition, semantics, venery, and a rich swathe of countryman's talk . . . This delightful book.' Observer

    In a remarkable achievement of historical detective work that is destined to become a classic, authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince delve into the mysterious world of the Freemasons, the Cathars, the Knights Templar, and the occult to discover the truth behind an underground religion with roots in the first century that survives even today. Chronicling their fascinating quest for truth through time and space, the authors reveal an astonishing new view of the real motives and character of the founder of Christianity, as well as the actual historical—and revelatory—roles of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. Painstakingly researched and thoroughly documented, The Templar Revelation presents a secret history, preserved through the centuries but encoded in works of art and even in the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe, whose final chapter could shatter the foundation of the Christian Church.

    PaperbackPublisher: Bantam Books (Mm) (November 1981)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 055313101XISBN-13: 978-0553131017Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 1 inchesShipping Weight: 10.4 ounces

    ' dentity CrisisRecovering from a nervous breakdown, Jane is nursed and nagged by her energetic and overwhelming mother, Edith Fromage, who claims to have invented cheese. She also criticizes Jane for her suicide attempt, but then claims it never happened. Plus Jane is very confused by the fact that her mother and her brother Dwayne seem to be having an affair. But then at other times, her brother turns into her father, and then into her grandfather, and sometimes into a French count. So Jane isn’t really sure who he is. Her psychiatrist makes a house call and listens sympathetically to Jane’s recurring memory of attending a nightmarish production of “Peter Pan” in her youth. But then he goes off and has sex change, and returns as a woman, and Jane has trouble recognizing him. Then his wife shows up, also with a sex change, and the wife now looks like the psychiatrist. So poor Jane feels crazier still, though Edith and Dwayne/father/ grandfather/count think the new company is great fun, and everybody ends by conjugating the verb “dentity” : I dentity, you dentity, he she or it denties.The Actor's NightmareThe Actor's Nightmare is a short comic play by Christopher Durang. It involves an accountant named George Spelvin, who is mistaken for an actor's understudy and forced to perform in a play for which he doesn't know any of the lines.

    For thirteen months the town of Point Pleasant is gripped by a real-life nightmare that culminates in a tragedy that makes headlines around the world. Strange occurrences and sightings, including a bizarre winged apparition that becomes known as the Mothman, trouble this ordinary American community. Mysterious lights are seen moving across the sky. Domestic animals are found slaughtered and mutilated. And journalist John Keel, arriving to investigate the freakish events, soon finds himself an integral part of an eerie and unfathomable mystery...

    The resulting journey through dark and desperate futures of aliens, diseases, and humanity's own madness is brain-bending and utterly bizarre.