Entertainment Science

The legendary creator of iconic television programs All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear remade our television culture - while leading a life of unparalleled political, civic, and social involvement. Sharing the wealth of Lear's 90 years, Even This I Get to Experience is a memoir as touching and remarkable as the life he has led.

Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the musical's journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement.

New York Police Lieutenant Danny Pak has a problem. When one of his officers calls him out to an unusual crime scene, Danny realizes that it’s terrifyingly similar to something the department thought was dead and buried. Across town, Agent William “Buddy” Redhorn of the FBI has two problems. He’s been assigned a potentially career-ending case with magical ties, and his sorceress boss is out of town. The case involves a stolen statue that belongs to the government of Brunei, but the more he chases the thieves, the more bodies begin to drop. Bodies affected by an unknown magic.

Have you ever wondered how off-key you are while singing in the shower? Or if your Bob Dylan albums really sound better on vinyl? Or why certain songs make you cry? Now, scientist and musician John Powell invites you on an entertaining journey through the world of music. Discover what distinguishes music from plain old noise, how scales help you memorize songs, what the humble recorder teaches you about timbre (assuming your suffering listeners don’t break it first), and more.

For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it? Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims.

The sinister zerg leader no longer commands her legions of bloodthirsty aliens against the humans of the Koprulu sector, all thanks to the combined courage and tenacity of Jim Raynor, General Horace Warfield, and a mismatched team of Dominion soldiers and outlaw rebels.

Hiro and crew head to a planet of dwarves on the hunt for a new carrier ship and a chance to stuff themselves with okonomiyaki and takoyaki, only to find a pair of bombshell twin mechanics! They may look alike, but these girls' personalities are like fire and ice. If the twins join the crew, will Hiro's ship ever know peace again?

Myne's disappearance has left Fate reeling, but as the new head of the Barbatos family, he must be strong. At first he's focused on reforging a bond with his former tormenter and new sister, Memil. Then a grim encounter critically endangers Roxy's soul, and Fate must find a way to protect her before his Gluttony devours her once and for all. But as he searches, unexpected answers to old mysteries begin to emerge--and the truths Fate uncovers about his own heritage prove as dangerous and strange as they are difficult to swallow.

Thrall, wise shaman and the warchief of the Horde, has sensed a disturbing change . . . Long ago, Azeroth’s destructive native elementals raged across the world until the benevolent titans imprisoned them within the Elemental Plane. Despite the titans’ intervention, many elementals have ended up back on Azeroth. Over the ages, shaman like Thrall have communed with these spirits and, through patience and dedication, learned to soothe roaring infernos, bring rain to sun-scorched lands, and otherwise temper the elementals’ ruinous influence on the world of Azeroth.

Now a much older man, Deckard Cain is on a mission to find the remnants of a rumored Horadric cell, and must call upon all of his knowledge and wit to teach and inspire those around him even as they face danger and death at every turn. Can he lead the return of a ragtag group of Horadrim and their ideals to Sanctuary...or will they die out with Cain himself?

Ever wonder which circles of Dante’s Inferno have the nicest accommodations? Where’s the best place to grab a bite to eat in the ancient Egyptian underworld? How does one dress like a local in the heavenly palace of Hinduism’s Lord Vishnu, or avoid the flesh-eating river serpents in the Klingon afterlife? What hidden treasures can be found off the beaten path in Hades, Valhalla, or TV’s The Good Place? Find answers to all those questions and more about the world(s) to come in this eternally entertaining book from Ken Jennings.

In 1997, Daniel Trush, a bright, active, outgoing twelve-year-old, collapsed on the basketball court and fell into a deep coma. Rushed to the hospital, he was found to have five previously undetected aneurysms in his brain. One had burst, causing a massive cerebral hemorrhage. While Daniel remained comatose, the uncontrolled pressure inside his skull caused him to suffer multiple strokes.

The Vagina Monologues is a moving, poignant and often hilarious play, which celebrates female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Originally drawn from a collection of interviews conducted by Eve Ensler, the Obie Award-winning play gives voice to some of the most intimate, rarely shared fantasies and fears of women from all walks of life.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there's a little-known footnote to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a midlevel agent named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them. Armed with foreign film visas, Mendez and an unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders traveled to Tehran....

A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief - she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust but no people and no answers. She knows only one thing about herself - her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin. She finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her.

Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film - aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.

The five members of an elite commando group nicknamed "the Stone Wolves" once raged against Creterakian rule. Now, four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living. But a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. Hopscotch, RedWire, the Killer, Lulz, and Recoil will soon wish their pasts could stay dead.

Why does fashion hold so much power over us? Most of us care about how we dress and how we present ourselves. Style offers clues about everything from class to which in-group we belong to. Bad Feminist for fashion, Dress Code takes aim at the institutions within the fashion industry while reminding us of the importance of dress and what it means for self-presentation. Everything—from societal changes to the progress (or lack thereof) of women’s rights to the hidden motivations behind what we choose to wear to align ourselves with a particular social group—can be tracked through clothing.

When Ivy and Sora encounter a mortally wounded man, Sora uses its unique powers to heal him...and splits in two?! As Ivy and Druid bond over their unhappy pasts, Ivy learns that her new friend was also abandoned by his family thanks to his "useless" skill. But as Ivy knows, there's often more to people (and slimes) than meets the eye. Can Ivy and Sora help their new companion find the strength to forge ahead?

In Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means - or doesn’t - to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected president of the United States purely on showmanship.