Woody Allen has carved out a unique place for himself in American movies, becoming our national auteur as well as the most prolific director in the country, and creating a singular world with each film he has released since his first movie in 1969. Foster Hirsch analyzes and celebrates that world in this expert study of the themes, visual style, and acting in each of Allen's films. With the addition of a new introduction and chapter covering the eleven movies Allen has made in the last decade, from Alice to The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, this is a vital book for Allen fans and...

For decades, in one small room on West Forty-fourth Street in Manhattan, Lee Strasberg ran the Actors Studio, where dozens of acclaimed actors absorbed a technique that became known as the "Method." Based on firsthand observations and numerous interviews, Hirsch's examination of the Studio's origins reveals how its graduates forever shaped the American stage and screen. A new introduction by the author studies the Actors Studio in the twenty-first century and places it in a modern context.

From 1905 to the crash of 1929, Sam Shubert and his brothers Lee and J.J., despite poor beginnings and near-illiteracy, created a theatre monopoly unrivalled in history.

Noir 'lives', but like any genre that endures, it has had to continually reinvent itself. While its defining subjects -- violence, sex, greed, loss of innocence -- remain as do its dominant character types -- the femme fatale, her vulnerable male victim and the private eye burdened with his own code of honour -- these ingredients have been blended in strikingly new ways. Charting these ways is what Foster Hirsch accomplishes so brilliantly in this enlightening and entertaining book. He demonstrates how neo-noir has reflected changes in contemporary life from film technology to social values....

His best-known song is "Mack the Knife," with words by Bertolt Brecht, from The Threepenny Opera, first performed in Weimar Berlin in 1928. Five years later, Kurt Weill fled the Nazis to come to America, where he soon emerged as one of the most admired composers of the Broadway musical stage. His shows included: Knickerbocker Holiday, Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Street Scene and Lost in the Stars. His songs: "My Ship," "September Song," "Speak Low" and "It Never Was You." This biography concentrates on Weill's career in the United States, but its aim is to explore the truth in the...