"John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit to West Berlin, with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, is seared into the national memory as a powerful image of a U.S. president on the world stage. When thinking about key presidential moments in international relations like Kennedy in Berlin, we often focus our attention on the speeches themselves. Professor Allison Prasch wants to treat us to a wider view-one that places these speeches in their physical context and allows us to grasp the intentional embodied nature of these carefully orchestrated international trips. In The World Is Our Stage, Prasch takes us along for the ride as Cold War U.S. presidents travel the world to assert power and influence. Drawing on extensive archival research, Prasch examines five representative moments that reveal how the "global rhetorical presidency" evolved during the Cold War: Harry S. Truman's 1945 participation in the Potsdam Conference, Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1959-60 "Good Will" tours, John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit to West Berlin, Richard Nixon's "Opening to China" in 1971-72, and Ronald Reagan's 1984 commemoration of D-Day in Normandy. Prasch uses these key events show how multiple presidential administrations and other government agencies designed these global tours as dynamic persuasive campaigns. As the body of the U.S. president traveled through and encircled the globe, it symbolically extended the spatial reach of U.S. ideology and elevated the nation's place in the Cold War world order"--

This is young William, His mind all ablaze, Who stays up all night Writing poems and plays. And this is a book, unforgettable and wise, that applauds inspiration, creation, story, and the world and works of William Shakespeare. Illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Anita Lobel, All the World's a Stage pays tribute to the act of turning words into art.

Bill Bryson’s bestselling biography of William Shakespeare takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship—updated with a new introduction by the author to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.

Actor Dennis Weaver, star of television's "McCloud," and host of the Western Channel, shares the story of his childhood and military years, his acting career, and his later life activities as a spokesperson for social and environmental concerns.

Most performing artists don’t do what they do for the money. And that’s a good thing, because jobs are scarce and talent alone no longer assures success. But since you’ve spent years mastering your craft--be it as a musician, a dancer, an actor, or some other type of artist--wouldn’t you love to figure out how to get paid for it?Inspired by the celebrated Juilliard course, The World's Your Stage explains the business side of the performing arts. Performers wishing to hone their entrepreneur skills and launch their own careers will learn how to:• Understand the numbers• Find their niche--and fill it• Market and promote themselves and their venture• Network productively• Fundraise both online and off• Utilize the Opportunity Framework to help balance artistic and financial growth• And moreComplete with insights from leading figures in the arts as well as lessons from thriving artist-entrepreneurs, The World’s Your Stage will help you keep your dream alive while keeping a clear eye on the unavoidable and essential business side of it all.

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright. Ever since he took the theatre of Elizabethan London by storm over 400 years ago, Shakespeare has remained centre stage. His fame stems not only from his plays - performed everywhere from school halls to the world's most illustrious theatres - but also from his enigmatic persona. His face is familiar to all, yet in reality very little is known about the man behind the masterpieces. Shakespeare's life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket of myths and traditions, some preposterous, some conflicting, arranged around the few scant facts known about the Bard - from his birth in Stratford to the bequest of his second best bed to his wife when he died. Taking us on a journey through the streets of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, Bryson examines centuries of stories, half-truths and downright lies surrounding our greatest dramatist. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, he introduces a host of engaging characters, as he celebrates the magic of Shakespeare's language and delights in details of the bard's life, folios, poetry and plays.

What is special, distinct, modern about modernity? In How the World Became a Stage, William Egginton argues that the experience of modernity is fundamentally spatial rather than subjective and proposes replacing the vocabulary of subjectivity with the concepts of presence and theatricality. Following a Heideggerian injunctive to search for the roots of epochal change not in philosophies so much as in basic skills and practices, he describes the spatiality of modernity on the basis of a close historical analysis of the practices of spectacle from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period, paying particular attention to stage practices in France and Spain. He recounts how the space in which the world is disclosed changed from the full, magically charged space of presence to the empty, fungible, and theatrical space of the stage.

Presents the history and development of the world's theaters from ancient times to the present.