In a career that has spanned more than 60 years, Sheldon Leonard, among his many other accomplishments, has never lost his sense of humor. It is this quality that provides the driving force of his memoir, recapturing those antic moments and the comic routines, the gags and the pratfalls, and the enormous joie de vivre that have marked his wonderfully creative and eventful life. In television Leonard has made his greatest contribution to popular entertainment. Occasionally as actor, more often as writer, but mainly - and resoundingly - as producer and director, his credits include some of the most successful and beloved TV series of our time, among them The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and I Spy. Leonard's account of how these series were created and sustained is in many ways the heart of his memoir.

This may be his toughest battle Jake Abbott, an injured Marine veteran, won a playwright competition with his script Afghanistan. The prize? A full-ride scholarship to the University of Idaho, and the chance to have his play performed that fall by the theater department. He should be overjoyed. Instead he finds himself listening for the sound of the voice of a woman he knows he can't have — theater professor Gail Tremont. She's made that clear — it's a conflict of interest, and she's the producer of his play. He might not like it, but he's honor-bound to accept her decision. Gail Tremont is under attack and not just in petty department politics either. There have been real attacks that put her life in jeopardy. But Gail is tough, and she's not going to back down. They're putting on Afghanistan, and no one is getting in the way of that — not even her wayward heart. Book 4 in the series Second Chance Romances featuring four women friends who have each other's backs. And really? There's little you can't do if you've got friends like that — even take a chance on love again. A slow burn, second chance, small town, contemporary romance. (Be prepared for language, triggers, and politics.)

A powerful, behind-the-scenes look at some of America's all-time favorite television programs during their darkest hours, this study examines how various hit series have absorbed the death of a lead actor during production. Although each television program eventually resumed production, the lead actor's death in each case had a profound impact on the surviving cast and crew and the future of the show itself. Individual chapters explore the events surrounding the deaths of Freddie Prinze (Chico and the Man), John Ritter (8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter), Redd Foxx (The Royal Family), Nicholas Colasanto (Cheers), Phil Hartman (NewsRadio), and many others. Their stories are told through first-hand accounts by those who knew them best, including many of the most talented actors, producers, writers, and directors in television over the past forty years.

Della makes cakes, not judgment calls – those she leaves to her husband, Tim. But when the girl she helped raise comes back home to North Carolina to get married, and the fiancé is actually a fiancée, Della’s life gets turned upside down. She can’t really make a cake for such a wedding, can she? For the first time in her life, Della has to think for herself.

There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. The Show Won't Go On covers almost every genre of entertainment, and is full of unearthed anecdotes, exclusive interviews, colorful characters, and ironic twists. With dozens of heart-stopping stories, it's the perfect book to dip into on any page.

An introduction to the theater that includes everything from backstage, cast, behind the scenes information, the building, to the actual productions.

Wars are born in human mind. Great military leaders belonging to all times and cultures have always tried to influence the minds of their foes and friends alike to facilitate their own victories by making their enemies hesitant. The minds concerned could be influenced with a variety of overt and covert actions that send right signals to the target audiences. In the words of Allied Supreme Commander of the World War II, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, these actions are: anything from the singing of a beautiful anthem to the most extraordinary kind of physical sabotage. This is Psychological Warfare and the most preferred action is communication. Dr. Arunkumar Bhatt, who being a defence journalist knows nuances of communication and unfolds here this soft-kill strategy and its tactics. He traces the history of the psychological warfare to establish how steadily its importance has grown. It became a war winning factor in the Great War and its role further expanded in the World War II. The Psywar as it has come to be known among many names has not looked back since then. The advances in science and technology, revolution in communication and information technologies have greatly enhanced the range and effectiveness of the psychological warfare in terms of both, time and space. The Revolution in Military Affairs has been further sharpening the Psywar weapons. Dedicated Psywar units and even commands backed by elements in formation staff are in the vogue. The Psychological Warfare has now found a place among ‘war by other means.’ It is recognised as a command function and is factored in planning at all levels. It is so important that the decision to deploy the psy-weapons is taken at the top echelon of the high command and this is done much ahead of the breaking out of hostilities. Where does India that has a poor strategic culture and still poorer awareness about its security, stand vis-à-vis Psywar? Indian culture has instances of the Psywar. It was being practised in the ancient period. Kautilya recommends it strongly. Different invaders used it. The British practised it in an institutionalised fashion to rule India. India did counter the British psywar but in a rather ‘irregular’ way. India used it successfully in some of the post-independence wars but the country needs to do much more to protect itself against Psywar attacks and to use it effectively to enhance its own security in the present day multi-threat scenario. This is an attempt to table a calling attention motion before the nation.

THE STORY: Nestled in the Catskills—1962's land of dirty dancing and Borscht Belt comedy—an inconspicuous bungalow colony catered to a very special clientele: heterosexual men who delighted in dressing and acting as women. These white-collar professionals would discreetly escape their families to spend their weekends safely inhabiting their chosen female alter-egos. But given the opportunity to share their secret lives with the world, the members of this sorority had to decide whether the freedom gained by openness was worth the risk of personal ruin. Based on real events and infused with Fierstein's trademark wit, this moving, insightful, and delightfully entertaining work offers a glimpse into the lives of a group of "self-made women" as they search for acceptance and happiness in their very own Garden of Eden.

On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into a silent and deserted Paris. Eight days later, a humbled France accepted defeat along with foreign occupation. The only consolation was that, while the swastika now flew over Paris, the City of Light was undamaged. Soon, a peculiar kind of normality returned as theaters, opera houses, movie theaters and nightclubs reopened for business. This suited both conquerors and vanquished: the Germans wanted Parisians to be distracted, while the French could show that, culturally at least, they had not been defeated. Over the next four years, the artistic life of Paris flourished with as much verve as in peacetime. Only a handful of writers and intellectuals asked if this was an appropriate response to the horrors of a world war. Alan Riding introduces us to a panoply of writers, painters, composers, actors and dancers who kept working throughout the occupation. Maurice Chevalier and Édith Piaf sang before French and German audiences. Pablo Picasso, whose art was officially banned, continued to paint in his Left Bank apartment. More than two hundred new French films were made, including Marcel Carné’s classic, Les Enfants du paradis. Thousands of books were published by authors as different as the virulent anti-Semite Céline and the anti-Nazis Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Meanwhile, as Jewish performers and creators were being forced to flee or, as was Irène Némirovsky, deported to death camps, a small number of artists and intellectuals joined the resistance. Throughout this penetrating and unsettling account, Riding keeps alive the quandaries facing many of these artists. Were they “saving” French culture by working? Were they betraying France if they performed before German soldiers or made movies with Nazi approval? Was it the intellectual’s duty to take up arms against the occupier? Then, after Paris was liberated, what was deserving punishment for artists who had committed “intelligence with the enemy”? By throwing light on this critical moment of twentieth-century European cultural history, And the Show Went On focuses anew on whether artists and writers have a special duty to show moral leadership in moments of national trauma.

Now in paperback, a transcendent and wide-ranging collection of stories by László Krasznahorkai: “a visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range who captures the texture of present-day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic, and often shatteringly beautiful.”—Marina Warner, announcing the Booker International Prize In The World Goes On, a narrator first speaks directly, then narrates a number of unforgettable stories, and then bids farewell (“here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me”). As László Krasznahorkai himself explains: “Each text is about drawing our attention away from this world, speeding our body toward annihilation, and immersing ourselves in a current of thought or a narrative…” A Hungarian interpreter obsessed with waterfalls, at the edge of the abyss in his own mind, wanders the chaotic streets of Shanghai. A traveler, reeling from the sights and sounds of Varanasi, India, encounters a giant of a man on the banks of the Ganges ranting on and on about the nature of a single drop of water. A child laborer in a Portuguese marble quarry wanders off from work one day into a surreal realm utterly alien from his daily toils. “The excitement of his writing,” Adam Thirlwell proclaimed in The New York Review of Books, “is that he has come up with his own original forms—there is nothing else like it in contemporary literature.”