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Although a major star in the 1910s, Theda Bara--known as "The Vamp"--was largely neglected until the 1990s, when her fame began to resurface. Since then, there have been biographies, documentaries and other works that have brought the silent film actress back into the spotlight, including a painstaking stills reconstruction of her lost epic Cleopatra. This is a complete examination of Bara's more than 40 films, as well as her theater and radio appearances, down to the smallest detail. With the vast majority of Bara's films considered lost, it is a particularly valuable resource for fans and scholars, and includes information about each film's genesis, director, plot, censorship problems, and critical and public reactions. Also included is a biographical overview, with many illuminating anecdotes.

Taking a postmodern critical approach, this collection of new essays explores The CW Network's popular television drama The Vampire Diaries, taking in the complete original series (2009-2017), its spinoffs, source novels and fan fiction. Spanning three decades, TVD has engaged its predominantly teenage audience with storylines around love, friendship, social politics and gender roles. Contributors traverse the franchise's metamorphosis to suit the complex tastes of an early 21st century audience.

A killer monkey. Suburban witchcraft. Motorcycle jousting. A cockroach invasion. Despite this enticing list of other subjects, George A. Romero is best known for the genre-defining 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and subsequent zombie films. The non-zombie films in his decades-long career have gotten varied degrees of critical examination but they remain underexamined compared to the Dead flicks. This book focuses on Romero's "other" work, highlighting lesser-known films such as There's Always Vanilla (1971) and Bruiser (2000), as well as more popular films such as Martin (1977) and The Crazies (1973). It examines how his body of work participates in social critique by delving into issues such as capitalism's pitfalls and excesses, domestic and racial power imbalances, and our patriarchal culture's expectations of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality.

Babe Ruth was 40 and flabby in 1935. His days as a strapping, fearsome home run hitter were behind him. Baseball had flourished into big business through Ruth's swing and swag and didn't need him anymore. His dream was to become a manager but the New York Yankees--a dynasty he helped build--were not interested. But someone wanted him. Judge Emil Fuchs, luckless president of the Boston Braves, had lost a fortune on his perpetually losing team. Desperate to save the club from collapse, he needed Babe Ruth--not the fading slugger but the most famous brand on the planet. This book chronicles the Ruth and Fuchs partnership during a perplexing 1935 season with the 38-115 Braves--truly one of the worst baseball teams in history--along with Ruth's final games, back in the city where he debuted.

How did beloved movie dogs become man-killers like Cujo and his cinematic pack-mates? For the first time, here is the fascinating history of canines in horror movies and why our best friends were (and are still) painted as malevolent. Stretching back into Classical mythology, treacherous hounds are found only sporadically in art and literature until the appearance of cinema's first horror dog, Sherlock Holmes' Hound of the Baskervilles. The story intensifies through World War II's K-9 Corps to the 1970s animal horror films, which broke social taboos about the "good dog" on screen and deliberately vilified certain breeds--sometimes even fluffy lapdogs. With behind-the-scenes insights from writers, directors, actors, and dog trainers, here are the flickering hounds of silent films through talkies and Technicolor, to the latest computer-generated brutes--the supernatural, rabid, laboratory-made, alien, feral, and trained killers. "Cave Canem (Beware the Dog)"--or as one seminal film warned, "They're not pets anymore."

Shakespeare's comedy Love's Labour's Lost has perplexed scholars and theatergoers for over 400 years due to its linguistic complexity, obscure topical allusions and decidedly non-comedic ending. According to traditional interpretations, it is Shakespeare's "French" play, based on events and characters from the French Wars of Religion. This work argues that the play's French surface conceals a Russian core. It outlines an interpretation of Love's Labour's Lost rooted in diplomatic and trade relations between Russia and Elizabethan England during the dramatic decades following England's discovery of a northern trade route to Muscovy in 1553. Drawing on original research of 16th-century sources in English, Latin and French, the text also surveys Russian sources previously unavailable in translation. This analysis provides new explanations for some of the play's previously most enigmatic elements, such as its unconventional ending, the significance of its secondary characters, linguistic anomalies and the Masque of the Muscovites itself.

In 2016, a newspaper published an article about four childrendue to be sent to an orphanage after their parents were punished for attempting to flee Vietnam. Among 46 asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat, they were intercepted by the Australian navy and returned to Vietnam, where intense retribution awaited. This newspaper article sparked a unifying response in people across the globe. This work tells the story of volunteer advocates who banded together to help a group of Vietnamese refugees on their journey to freedom. Highlighting the courage of "ordinary" people--and with tales of human rights, communal living, reuniting families and their eventual resettlement in Canada--this book paints a vivid picture of Vietnamese families' struggle for liberty in the 21st century.

From British soldier Flora Sandes to the famed World War II Night Witches of the Soviet Air Force, women across the globe have stepped up to defend their countries during every major and minor conflict of the twentieth century, and filmmakers have long attempted to capture their stories. This book analyzes these military women's portrayals in world cinema, examining movies from Israel, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, Japan and others. It includes theatrical releases, direct-to-video productions, and made-for-television films. Chapters organize films by decade produced, and topics covered include the women's sexuality, maternal and marital status; leadership skills; actual jobs performed; and the accuracy of depiction. The book also discusses how each film reflects the contemporary social issues of the nation in which it was produced.

This is the most complete and thorough biography of Jose Raul Capablanca, one of the greatest players in the history of chess. Beginning with his family background, birth, childhood and introduction to the game in Cuba, it examines his life and play as a young man; follows his evolution as a player and rise to prominence, first as challenger and then world champion; his loss of the title to Alekhine and his efforts to recapture the championship in the last years of his too-short life. What emerges is a portrait of a complex man with far-ranging interests and concerns, in stark contrast to his robotic reputation as "the chess machine." Meticulously researched, utilizing many sources available only in Capablanca's home country, it puts truth to legend regarding a man who stood astride the chess world in of its most dynamic and dramatic eras. Numerous games and diagrams complement the text, as do a wealth of photographs.

Corporal Leonard Guttridge was among the many unsung heroes of the Battle of Britain--the Royal Air Force mechanics and armorers who patched bullet holes, repaired engines, refueled empty tanks and replenished ammunition, enabling outnumbered pilots to return to the skies. His journal, written in tiny notebooks, at moments under enemy fire, chronicles the battle and its human toll, and portrays the tenacity of the RAF ground crews without whom the British could not have defeated the German Luftwaffe.

When Nazi troops invaded her home of Donetsk, Ukraine, Tatyana Artemyeff, a 27-year-old teacher, was left on her own to save her two children and mother when her conscripted husband's unit retreated from the city. Luckily, she spoke German, and she was determined to find a way to survive the brutal occupation and keep her family from dying of starvation or facing execution. Decades later, when Tatyana's daughter found her diaries in a Connecticut attic, she discovered a unique account of life as a teacher in the Stalinist Soviet Union, the 1941 Nazi invasion of Donetsk, her survival under Nazi occupation, and her harrowing escape to the West. Told from the perspective of her daughter, Helen, this book switches seamlessly between the first-person account of life and death and the immigrant story of her American-born daughter.

This is the first book-length biography of Ned Hanlon, a Hall of Famer but yet an underappreciated figure in baseball history. As a first generation Irish-American, Ned Hanlon left behind a childhood in the cotton mills to become a star player in the major leagues and the famous manager of the colorful 1890s Baltimore Orioles. He traveled the world on an all-star team and was a key member of the first attempt by baseball players to unionize, which led to the creation of the upstart Players' League. Hanlon was an innovative and shrewd tactician whose strategies and ideas helped baseball transition from its rough infancy into the modern game we know today. As one of the premier baseball minds of his time, "Foxy Ned" also exerted a profound influence on the sport through the managerial tree he established, which includes Hall of Fame managers such as John McGraw, Miller Huggins, and Connie Mack.

The hunger strike of 1981 is regarded as one of the most tragic events in Irish history. Ten men died over a period of 217 days in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh (Maze) prison while exercising the most extreme form of civil disobedience available to them. The Troubles that gave rise to the hunger strike had roots in the centuries of socio-economic subjugation and religious persecution in Ireland. In 1971, the British government began internment without trial for persons suspected of belonging to paramilitary organizations. Eventually, the British government granted Special Category Status to these prisoners before later stripping it from the prisons by 1976, leading to a five-year prisoner protest that culminated in the 1981 hunger strike. This book critically examines declassified British government documents that detail how the government's policies led to the 1981 hunger strike, how Margaret Thatcher exacerbated the strike by refusing steps to end it, and how the hunger strike eventually led to peace in the north. Analysis also illustrates how the 1981 hunger strike, and the ten men who died on it, forced a revolutionary change in the political and governmental structure of the north and paved a road to peace that concluded with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

History paints war out to be a man's business, but there is an army of women warriors who stand between the lines of history books, waiting to be seen. This biographical dictionary tells the story of the females who armed themselves against threats to self, family, home and country. Spanning 17 periods of world history, it compiles the daring deeds of 1,622 female fighters, from Bronze Age archers and Viking raiders, to helicopter pilots and commanders of aircraft carriers. Entries summarize heroes such as the Old Testament judge Deborah, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Aisha, Mary Spencer-Churchill, Calamity Jane, Cleopatra VII, Molly Pitcher, Aung San Suu Kyi and-- surprisingly-- Julia Child. Included are the famous stands the unheralded scrappers and risk-takers took up in fierce crises.

This is a critical history of spy fiction, film and television in the United States, with a particular focus on the American fictional spies that rivaled (and were often influenced by) Ian Fleming's James Bond. James Fenimore Cooper's Harvey Birch, based on a real-life counterpart, appeared in his novel The Spy in 1821. While Harvey Birch's British rivals dominated spy fiction from the late 1800s until the mid-1930s, American spy fiction came of age shortly thereafter. The spy boom in novels and films during the 1960s, spearheaded by Bond, heavily influenced the espionage genre in the United States for years to come, including series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Matt Helm. The author demonstrates that, while American authors currently dominate the international spy fiction market, James Bond has cast a very long shadow, for a very long time.

Theaters worldwide have exhibited a bewildering array of form, style, tone and subject in the late 20th- and the early 21st centuries, and this range of work has been determined largely by its directors. This book documents this procession of theatre in interviews with 28 directors who've been most recognized and influential on the global stage. Their ideas are varied, even dissonant, indicating the protean nature of theatre and the rich weave of work that's made our theater so rewarding. Interviewees include Judith Malina, Ping Chong, Julie Taymor and Robert Icke, among others who have defined modern theater.

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and visual artist early within the Romantic movement. Although both his textual and pictorial works have generally been regarded as complex and open to interpretation, the author argues that sexuality is perhaps the most notable component worthy of discussion when reading Blake. This book covers sex in Blake's works and Blake's personal views about sex, and offers a more general overview of sex in literature from the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. It includes a brief discussion of some of the more dated criticism of Blake and the matter of sex. The book then goes on to discuss, more specifically and in greater detail, the issue of sex in several of the longer and more complex of Blake's notable works, including The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem. A chapter is dedicated to each work, examining Blake's development of sexual issues. It concludes with notable examples of the omnipresent nature of sex in nearly all of Blake's art and poetry.

This is a biography of Dan Levenson, an old-time banjo and fiddle player from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1987 and 1991, Dan worked for Goose Acres Folk Music Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he dove deeply into old-time music. In the late 1980s, he formed the Boiled Buzzards; they recorded four albums between 1989 and 1994 and were a consistently active presence at old-time music festivals. He also played with Bob Frank during that time as one-half of the Hotfoot Duo. In 1995, he teamed up with Kim Murley and recorded New Frontier: Instrumentals from China and America. Levenson undertook his first cross-country trip as a solo performer in 1996. His traveling workshop "Meet the Banjo" ran with the sponsorship of Deering Banjos from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Dan recorded three projects in the first five years of the 2000s and began editing the quarterly "Old Time Way" section for Banjo Newsletter in 2005. He continues performing old-time music, teaching fiddle and banjo, writing instructional and repertoire books featuring banjo and fiddle tunes for Mel Bay, and making plans for more old-time music projects.

What makes a kaiju a kaiju? What makes an ape a large ape, and why do we sympathize with some, such as King Kong, and not with others, such as Konga? And what makes a giant person become a "monster"? This book provides a new perspective on kaiju and reveals that our boundaries for the genre are perhaps not so solid. This work focuses primarily on newer kaiju works, ranging from Colossal to Shin Godzilla to Godzilla vs. Kong, but also touches on classics such as King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, Godzilla Raids Again, and lesser-known works such as What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? and Agon. Like our ancestors we have collectively adopted giant monsters into our culture, especially our pop culture. Within the domains where giant monsters walk, we experience the rigidity of our moral structures, and the fleeting borders of our definitions of humanity. Within the kaiju film genre rest our own assumptions about what makes a monster a monster, and, more importantly, what makes a human a human.

In 1911, a legally deaf, beginner pilot with limited training and only 90 minutes of solo flying experience took on newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst's $50,000 challenge to be the first aviator to fly across America in 30 days or less. The transcontinental flight was considered by most to be an extremely dangerous and nearly impossible feat, considering roughly half of all pilots perished in the early years of aviation. Less than a decade since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, a time when less than two percent of the country had even seen an airplane, Calbraith "Cal" Perry Rodgers drew tens of thousands of people to watch him fly. He survived a grueling journey, making history by becoming the first person to complete an east-to-west transcontinental flight. In a flimsy aircraft prone to mechanical failure, Rodgers crashed an astonishing 16 times, narrowly avoiding death on numerous occasions. By the time he had reached California and the coast where he would land, on the sand at Long Beach, his story of courage and determination had captured the imagination of an entire nation. This book chronicles the life of Cal Rodgers and depicts the world of aviation during its adventurous, if dangerous, beginnings.

A sequel to the author's autobiographical trilogy--Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin, In the Jaws of the Crocodile, and Farewell, Mama Odessa--this book is part memoir and part cultural study about the challenges of immigration and American accculturation. With self-deprecating humor, the author, a former Soviet satirist who was punished for trespassing the boundaries of public criticism, recollects his growing pains as he overcame his indoctrinated upbringing in a totalitarian society to embrace America's defining values.

This work traces the history of a remarkable troop of Hoosier horsemen--the East Wing of the Third Indiana Cavalry--during the Civil War. From the backwaters of the war in eastern Maryland to the epicenter of cavalry action in the eastern theater, they fought at Antietam, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and around Petersburg, and helped subdue Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Along the way they served as spies and fought in dozens of vicious skirmishes and battles. At Appomattox, they escorted one of the most famous generals to come out of the war.

Although often overlooked today, James Fenimore Cooper's novels represent the very beginnings of American literature. Singlehandedly, the gentleman farmer from upstate New York created the American historical, spy, sea, frontier, science fiction, and courtroom novels. His books became both national and international bestsellers, were quickly translated into other languages, and impacted the development of the American publishing industry. This literary companion is a useful resource covering the major themes, characters, settings and more found in Cooper's works. It includes an overview of his fiction; a brief biography; a chronological list of his major publications; and topics for discussion, research, and study.

World War II was over and the U.S. was still using the captured Japanese island of Okinawa as a major naval base. Hundreds of vessels dotted the numerous bays and inlets, and thousands of military personnel occupied the island. In October 1945, Typhoon Louise tore into Okinawa, slamming ships together and tossing them onto reefs and beaches. Terrible winds tore up tent cities and disintegrated corrugated tin Quonset huts. One hundred people died and 383 ships of all sizes were sunk or damaged. This book tells the full story of the typhoon historian Samuel Eliot Morison called "the most furious and lethal storm ever encountered by the United States Navy."

From their first pairing in Hamlet (1948) to House of the Long Shadows (1983), British film stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing forged perhaps the most successful collaboration in horror film history. In its revised and expanded second edition, this volume examines their 22 movie team-ups, with critical commentary, complete cast and credits, production information, details on cinematography and make-up, exhibition history and box-office figures. A wealth of background about Hammer, Amicus and other production companies is provided, along with more than 100 illustrations. Lee and Cushing describe particulars of their partnership in original interviews. Exclusive interviews with Robert Bloch, Hazel Court and nearly fifty other actors, directors and others who worked on the Lee-Cushing films are included.

General Braxton Bragg is often described as a despicable, friendless man, the most hated general of the Confederacy. Historians have denigrated Bragg by accepting without challenge the self-serving accusations of prominent, disgruntled subordinates, each of whom sought to explain their own failures by assigning them to Bragg. This biography, without dodging Bragg's deficiencies, refutes much of this false testimony. The result is a balanced view of this controversial general, from his early rise to power in the Western theater to his subsequent fall from grace in the latter years of the Civil War.

This work offers a critical examination of 130 commercially-released film comedies of the 1970s. It considers the socio-political circumstances of each year of the decade, then critiques each film released that year with a focus on its effect on the film industry and the art of big screen comedy, as well as the emergence of talents whose work influenced (or was influenced by) the zeitgeist of the decade. Covering popular titles like M*A*S*H, Blazing Saddles, American Graffiti, The Bad News Bears, Smokey and the Bandit and many more, it argues that the 1970s may rightly be considered the last golden age of film comedy.

Has John Adams been forgotten? He is the only Founding Father without a major memorial in the nation's capital. When he lamented that "monuments will never be erected to me," he predicted as much. His pessimism was understandable, but it was unjustified: Adams has since been portrayed in numerous biographies, plays, musicals, poems, novels, and television shows. This is the first comprehensive overview of John Adams as he appears in scholarship and in popular culture. The second president is one-dimensional at times, and perhaps best known to the public as "obnoxious and disliked," but he is always fascinating. The varied ways in which biographers and artists represented Adams provide a glimpse into his character. These portrayals also provide insight into the various ways in which people continue to find meaning in the American Revolution and its aftermath.

How did Friday the 13th begin as a movie about a grieving mother killing camp counselors and spawn a movie in which a nanobot enhanced, hockey masked man destroys a space station? Similarly, how did A Nightmare on Elm Street evolve from a film by Wes Craven about Freddy Krueger into a film about Wes Craven making a Freddy Krueger movie? Film series are destined to change with time, but horror film series are often unrecognizable after multiple sequels and reboots. This work examines horror films and their sequels to determine the glue that holds individual franchises together, which films matter to a series' continuity, which should be considered as canon, and what goes into the process of continuing--or, in some cases, abandoning--the overarching storyline. Series covered include Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Leprechaun, and Scream.

This book examines translations of Icelandic sagas and the Victorian and Edwardian children's literature they inspired, some of which are canonical while others are forgotten. It covers authors like William Morris, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Gray, Walter Scott, H. Rider Haggard, W.H. Auden, John Greenleef Whittier and more. In lavish volumes and modest schoolbooks, British and American writers claimed Nordic heritage and explored Nordic traditions. The sagas offered a rich and wide-ranging source for these authors: Volsunga saga's Sigurd the dragon slayer; King Olaf's saga of opposing Nordic Gods and Christianity; Frithiof's model of headstrong youth beset with unfair opposition and lost love. Grettir and Njal tell of men who accepted fate and met conflict and enemies unflinchingly; Aslaug, Gudrida, Hallberga and Hervar exerted remarkable influence; and Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky provided Americans with a Nordic heritage of discovery.