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  Josephine Baker's Cinematic Prism

  Terri Simone Francis

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  A history and in-depth analysis of the film career of the iconic Black star, activist, and French military intelligence agent. Josephine Baker, the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, was both liberated and delightfully undignified, playfully vacillating between allure and colonialist stereotyping. Nicknamed the “Black Venus,” “Black Pearl,” and “Creole Goddess,” Baker blended the sensual and the comedic when taking 1920s Europe by storm. Back home in the United States, Baker’s film career brought hope to the Black press that a new cinema centered on Black glamour would come to fruition. In Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism, Terri Simone Francis examines how Baker fashioned her celebrity through cinematic reflexivity, an authorial strategy in which she placed herself, her persona, and her character into visual dialogue. Francis contends that though Baker was an African American actress who lived and worked in France exclusively with a white film company, white costars, white writers, and white directors, she holds monumental significance for African American cinema as the first truly global Black woman film star. Francis also examines the double-talk between Baker and her characters in Le Pompier de Folies Bergère, La Sirène des Tropiques, Zou Zou, Princesse Tam Tam, and The French Way, whose narratives seem to undermine the very stardom they offered. In doing so, Francis illuminates the most resonant links between emergent African American cinephilia, the diverse opinions of Baker in the popular press, and African Americans’ broader aspirations for progress toward racial equality. Examining an unexplored aspect of Baker’s career, Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism deepens the ongoing conversation about race, gender, and performance in the African diaspora.

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  Emotional Ninja

  Whitney Cummings

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  Crude, vulgar, and above all hilariously honest Whitney Cummings shows off in her debut album Emotional Ninja.

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  Beethoven - The Man Revealed

  John Suchet

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  “An ideal ‘first book’ on Beethoven” from one of the world’s most eminent classical music aficionados (Booklist).   Beethoven scholar and classical radio host John Suchet has had a lifelong, ardent interest in the man and his music. Here, in his first full-length biography, Suchet illuminates the composer’s difficult childhood, his struggle to maintain friendships and romances, his ungovernable temper, his obsessive efforts to control his nephew’s life, and the excruciating decline of his hearing. This absorbing narrative provides a comprehensive account of a momentous life, as it takes the reader on a journey from the composer’s birth in Bonn to his death in Vienna.   Chronicling the landmark events in Beethoven’s career—from his competitive encounters with Mozart to the circumstances surrounding the creation of the well-known “Für Elise” and Moonlight Sonata—this book enhances understanding of the composer’s character, inspiring a deeper appreciation for his work. Beethoven scholarship is constantly evolving, and Suchet draws on the latest research, using rare source material (some of which has never before been published in English) to paint a complete and vivid portrait of the legendary prodigy.   “A gripping and thought-provoking read.” —Howard Shelley, pianist and conductor   “By exercising a genuine authority in identifying how Beethoven, the man, manifests himself in our appreciation of the music, Suchet brings an incisive freshness to an extraordinary life.” —Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music

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  Dick Van Dyke - The Life of an...

  Newbury Publishing

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  From his earliest experiences in Air Force radio to his third act as a crime-solving doctor on television and beyond, Dick Van Dyke has been delivering steady comedic and dramatic performances for more than seven decades. 
  An actor, producer and writer, Van Dyke has been a recognizable name for generations, thanks to the naming conventions of the early days of television, wherein a lead actor’s name would be used as the title of the series. At just 36, fresh from Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway, Dick Van Dyke carved out an enduring place in television with The Dick Van Dyke Show, alongside another soon-to-be small-screen legend with three names: Mary Tyler Moore. 
  By 1964, after being chosen by Walt Disney for a starring role in the film adaptation for Mary Poppins, Van Dyke danced his way into the hearts of Americans of all ages. Since those early roles as Albert J. Peterson, Rob Petrie and Bert the Chimney Sweep, Van Dyke has never gotten too far away from a microphone, camera or spotlight and his storied career continues. 
  As one of few remaining American actors still working in their 90s (alongside Angela Lansbury, Betty White, and Norman Lloyd), Van Dyke will seemingly never run out of roles. Nor is he running out of charm. Dick Van Dyke continues to delight audiences today. Recent appearances include a lively dance number during the climax of 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns, voicing a character in Showtime’s short-lived series Kidding in 2020 and accepting the tributes colleagues and acolytes bestowed on him as a recipient of the 43rd Kennedy Center Honors in 2021.

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  A Few More Pretty Good Jokes

  Garrison Keillor

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  The Joke Show is the most popular annual broadcast from A Prairie Home Companion. A Few More Pretty Good Jokes features all the jokes from the most recent shows which aired in April 2000 and 2002 (both were done in New York).  These recordings are a welcome supplement to the highly successful previous Joke Book, Tape, and CD.

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  The Statue of Liberty - A...

  Edward Berenson

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  “If you think you know all there is to know about the Statue of Liberty, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”—The New York Times   When the crated monument first arrived in New York Harbor, few could have foreseen the central place the Statue of Liberty would come to occupy in the American imagination. In this book, cultural historian and scholar of French history Edward Berenson tells the little-known stories of the statue’s improbable beginnings, transatlantic connections, and the changing meanings it has held for each successive generation. He tells of the French intellectuals who decided for their own domestic political reasons to pay tribute to American liberty; the initial, less-than-enthusiastic American response; and the countless difficulties before the statue was at last unveiled to the public in 1886. The trials of its inception and construction, however, are only half of the story. Berenson also shows how the statue’s symbolically indistinct, neoclassical form has allowed Americans to interpret its meaning in diverse ways—as representing the emancipation of the slaves, Tocqueville’s idea of orderly liberty, opportunity for “huddled masses,” and, in the years since 9/11, the freedom and resilience of New York City and the United States in the face of terror.Includes photos and illustrations “Endlessly fascinating.”—Louisville Courier-Journal

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