Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    The musical tale of a domineering stage mother's inadvertent creation of a burlesque stripper, now available in paperback for the first time.

    

    A collection of twenty of Paglia's out-spoken essays on contemporary issues in America's ongoing cultural debate such as Anita Hill, Robert Mapplethorpe, the beauty myth, and the decline of education in America.

    . . Jean and Rosie, opposites in every way, are dealing with different aspects of their lives when they find themselves working side-by-side in the same real estate company. Despite reluctance, they also find themselves teaming up for some new mid-life adventures filled with excitement, romance and plenty of drama. As they become better acquainted, a friendship begins to form. They laugh, cry, and even fight together. Until finally, during a slumber party and while sporting polyester pajamas, they entrust their lives completely to each other and share their deepest, darkest secrets. Through it all, they discover how truly wonderful having a best friend, at any age, can be. If you’ve ever had or needed a best friend, have wondered what life was all about, have been ashamed of something you’ve done in the past, or if you’ve ever lost someone you loved with all of your heart, then you MUST read this book! Praise for in Polyester Pajamas: “In Polyester Pajamas is at once gutsy, poignant, tear-inducing, and wickedly funny. I recommend this book to anyone who has experienced love, loss, heartbreak, happiness, and new beginnings. In short, In Polyester Pajamas is for everyone. It’s a brave, ballsy, brightly colored novel by a brave, ballsy, brightly colorful writer. Bravo, Catherine Dougherty.” —Jennifer Niven, author of Velva Jean Learns to Drive, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, and Becoming Clementine

    Michael Gray's 'Song and Dance Man III', on Bob Dylan's life and work, offers studies of Dylan's' entire oeuvre, and the ever-popular album-by-album guide has also been extensively updated and extended.

    Old friends, their lives are interwoven in a comfortable pattern of school runs and Sunday golf, barbecues and shared holidays.Until Nina Cort returns to the cathedral city of her childhood. Rich sophisticated and newly widowed, Nina is an exotic thread in the pattern, whose intrusion reveals a web of hidden flaws.In the course of a year from which none will emerge unscathed, the five families and Nina discover that you can never truly know the fabric of other people's marriages. Perhaps not even of your own...

    But beneath its glitzy surface, postmodernism had a dirty secret: it was the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was the forcing ground of “post truth,” by means of which western values were turned upside down. But where do these ideas come from and how have they impacted on the world?In this brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a narrative that starts in the early 1970s and still dominates our lives today. He tells this history through a riotous gallery that includes, among others: David Bowie, the iPod, Madonna, Jeff Koons’s the Nixon Shock, Judith Butler, Las Vegas, Margaret Thatcher, Grand Master Flash, I Love Dick, the RAND Corporation, the Sex Pistols, Princess Diana, Grand Theft Auto, Jean Baudrillard, Netflix, and 9/11.We are today scarcely capable of conceiving politics as a communal activity because we have become habituated to being consumers rather than citizens. Politicians treat us as consumers to whom they must deliver. Can we do anything other than suffer from buyer’s remorse?

    It's easier that way. Her needs are taken care of and she doesn't have to give more of herself than she wants to. No messy feelings involved. But when the man she's seeing poses an unexpected question, Kimera quickly realizes that she's not the only woman pulled in by his charm.Their new arrangement doesn't require much from Kimera, but she soon discovers that someone else is pulling the strings. She's not looking for complications, yet she can't help feeling that there's something devious at play.And the truth is more complicated than she could ever imagine . . .

    In keeping with the popular level of this theater, Schikaneder himself supplied Mozart with the libretto about the rescue of a good fairy's daughter from a wicked magician by a hero armed with a magic flute. After a good deal of the music was written, the composer and librettist — both Freemasons — grafted Masonic ideals onto the plot, transforming a simple fairy tale into a moralistic allegory and a Singspiel into one of the world's greatest operas.This handsome, moderately priced volume, reprinted directly form an authoritative edition, will enable musicians, music students, and opera lovers to gain a fuller appreciation of Mozart's mastery of operatic language, orchestral color, and dramatic expression. A helpful feature of this edition is the inclusion of all spoken dialog, usually abbreviated in other editions.

    Her greatest concerns, though, are the health problems of her young daughter, Kylie. Symptoms point to a compromised immune system, but every doctor they’ve seen has a different theory. Then comes hope for some clarity.It’s possible that Kylie’s illness is genetic, but Ally is adopted. A DNA test opens up an entirely new path. And where it leads is a surprise: to an aunt Ally never knew existed. She’s a little wild, very welcoming, and ready to share more of the family history than Ally ever imagined.Coping with a skeptical soon-to-be-ex husband, weathering the cautions of her own resistant mother, and getting maddeningly close to the healing Kylie needs, Ally is determined to regain control of her life. This is her chance to embrace uncertainty and the beauty of family—both the one she was born into and the one she chose.

    Serious, funny, profound, whimsical and enigmatic, it contains descriptions of his days in teenage garage bands, the rise of The Waterboys, his exploits with Steve Wickham and the rest of the gang in the west of Ireland, and much, much more.

    Maybe they’re even suspicious of it. John Coltrane’s saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix’s feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar’s sitar extrapolations—all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. “Just” improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett’s A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse— found all around the world— to make up music on the spot.           Corbett equips his reader for a journey into a difficult musical landscape, where there is no steady beat, no pre-ordained format, no overarching melodic or harmonic framework, and where tones can ring with the sharpest of burrs. In “Fundamentals,” he explores key areas of interest, such as how the musicians interact, the malleability of time, overcoming impatience, and watching out for changes and transitions; he grounds these observations in concrete listening exercises, a veritable training regime for musical attentiveness. Then he takes readers deeper in “Advanced Techniques,” plumbing the philosophical conundrums at the heart of free improvisation, including topics such as the influence of the audience and the counterintuitive challenge of listening while asleep. Scattered throughout are helpful and accessible lists of essential resources—recordings, books, videos— and a registry of major practicing free improvisors from Noël Akchoté to John Zorn, particularly essential because this music is best experienced live.           The result is a concise, humorous, and inspiring guide, a unique book that will help transform one of the world’s most notoriously unapproachable artforms into a rewarding and enjoyable experience.

    It is the sound of isolation that has sold itself to millions.” Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is the best-selling piece of music in jazz history and, for many listeners, among the most haunting works of the twentieth century. It is also, notoriously, the only jazz album many people own. Recorded in 1959 (in nine miraculous hours), there has been nothing like it since. Richard Williams’s “richly informative” (The Guardian) history considers the album within its wider cultural context, showing how the record influenced such diverse artists as Steve Reich and the Velvet Underground.In the tradition of Alex Ross and Greil Marcus, the “effortlessly versatile” Williams (The Times) “connects these seemingly disparate phenomena with purpose, finesse and journalistic flair” (Financial Times), making masterly connections to painting, literature, philosophy, and poetry while identifying the qualities that make the album so uniquely appealing and surprisingly universal.

    Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.