Entertainment Science

I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone chronicles Jim Dickinson's extraordinary life in the Memphis music scene of the fifties and sixties and how he went on to play with and produce a rich array of artists, including Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder, Duane Allman, Arlo Guthrie, and Albert King. With verve and wit, Dickinson (1941-2009) describes how his trip to Blind Lemon's grave on the Texas flatlands as a college student and how that encounter inspired his return to Memphis.

"She sings jumping and dancing, her fists alternately clenching and breaking open to clap; the corners of her marvelous mouth turning down in the fierceness of joy breaking through anguish; her hair covering her eyes until swept back with a meaty hand. In great shouts that send her strings of beads flying and knot her face into grimaces, the energy explodes and explodes again, sending out waves of electrical excitement. Some say she can sing more than one note at a time; maybe, but does it matter? In her every note there are infinite meanings."

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.

For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, the story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. But what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse?

Universal Studios never really wanted to get into the theme park business. They wanted to be the anti-Disney. But when forced to do so, they did it in a big way. Despite the fits and starts of multiple owners, the parks have finally gained the momentum to mount a serious challenge to the Walt Disney Company. How did this happen? Who made it happen? What does this mean for the theme park industry?

Hollywood stars have always furthered fashion's cause of seducing the masses into buying designers' clothes by acting as living billboards. Now, red carpet celebrities are no longer content to just advertise and are putting their names on labels that reflect the image they - or their stylists - created.

A great script is only as good as the effort you put into your career, but there is little information for the aspiring screenwriter about how to break in. Even those who study TV or film in college are taught to simply “get a production assistant job.” But then what? Anton Schettini provides a rare insider’s glimpse of the modern-day network and streaming TV writers’ room. Here, you will find practical advice, career path strategies, and first-hand accounts for how to establish your network, grow within it, and acquire the necessary tools to become a TV writer.

Before Talib Kweli became a world-renowned hip hop artist, he was a Brooklyn kid who liked to cut class, spit rhymes, and wander the streets of Greenwich Village with a motley crew of artists, rappers, and DJs who found hip hop more inspiring than their textbooks (much to the chagrin of the educator parents who had given their son an Afrocentric name in hope of securing for him a more traditional sense of pride and purpose).

The host of the NBC Today Show’s popular segment shares his favorite stories of citizens making a difference around the country. For the six million people who watch the Emmy Award-winning "American Story with Bob Dotson" on NBC’s Today Show, Bob Dotson’s reports celebrate the inspirational stories of everyday Americans. Dotson has been crisscrossing the country for more than 40 years - logging more than four million miles - in search of people who have quietly but profoundly changed our lives and our counrty for the better.

This is the true story of a poor girl from small-town Nova Scotia, and her transformation into one of the most successful Dominatrix porn stars in the world. Becoming one of the most successful and well-known femdom fetish porn stars takes a certain mix of ingredients - ingredients cultivated in Mistress T at a young age. Lack of inhibition, keen business sense, and a powerful sense of independence resulted in a skilled and driven woman uniquely prepared to do whatever was necessary to succeed in a business most people fail to excel in.

Vivek Shraya knows this to be true: people change. We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions. In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who’s made a career of embracing many roles: artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change, she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna.

Jenny's friends are lost one by one to a ghostly wolf and a phantom snake, instruments of the sinister but attractive Shadow Man, who has returned from the Shadow World with a deadly game called "Lambs and Monsters."

Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.

The node has failed, rendering humanity's battle clankers and the Aachim's constructs useless. The battle has been lost. Now hordes of alien lyrinx are swarming out of the tar pits of Snizort, intending to fall upon the survivors and destroy them to the last man. Tiaan is held prisoner by a vengeful Vithis, who is determined to extract her geomantic secrets at any cost. For his failings, Nish has been cast out and branded a traitor while Irisis, accused of high treason, has been forced to flee for her life.

Jacob Reckless continues to travel the portal in his father's abandoned study. His name has continued to be famous on the other side of the mirror, as a finder of enchanted items and buried secrets. His family and friends, from his brother, Will, to the shape-shifting vixen Fox, are on a collision course as the two worlds become connected. Who is driving these two worlds together, and why is he always a step ahead?

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.

A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: Everyone here wants something...and everyone has something to lose. Leda Cole's flawless exterior belies a secret addiction - to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched. Eris Dodd-Radson's beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart. Rylin Myers' job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world - and a romance - she never imagined...but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?

By the time Chloé Hilliard was 12, she wore a size 12 - both shoe and dress - and stood over six feet tall. Fitting in was never an option. That didn’t stop her from trying. Cursed with a “slow metabolism”, “baby weight”, and “big bones” - the fat trilogy - Chloe turned to fad diets, starvation, pills, and workouts, all of which failed. Realizing that everything - from government policies to corporate capitalism - directly impacts our relationship with food and our waistlines, Chloé changed her outlook on herself and hopes others will do the same for themselves.

Earth is in danger! The only thing that can save our planet are six essential elements scattered throughout the galaxy. It is up to the Voyagers - a team of four kids (plus one stowaway) - to gather them all and return to Earth. Failure is not an option. The Alpha team knows that the second element is hidden on Meta Prime, a planet filled with metal mazes, catapults of fire, and warring alien robots. But what they don’t know is that another spaceship is following hot on their trail....

Thirteen-year-old Jack Buckles is great at finding things. Not just a missing glove or the other sock but things normal people have long given up on ever seeing again. If only he could find his father, who has disappeared in London without a trace. But Jack's father was not who he claimed to be. It turns out that he was a member of a secret society of detectives that has served the crown for centuries - and membership into the Lost Property Office is Jack's inheritance.