The Broadway star and Academy Award-winning performer best known for his iconic role as the irascible emcee in Cabaret traces his remarkable life story, documenting his Jewish-American upbringing in 1930s Cleveland, childhood roles, rise to fame and challenging losses.

The cultural and psychological roots of Groucho Marx's genius are explored, uncovering the source of the performer's outrageous intellectual acuity and hilarious insolence toward convention and authority in his early upbringing and Marx family dynamics.

In the Soviet Union, some Russians used to smuggle illegal rock music into the country by cutting grooves into used vinyl X-rays swiped from hospitals.

Explores the history of stand-up comedy in the United States, from vaudeville through radio and late-night television, discussing how comedians have both reflected and shaped American culture over the past century.

The noted movie critic offers insights into how to derive more from a film experience, analyzing a range of iconic films to reveal metaphorical artistry techniques in acting, filming, dialogue and music.

This collection of essays Washington, D.C. punk hero Ian Svenonius (former frontman of The Nation of Ulysses) takes aim at targets real and imaginary, ranging from anarchist tirade to Swiftian satire.

The guitarist and vocalist of feminist punk trio Sleater-Kinney presents a candid and deeply personal assessment of life in the rock-and-roll industry that reveals her struggles with rock's double standards and her codevelopment of the comedy Portlandia. 75,000 first printing.

One of Britain's best-known screenwriters and dramatists presents a vibrant and account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England, taking readers through his university days at Cambridge all the way up to his success as a playwright.

Authors Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold of Stanford University chart a history of songs from James Bond movies against the history of the times in which they were written.

A collection of contemporary and classic pop songs are re-imagined as Shakespearean sonnets.