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History & Criticism eBooks

If you like History & Criticism eBooks, then you'll love these top picks.
Showing 1 - 24 of 1617 Results
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  • Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More

    Stories from the Broadway Phenomenon That Started It All

    "Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More is a fabulous rockin' and rollin' origin story with every juicy inspiration that went into creating it. . . . A must read for all Grease fans." —Didi Conn, Grease's "Frenchy"What started as an amateur play with music in a converted trolly barn in Chicago hit Broadway fifty years ago—and maintains its cultural impact today.Grease opened downtown in the Eden ... Read more

    $19.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Cocktails with George and Martha

    Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

    by Philip Gefter ...
    **"Very smart and entertaining . . . dishy-yet-earnest . . . Gefter shows why Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit the '60s like a torpedo."****-**NPR, Fresh Air**“Raucous, unpredictable, wild, and affecting.”****-**Entertainment WeeklyAn award-winning writer reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the provocative play, the groundbreaking film it became, and how two iconic stars changed the image of ... Read more

    $18.99 USD

  • When the British Musical Ruled the World

    For decades, British stage musicals struggled to compete against the dazzling Broadway productions that came roaring in from across the pond. But that tide was turned at last in 1978, when Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Evita brought the West End back into contention with Broadway. It was just the first of several blockbuster productionsthat helped Britain dominate musical ... Read more

    $18.99 USD

  • Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live

    Saturday Night is the intimate history of the original Saturday Night Live, from its beginnings as an outlaw program produced by an unruly band of renegades from the comedy underground to a TV institution that made stars of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. This is the book that revealed to the world ... Read more

    $6.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Playing Underground

    A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement

    Series series Theater: Theory/Text/Performance
    "Scrupulously researched, critically acute, and written with care, Playing Underground will become a classic account of an era of hard-won free expression."-William Coco"At last---a book documenting the beginnings of Off-Off Broadway theater. Playing Underground is an insightful, illuminating, and honest appraisal of this important period in American theater."-Rosalyn Drexler, author of Art Does ... Read more

    $18.99 USD

  • Notes on a Cowardly Lion

    The Biography of Bert Lahr

    by John Lahr ...
    John Lahr’s stunning and complex biography of his father, the legendary actor and comedian Bert LahrNotes on a Cowardly Lion is John Lahr’s masterwork: an all-encompassing biography of his father, the comedian and performer Bert Lahr. Best known as the Cowardly Lion in MGM’s classic The Wizard of Oz, Lahr was a consummate artist whose career spanned burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood. ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • The Method

    How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

    by Isaac Butler ...
    National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Nonfiction**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME MAGAZINE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, VOX, SALON, LIT HUB, AND VANITY FAIR“Entertaining and illuminating.”--The New Yorker * “Compulsively readable.”--New York Times * “Delicious, humane, probing.”--Vulture * “The best and most important book about acting I've ever re... ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • Ernie:

    The Autobiography

    We wept at his Oscar-winning role in Marty. . .we gasped when he took on Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity. . .we were riveted by his compelling performances in The Dirty Dozen, Bad Day at Black Rock, and Ice Station Zebra. . .and we laughed at his television sitcom McHale's Navy. We loved all of Ernest Borgnine's many portrayals, but what did we know about the man behind the famous roles? ... Read more

    $11.99 USD

  • Look Back in Anger

    by John Osborne ...
    In 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger changed the course of English theatre.' Look Back in Anger presents post-war youth as it really is. To have done this at all would be a significant achievement; to have done it in a first play is a minor miracle. All the qualities are there, qualities one had despaired of ever seeing on stage - the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • This Was Burlesque

    A rollicking, colorfully illustrated history of burlesque as seen through the eyes of its first lady, Ann Corio. ... Read more

    $12.99 USD $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

    by John Lahr ...
    **National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography CategoryNational Book Award Finalist2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre BiographyAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial AwardA Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014'USA Today: 10 Books We Loved ReadingWashington Post, 10 Best Books of 2014The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from ... Read more

    $14.99 USD

  • The Great White Way

    Race and the Broadway Musical

    Broadway musicals are one of America’s most beloved art forms and play to millions of people each year. But what do these shows, which are often thought to be just frothy entertainment, really have to say about our country and who we are as a nation?Now in a new second edition, The Great White Way is the first book to reveal the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for ... Read more

    $21.99 USD

  • Hamlet, Globe to Globe

    Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play

    Translated by Michael Gallagher ...
    A New York Times Notable Book: “A loving testament to the enduring ability of Shakespeare’s play to connect in myriad ways across countries and cultures” (Pop Matters).For the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, the Globe Theatre undertook an unparalleled journey: to take Hamlet to every country on the planet, to share this beloved play with the entire world. The tour was the brainchild of ... Read more

    $12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Invitation to the Party

    Building Bridges to the Arts, Culture and Community

    Presented workshops or space at following venues: Arts and Business Council; Professional Women’s Exchange of NY; League of American Theatres and Producers; National Guild of Community Schools for the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; Walker Arts Center; Boys and Girls Club of America; Yale School of Drama; Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; and American Express National Arts Marketing ... Read more

    $14.99 USD

  • Theatre of the Unimpressed

    In Search of Vital Drama

    Series series Exploded Views
    How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it.Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of ... Read more

    $8.99 USD

  • The World Only Spins Forward

    The Ascent of Angels in America

    "Marvelous . . . A vital book about how to make political art that offers lasting solace in times of great trouble, and wisdom to audiences in the years that follow."- Washington PostNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPRA STONEWALL BOOK AWARDS HONOR BOOKThe oral history of Angels in America, as told by the artists who created it and the audiences forever changed by it--a moving acco... ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • The Importance of Being Earnest (Illustrated + FREE audiobook link + Active TOC)

    by Oscar Wilde ...
    FEATURES:• Includes beautiful artworks and illustrations• A link of a FREE audio book to download at the end of the book• Active Table of Contents for an easy navigation within the book• Manually coded and crafted by professionals for highest formatting quality and standardsCheck out ngims Publishing's other illustrated literary classics. The vast majority of our books have original illustrations, ... Read more

    $0.99 USD

  • The Viewpoints Book

    A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition

    The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with—space and time—into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and ... Read more

    $14.99 USD

  • Starring Madame Modjeska

    On Tour in Poland and America

    by Beth Holmgren ...
    The “important . . . meticulously researched” prize-winning biography of the pre-eminent Polish star of the nineteenth century global stage (CosmopolinReview.com).In reintroducing “a little-remembered actress to a new American audience” biographer Beth Holgram delivers a revelatory portrait of Helena Modjeska—from unparalleled European success to her reign as the most acclaimed, and most ... Read more

    $12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Oklahoma!

    The Making of an American Musical

    by Tim Carter ...
    The backstage story of the timeless Broadway hit, and how Rodgers and Hammerstein brought it to life: “Meticulously researched” (Publishers Weekly).Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway in 1943 under the auspices of the Theatre Guild, and today it is performed more frequently than any other Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. In this book, Tim Carter offers the first fully documented history of the making ... Read more

    $12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater

    Revised Edition

    by Graham Ley ...
    Contemporary productions on stage and film, and the development of theater studies, continue to draw new audiences to ancient Greek drama. With observations on all aspects of performance, this volume fills their need for a clear, concise account of what is known about the original conditions of such productions in the age of Pericles.Reexamining the surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, ... Read more

    $15.99 USD

  • Revolutionary Acts

    Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917-1938

    by Lynn Mally ...
    During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, amateur theater groups sprang up in cities across the country. Workers, peasants, students, soldiers, and sailors provided entertainment ranging from improvisations to gymnastics and from propaganda sketches to the plays of Chekhov. In Revolutionary Acts, Lynn Mally reconstructs the history of the amateur stage in Soviet Russia from 1917 to the height ... Read more

    Free

  • Musical Theater Today Volume 2

    by Various ...
    Series Book 2 - Musical Theater Today
    Musical Theater Today is a new, yearly periodical inspired by the extraordinary variety of artists, institutions, and audiences engaged in the musical theatre world. While many endeavors across the industry appear to share individual artists (composers, performers, etc.), it seems that they rarely have the opportunity to come together in discussion. By gathering as many creative viewpoints as ... Read more

    $9.99 USD

  • African American Arts

    Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity

    Series series The Griot Project Book Series
    Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take ... Read more

    $28.99 USD