If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery
In Search of Billie Holiday
Written by Farah Jasmine Griffin

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
On Sale: April 30, 2002
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-345-44973-3 (0-345-44973-8)

Singer, composer, actress, lover, wife, writer, pleasure seeker, drug addict, icon, commodity, myth and mystery: Billie Holiday is still one of the most famous jazz vocalists of all time. But Holiday's image - the gifted torch singer with insatiable appetites for food, sex, alcohol and drugs - is not the full... Read more >

Lady Sings the Blues the 50th Anniversary Edition

Written by Billie Holiday and William Dufty
Foreword by David Ritz

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Harlem Moon
On Sale: July 25, 2006
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2386-6 (0-7679-2386-3)

LADY SINGS THE BLUES is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and... Read more >

Ball of Fire
The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball
Written by Stefan Kanfer

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 9, 2004
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72771-9 (0-375-72771-X)

As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, “queen of the B-pluses.” But on the small screen she was a superstar—arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the roots of Lucy’s genius and places it in the... Read more >

Groucho
The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx
Written by Stefan Kanfer

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 8, 2001
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70207-5 (0-375-70207-5)

This definitive biography of one of the world’s greatest comedians unflinchingly yet affectionately uncovers the man behind the cigar.

Here is the amazing career of the man the world recognized as Groucho: the improbable disasters of the vaudeville years; the Marx Brothers, an act so funny W.C. Fields refused to follow it... Read more >

Kazan on Directing

Written by Elia Kazan
Preface by Martin Scorsese
Foreword by John Lahr

Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: April 21, 2009
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-26477-0 (0-307-26477-7)

Elia Kazan was the mid-twentieth century’s most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this book shows us the master at work.

Kazan directed virtually back to back the greatest American dramas of the era—by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams—and revolutionized theatre and film with dynamic action, poetic staging, and rigorous... Read more >

The Back Stage Guide to Stage Management, 3rd Edition
Traditional and New Methods for Running a Show from First Rehearsal to Last Performance
Written by Thomas A. Kelly

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Back Stage Books
On Sale: June 16, 2009
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-8230-9802-6 (0-8230-9802-8)

The Most Widely Used Manual For Aspiring And Veteran Stage Managers - Now Revised and Expanded


The next best thing to shadowing a Broadway stage manager, this detailed, behind-the-scenes book as been brought completely up to date. First published in 1991, it is widely used and has been lauded as the most... Read more >

Opera and the Morbidity of Music

Written by Joseph Kerman

Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: New York Review Books
On Sale: April 8, 2008
Price: $27.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-265-0 (1-59017-265-5)

The death of classical music, the distinguished critic and musicologist Joseph Kerman declares, is “a tired, vacuous concept that will not die.” In this wide-ranging collection of essays and reviews, Kerman examines the ongoing vitality of the classical music tradition, from the days of Guillaume Dufay, John Taverner, and William Byrd... Read more >

Wilco
Learning How to Die
Written by Greg Kot

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: June 15, 2004
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-7679-1558-8 (0-7679-1558-5)

Wilco: Learning How to Die traces critically-acclaimed band Wilco's story as its music grew from its punk and alt-country origins, addressing some of the key issues surrounding the music business: How is music of substance created while the gulf between art and commerce widens in the corporate consolidation era? How does... Read more >

Improv Wisdom
Don't Prepare, Just Show Up
Written by Patricia Ryan Madson

Format: Hardcover, 160 pages
Publisher: Harmony/Bell Tower
On Sale: May 3, 2005
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-8188-2 (1-4000-8188-2)

One of the 50 Best Spiritual Books of 2005, Spirituality & Health magazine

Improv Wisdom teaches us how to apply the maxims of improvisational theater to real-life challenges­helping readers to loosen up, think on their feet, and take on everything life has to offer with skill, chutzpah, and a sense of humor... Read more >

Cole Porter

Written by William McBrien

Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: December 5, 2000
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-72792-7 (0-679-72792-2)

In his life and in his music, Cole Porter was "the top"—the pinnacle of wit, sophistication, and success. His songs—"I Get a Kick Out of You," "Anything Goes," and hundreds more—were instant pop hits, and their musical and emotional depths have made them lasting standards.

William McBrien has captured the creator of... Read more >

A Long Strange Trip
The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
Written by Dennis McNally

Format: Trade Paperback, 704 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: August 12, 2003
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-7679-1186-3 (0-7679-1186-5)

The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist–a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture.

From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual... Read more >

The Tenacity of the Cockroach
Conversations with Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders
Written by The Onion AV Club

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: December 10, 2002
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-609-80991-4 (0-609-80991-1)

For ten years, The Onion A.V. Club—the entertainment section of the award-winning humor publication The Onion—has been interviewing entertainers and storytellers of every style and stripe. But it has always placed an emphasis on those with fascinating, hard-won careers, from amiable retirees and passionate visionaries to bitter, jilted, eternally warring cranks... Read more >

The Music Business
Career Opportunities and Self-Defense
Written by Dick Weissman

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: May 27, 2003
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-609-81013-2 (0-609-81013-8)

Completely revised and updated for the twenty-first century, The Music Business provides essential career advice and information on how to get started and advance in all areas of the music industry—from an author who’s had careers in music as an artist and professor for more than two decades. This comprehensive volume... Read more >