Other books that might interest you

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  Aretha Franklin - The Queen of Soul

  Mark Bego

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  Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul documents the beloved singing star's rocky personal life and internationally acclaimed show business career. An in-depth and frank examination of Aretha, this definitive biography traces her career from her beginnings as a twelve-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, recording her first album at the age of fourteen, a major recording contract at eighteen, and stardom in her twenties, right up through her headline-grabbing 2010 health scare, to her triumphant return: singing to her cheering Detroit hometown fans in summer 2011. 
   
  This New York Times bestselling author's detailed research includes interviews with the most important people in Aretha's life, including record producers Jerry Wexler, Clyde Otis, and Clive Davis, her first husband, several of Franklin's singing star contemporaries, and a rare one-on-one session with Aretha herself. 
   
  Bego's portrayal of the singing sensation is done with clarity and neutrality. A no-holds-barred look at her roller coaster life, it takes her from two teenage pregnancies and an abusive first marriage, to drinking problems, battles with her weight, the murder of her father, and tabloid wars. This critically acclaimed, freshly updated biography will give readers a clear understanding of what makes Aretha Franklin the "Queen of Soul."

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  Cecil B DeMille's Hollywood

  Robert S. Birchard

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  A look at the wide-ranging work of the Golden Age genius who made The Ten Commandments and other blockbusters—and helped found the American film industry.  Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood is a detailed and definitive chronicle of the director’s screen work that changed the course of film history—and a fascinating look at how movies were actually made in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Drawing extensively on DeMille’s personal archives and other primary sources, Robert S. Birchard offers a revealing portrait of DeMille the filmmaker that goes behind studio gates and beyond DeMille’s legendary persona.   In his forty-five-year career DeMille’s box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. He had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories, and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah, DeMille also created Westerns, realistic “chamber dramas,” and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies—while setting the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanding absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians.   “Far and away the best film book published so far this year.” —National Board of Review

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  Rahm Emanuel Author of "The...

  PBS NewsHour

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  Rahm Emanuel has served as a top adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama, a three-term congressman from Illinois and a two-term mayor of Chicago. But in his new book, “The Nation City,” the longtime Democrat argues that mayors are today’s most effective U.S. government officials. Emanuel sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss that idea as well as his fears about "reckless" progressives in 2020.

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  A Shostakovich Casebook

  Malcolm Hamrick Brown

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  A collection of writings analyzing the controversial 1979 posthumous memoirs of the great Russian composer at their significance. 
   
  In 1979, the alleged memoirs of legendary composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) were published as Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitry Shostakovich As Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov. Since its appearance, however, Testimony has been the focus of controversy in Shostakovich studies as doubts were raised concerning its authenticity and the role of its editor, Volkov, in creating the book. 
   
  A Shostakovich Casebook presents twenty-five essays, interviews, newspaper articles, and reviews—many newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union—that review the “case” of Shostakovich. In addition to authoritatively reassessing Testimony’s genesis and reception, the authors in this book address issues of political influence on musical creativity and the role of the artist within a totalitarian society. Internationally known contributors include Richard Taruskin, Laurel E. Fay, and Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, the composer’s widow. This volume combines a balanced reconsideration of the Testimony controversy with an examination of what the controversy signifies for all music historians, performers, and thoughtful listeners. 
   
  Praise for A Shostakovich Casebook 
   
  “A major event . . . This Casebook is not only about Volkov’s Testimony, it is about music old and new in the 20th century, about the cultural legacy of one of that century’s most extravagant social experiments, and what we have to learn from them, not only what they ought to learn from us.” —Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

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  Doug Stanhope: No Place Like Home

  Doug Stanhope

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  Doug Stanhope performs live in his hometown of Bisbee, Arizona, tackling an assortment of hard-hitting issues, from caring for the mentally-ill, to Vietnam vets, being locked up abroad and why everyone should kick like they kick. Watch him battle ISIS for the disenfranchised, angry youth.

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  Tom Keith - Sound Effects Man

  Garrison Keillor, Tom Keith

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  Tom Keith had a wonderful ear for sound and beautiful sense of comic timing. As a schoolboy imitator of birds, livestock, and people being punched in the face, he had natural abilities that pointed to a career in the Live Radio Sound Effects Production Industry. But by the time he graduated from the University of Minnesota in the late ’60s, that once well-traveled career path was deserted. Tom joined the Marines instead, and he learned to mimic helicopters and do seven different kinds of explosion. 
   Still there were no jobs, so he took an engineering post, babysitting a public radio transmitter while a tall, quiet writer tried to turn his imaginary world into a show. Tom was enlisted as an accomplice and immediately found his calling, eventually entertaining millions as the regular sound-effects man for A Prairie Home Companion.A HighBridge Audio production.

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