The first joint biography of one of rock n roll's greatest song writing teams, Hitmakers Inc. explores the private lives and public triumphs of lyricist Doc Pomus and composer Mort Shuman. Between 1958 and 1965, usually working out of Manhattan s famous Brill Building, they wrote some 500 teen anthems and timeless ballads for Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, The Drifters, Bobby Darin, Del Shannon and Andy Williams among others. Polio-stricken ex-blues shouter Pomus always attracted the press coverage, but after the duo split junior partner Shuman proved the more colourful of the two, acting in films, writing musicals, joining the post-Beatles British beat boom and eventually becoming a chart-topping singer-composer in his own right in of all places France. The story of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, writing together and individually, reveals a personal dynamic that was both warm and difficult but which at its height produced songs like Teenager In Love, Save The Last Dance For Me, Surrender, Little Sister, (Maries The Name) His Latest Flame, This Magic Moment and Lonely Avenue.

A joint biography of one of rock 'n' roll's greatest song writing teams, 'Hitmakers Inc' explores the private lives and public triumphs of lyricist Doc Pomus and composer Mort Shuman.

In the summer of 1958, a 12-year-old girl took the world by storm--"Lolita" was published in the United States--and since then, her name has been taken in vain to serve a wide range of dubious ventures, both artistic and commercial. Offering a full consideration of not only "the Lolita effect" but shifting attitudes toward the mix of sex, children, and popular entertainment from Victorian times to the present, this study explores the movies, theatrical shows, literary spin-offs, artifacts, fashion, art, photography, and tabloid excesses that have distorted Lolita's identity with an eye toward some real-life cases of young girls who became the innocent victims of someone else's obsession--unhappy sisters to one of the most affecting heroines in fiction. New insight is provided into the brief life of Lolita and into her longer afterlives as well.

The public's appetite for new and excitingly designed hotels is insatiable. Never before have hotels been so earnestly responsive to the zeitgeist. How else can we explain the latest trends in design which at one extreme increasingly blur the border between lodging, lifestyle and living theatre, and at the other seek to reinvent the more discreet manners and style of the grand hotels of the late 19th century? 21st-Century Hotel highlights the latest examples of these trends and more as the international hotel sector finds newer and more imaginative ways to invent and reinvent itself in order to match the mood of the moment. A large-format bible of style for architects and interior designers, this book outlines the very latest developments in types of hotel design and then showcases the best on international scene through five themed chapters. It features forty six unusual

"This is an in-depth study of arrangers in pop, analyzing their techniques and revealing their significant contribution to popular music"--Page 4 of cover.

Traces the rise and fall of the original Stax Records, touching upon the racial politics in Memphis in the 1960s, the personal histories of the sibling founders, and the prominent musicians they featured.

Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock-the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident-was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape. In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren-and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title). Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene-and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s-Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.

Warm and hopeful, this is a touching and honest depiction of a family changing together-and staying together. "I wonder what people would think if they could take the front off our house like a doll's house and watch us. All in the same house, but everyone separate. No one talking, but everyone thinking the same thing. Will we ever be a normal family again?" Izzy's family is under the spotlight when her dad comes out as Danielle, a trans woman. Izzy is terrified her family will be torn apart. Will she lose her dad? Will her parents break up? And what will people at school say? Now all eyes are on Izzy. Can she face her fears, find her voice, and stand up for her family and what's right?

'...it's really quite beautiful' Matt Everitt, BBC Radio 6 Music Happy, beautiful and full of fun - this is an intimate portrait of the real Amy Winehouse. With over 100 photographs - many seen here for the first time - along with personal stories and recollections from Amy's mother, Janis Winehouse, as well as Amy's band members and others close to her, this is a celebration of a young artist on the cusp of fame. Taken by a friend at a relaxed photoshoot just before she released her debut album, these beautiful images give an early glimpse of the girl who would captivate the world. With a foreword by Asif Kapadia, director of Academy Award-winning documentary Amy, and containing fond memories and insights from the people who knew her best, Back to Amy is a tribute to the enduring spirit of a truly special artist.