Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Arts & Entertainment

The Great Digital Convergence of all media types into one universal digital medium occurred, with little fanfare, at the recent turn of the millennium. The bit became the universal medium, and the pixel conquered the world. Henceforward, nearly every picture in the world would be composed of pixels. In A Biography of the Pixel, Pixar cofounder Alvy Ray Smith argues that the pixel is the organizing principle of most modern media, and he presents a few simple but profound ideas that unify the dazzling varieties of digital image making.

Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, Europeans are increasingly airbrushing from history their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But this legacy lives on in some of Europe's most recognizable buildings, from Notre-Dame Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament.

Mackenzie McKee has grown up in front of the world as part of MTV's hit reality shows 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom 3, and Teen Mom OG. Fans have experienced the ups and downs of motherhood and marriage right alongside Mackenzi - from difficult childbirths due to her type 1 diabetes diagnosis, to the untimely death of her beloved mother, Angie Douthit. But through it all, Mackenzie never falters in her deep love of family and God. In her new memoir, Mackenzie proves there is more to her than what the glaring spotlight of fame has shown.

We are living in a time when behavioral change is necessary for our health and survival. Yet we find it exceedingly difficult to transform our own habits, let alone those of other people. Enter Naohiro Matsumura, whose powerful new design method is as astonishingly simple in its logic as it is sophisticated in its psychology. It allows any of us to address challenges in our homes, our public spaces, and our social interactions.

Roy Orbison emerged as an artist alongside his Sun Records contemporaries in the early days of rock 'n' roll. He did not possess the good looks of Elvis Presley or the everyman toughness of Johnny Cash. But he did possess a magnetic mystique that would captivate fans around the world and inspire countless musicians. John Kruth tells the story of Roy Orbison in prose as musical as the artist's melodies and does not shy away from or trivialize the personal pain, alienation, and tragic events that shaped Orbison's singular personality and music.

Decades before The Daily Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour proved there was a place on television for no-holds-barred political comedy with a decidedly antiauthoritarian point of view. In this explosive, revealing history of the show, veteran entertainment journalist David Bianculli tells the fascinating story of its three-year network run---and the cultural impact that's still being felt today.

In a story that is both of its time and timeless, Evan I. Schwartz tells a tale of genius versus greed, innocence versus deceit, and independent brilliance versus corporate arrogance. Many men have laid claim to the title "father of television," but Philo T. Farnsworth is the true genius behind what may be the most influential invention of our time. Driven by his obsession to demonstrate his idea, by the age of 20 Farnsworth was operating his own laboratory above a garage in San Francisco and filing for patents. The resulting publicity caught the attention of RCA tycoon David Sarnoff, who became determined to control television in the same way he monopolized radio.

Seymour Stein is America's greatest living record man. Not only has he signed and nurtured more important artists than anyone alive, now 60 years in the game, he's still the hippest label head, traveling the globe in search of the next big thing. Since the late '50s, he's been wherever it's happening, and along that winding path, he discovered and broke out a skyline full of stars, including Madonna, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Madonna, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, Lou Reed, Seal, and many others.

We may not often think of our clothes as having a function beyond covering our naked bodies and keeping us a little safer from the elements. But to discount the enormous influence of clothing on anything from economic cycles to the future of water scarcity is to ignore the greater meaning of the garments we put on our backs. Disrobed vividly considers the role that clothing plays in everything from natural disasters to climate change to terrorism to geopolitics to agribusiness.

Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines.

This is an engrossing and candid book, a beguiling exploration of what it means to be a producer, including purchasing rights, developing scripts, casting actors, managing directors, editing film, and winning awards. Filled with tales of legendary and beloved films, as well as some not-so-legendary and forgotten ones, A Life in Movies takes listeners behind the scenes and into the history of Hollywood.

From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star plays like a modern fairy tale shaped by gossip columnists, fan magazines, biopics, and documentaries. Yet the real Marion Davies remained largely hidden from view, as she trusted few with her true life story. In Captain of Her Soul, Lara Gabrielle pulls back layers of myth to show a complex and fiercely independent woman, ahead of her time, who carved her own path.

Furs are the creative subculture of people who identify with animals. You can find them at furry conventions, furfests, around the world-tens of thousands of people donning their most elaborate fursuit. In costume, at conventions, with friends or alone, furries unleash the animal within, letting their inner beasts roar and their inner cats purr, aware of the power—and joy—to be found in bringing forward one's animal side and encouraging others to do the same.

In The Science of James Bond, we recognize the Bond franchise as a unique genre: spy-fi. A genre of film and fiction that fuses spy fiction with science fiction. We look at Bond's obsessions with supervillains, the future, and world domination or destruction. And we take a peek under the hood of trends in science and tech, often in the form of gadgets and spy devices.

The history of the films, cartoons, toys, and more: The Back to the Future series is a timeless collection that is greatly revered by all audiences. The beauty of this audiobook by Brad Gilmore is that it doesn't present the history of the film as textbook information. Gilmore discusses these films from a place of passion and so effectively reveals how the history behind the movies is just as engaging as the films themselves.

Married . . . With Children writer-producer Richard Gurman takes us behind the scenes of this boundary-breaking show to reveal how its inner workings were at times as disruptive and contentious—yet at other times, as hysterical and raunchy—as the Bundy family themselves.

Based on exclusive interviews with the surviving cast and crew, friends and families of the stars, and other Hollywood insiders, Killin' Generals is a riveting must-listen for film buffs, military fans, and anyone who loves a down-and-dirty adventure tale. Detailed, insightful, and gossipy, Epstein's homage spotlights the movie's endless barrage of cinematic gold.

Martin Torgoff details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new segment of the American fabric. Channeling his decades of writing experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the launch of heroin in Harlem.

Cynthia Saltzman's Plunder recounts the fate of Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island in Venice, in 1797. Painted in 1563 during the Renaissance, the picture was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. In 1801, the Veronese went on exhibition at the Louvre, the new public art museum founded during the Revolution in the former palace of the French kings.

Jaime Primak Sullivan, a Jersey-bred, tough-as-nails PR maven - and unlikely transplant in an upscale suburb of Birmingham, Alabama - has spent her entire life crossing the line: whether she's pushing the boundaries of what proper Southern ladies consider to be "polite behavior" or literally traversing the Mason-Dixon line in the name of love. She isn't afraid to say what everyone is thinking when it comes to love, sex, friendship, and many other topics that are all too often sugar-coated in polite Southern company.