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  A Victorian Lady's Guide to...

  Mimi Matthews

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  “Meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated . . . indispensable to anyone interested in the era.” —Tasha Alexander, New York Times–bestselling author of the Lady Emily series What did a Victorian lady wear for a walk in the park? How did she style her hair for an evening at the theater? And what products might she have used to soothe a sunburn or treat an unsightly blemish? USA Today-bestselling author Mimi Matthews answers these questions and more as she takes readers on a decade-by-decade journey through Victorian fashion and beauty history.  Women’s clothing changed dramatically during the course of the Victorian era. Necklines rose, waistlines dropped, and Gothic severity gave way to flounces and frills. Sleeves ballooned up and skirts billowed out. The crinoline morphed into the bustle and steam-molded corsets cinched women’s waists ever tighter. As fashion evolved, so too did trends in ladies’ hair care and cosmetics. An era which began by prizing natural, barefaced beauty ended with women purchasing lip and cheek rouge, false hairpieces and pomades, and fashionable perfumes.  Using research from nineteenth-century beauty books, fashion magazines, and lady’s journals, the author of the Parish Orphans of Devon series brings Victorian fashion into modern day focus—and offers a glimpse of the social issues that influenced women’s clothing and the outrage that was a frequent response to those bold females who used fashion and beauty to assert their individuality and independence.   “An elegant resource that I will be reaching for again and again.”—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times-bestselling author of the Veronica Speedwell novels

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  There Was a Cherry-Tree

  James Whitcomb Riley

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  LibriVox volunteers bring you 18 recordings of There Was a Cherry-Tree by James Whitcomb Riley. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 13, 2012.Riley began his career writing verses as a sign maker and submitting poetry to newspapers. Thanks in part to an endorsement from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he eventually earned successive jobs at Indiana newspaper publishers during the latter 1870s. Riley gradually rose in prominence during the 1880s through his poetry reading tours. He traveled a touring circuit first in the Midwest, and then nationally, holding shows and making joint appearances on stage with other famous talents. Regularly struggling with his alcohol addiction, Riley never married or had children, and was involved in a scandal in 1888 when he became too drunk to perform. He became more popular in spite of the bad press he received, and as a result extricated himself from poorly negotiated contracts that limited his earnings; he quickly became very wealthy. (Summary from Wikipedia)

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  Dolce Vita Confidential -...

  Shawn Levy

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  From the ashes of World War II, Rome was reborn as the epicenter of film, fashion, creative energy, tabloid media, and bold-faced libertinism that made "Italian" a global synonym for taste, style, and flair. A confluence of cultural contributions created a bright, burning moment in history: it was the heyday of fashion icons such as Pucci and Brioni. Rome's huge movie studio, Cinecitta, attracted a dizzying array of stars, from Charleton Heston, Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Frank Sinatra to that stunning and combustible couple, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.Fashionistas, exiles, moguls, and martyrs flocked to Rome hoping for a chance to experience and indulge in the glow of old money, new stars, fast cars, wanton libidos, and brazen news photographers. The scene was captured nowhere better than in Federico Fellini's masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, starring Marcello Mastroianni and the Swedish bombshell Anita Ekberg.Gossipy, colorful, and richly informed, Dolce Vita Confidential re-creates Rome's stunning ascent with vivid and compelling tales of its glitterati and artists, down to every last outrageous detail of the city's magnificent transformation.

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  The Coen Brothers (Text-only...

  Adam Nayman

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  Fans of Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, and other modern classics will enjoy this “definitive history of the Coen brothers oeuvre” (Indiewire). 
   
  From such cult hits as Raising Arizona (1987) and The Big Lebowski (1998) to major critical darlings Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Ethan and Joel Coen have cultivated a bleakly comical, instantly recognizable voice in modern American cinema. In The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together, film critic Adam Nayman carefully sifts through their complex cinematic universe in an effort to plot, as he puts it, “some Grand Unified Theory of Coen-ness.”  
   
  With a combination of biography, close analysis, and enlightening interviews with key Coen collaborators, this book honors the films’ singular mix of darkness and levity, and is the definitive exploration of the Coen brothers’ oeuvre.

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  Mr Rickey Calls a Meeting

  Ed Schmidt

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  On a spring day in 1947, Mr. Rickey, the powerful General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, summons heavyweight champion Joe Louis, tap star Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson and actor Paul Robeson to his hotel room in Manhattan. Rickey wants their support when he taps Jackie Robinson to be the Major League’s first black ballplayer. But a power struggle ensues when the eloquent Robeson raises questions about Rickey’s motivations to integrate white baseball.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Edward Asner, David Downing, Tommy Hicks, Carl Lumbly, Sterling Macer, Charlie Robinson and Rugg Williams.

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  Cloverfield - Creatures and...

  Steffen Hantke

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  Upon its release in 2008, Matt Reeves's Cloverfield revitalized the giant creature, a cinematic trope that had languished for over a decade. The film addressed the attacks of September 11, 2001, trading the jingoistic rhetoric of retributive military aggression for serious engagement with personal and collective trauma. It applied the horror genre's fascination with personal stories captured by found footage to the grand violence of history. Innovative and intense, Cloverfield represented blockbuster filmmaking at its best.Cloverfield's franchising followed the path of high-profile Hollywood properties. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the franchise.Author Steffen Hantke examines how, in the broader context of postmillennial Hollywood, the Cloverfield franchise remains both a harbinger of the way Hollywood does business and a test case for the cinematic fantasies of apocalyptic disaster that continue to dominate global box office. As an inspiration for the next stage of blockbuster filmmaking, in which franchises have replaced the singular cinematic masterpiece and marketing plays to fans as critics and scholars, Cloverfield remains as relevant today as when it first unleashed its giant creature onto New York City over a decade ago.

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