In 1960, burgeoning actress and defiant dreamer Lena Spencer opened a small, grassroots coffeehouse in the quaint upstate New York town of Saratoga Springs. Within her then-husband’s plan to start the Caffè as a means for the couple to artistically flourish while “making enough money to retire in Europe” lay the seed of a more impactful cultural contribution that would change music history forever. It was a time in America when a coffeehouse could be something more—a focal point for a different sort of people, radical new ideas, and notably, emerging artists. Caffè Lena’s humble stage regularly welcomed musicians such as a young Bob Dylan in 1961, the singer/activist Bernice Johnson Reagon in 1962, and a pre-”American Pie” Don McLean in 1965. Quickly, Caffè Lena took its place among the nation’s foremost incubators of an American folk movement that inspired a generation of musicians, artists, and thinkers and a country in need of a new vision of equality, freedom, and understanding. Fortunately for posterity, camera shutters were often snapping in time to the music, and so an intimate visual record of Caffè Lena’s early years exists. Now, thanks to years of dedicated digging by the Caffè Lena History Project—to unearth Lena’s secret memoirs, collaborating with photographers to identify and rescue mysterious negatives, and collecting stories from the original artists to highlight these materials—the time has come to share this treasure trove of authentic and rare Americana with the world. Caffè Lena: Inside America’s Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse brings more than 200 never before seen, evocative images and stories to the public. Early 1960s photographs of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger and modern-day images of Rufus Wainwright and Patty Larkin blend with rare memorabilia and an oral history derived from more than 100 original interviews of artists who have graced Caffè Lena’s stage over the decades, including Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, Dave Van Ronk, Spalding Gray, and other luminaries of the folk, blues, jazz, and theater worlds. This exclusive time capsule chronicling the heyday of Caffè Lena—now the country’s oldest continuously operational folk music coffeehouse—provides an insightful look at the many artists whose poetic lyrics cast a mesmerizing spell over a generation, and who remain beloved today. Alongside the release of Caffè Lena: Inside America’s Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse, San Francisco’s Tompkins Square label will release the 3-CD box set, ‘Live at Caffè Lena: Music From America’s Legendary Coffeehouse, 1967–2013′ on September 24, 2013. “Caffè Lena holds an important place in the folk and traditional music communities. For me it was the gateway to so many things I hold dear about music.” —Scott Goldman, The GRAMMY Foundation “The story of Caffè Lena is the secret history of the folk-music scene. Lena was a pioneering woman in a man's world and her story needs to be told.” —Holly George-Warren, The Road to Woodstock “Lena Spencer was a rare person with a shining spirit who created a small world of her own. The magic of her Caffè cannot be analyzed, computerized, or explained.” —David Amram, Musician

First single volume edition of this bold version of a classic by Sarah Kane Sarah Kane's radical reworking of Seneca's classical tragedy of incest and unrequited lust. Phaedra's Love is a bold and provocative revisioning of the story of Phaedra's obsessive and destructive love of her son Hippolytus and his violent punishment by Theseus.Kane's achievement is to have humanised the antics of the pounding royals. Her sulphurous dialgoue is full of reeking toughness' Evening Standard 'Sarah Kane's writing is both daring and accomplished' Time Out 'Pure theatre or rather impure theatre: dirty, alarming, dangerous' Observer 'delivered with punch and laced with black humour' Financial Times

EXCERPT FROMWelcome to New York!He shook my hand outOn the sidewalkA thumb-to-thumb shakeThat felt like I wasIn on somethingWith him, he smiledAnd said, Hey man IWork in the neighborhoodToo, and so on, butKnow what manI'm kind of stuckI just need like fiveBucks to get outTo my family inNew Jersey I'mNot bullshitting youMan and I'll evenLeave my work shirtSee that's my nameLou above thePocket that's meI work right overHere on ChambersMan and if you canFront me like fiveBucks I swear I'llBring you back tenTomorrow I'mNot fucking withYou man honest toGod I lost my walletAnd just need someHelp you knowMan?That shirt hung in myCloset for a whileAnd then I started wearingIt around the buildingWhen I was moppingThe floor or downTo the Raccoon LodgeAt night on Warren StreetSo that some of the guysI knew used to look upAnd smile when I cameWalking in for a beer"DAN HUBBS plays two-finger banjo and writes songs that sound like they might have been favorites a hundred years ago." -- Sarah Craig, Executive Director Caffè Lena

"In this provocative work full of intriguing female characters from tattoo history, Margot Mifflin makes a persuasive case for the tattooed woman as an emblem of female self-expression." —Susan Faludi Bodies of Subversion is the first history of women’s tattoo art, providing a fascinating excursion to a subculture that dates back into the nineteenth-century and includes many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last century. Author Margot Mifflin notes that women’s interest in tattoos surged in the suffragist 20s and the feminist 70s. She chronicles: * Breast cancer survivors of the 90s who tattoo their mastectomy scars as an alternative to reconstructive surgery or prosthetics. * The parallel rise of tattooing and cosmetic surgery during the 80s when women tattooists became soul doctors to a nation afflicted with body anxieties. * Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship. * Victorian society women who wore tattoos as custom couture, including Winston Churchill’s mother, who wore a serpent on her wrist. * Nineteeth-century sideshow attractions who created fantastic abduction tales in which they claimed to have been forcibly tattooed. “In Bodies of Subversion, Margot Mifflin insightfully chronicles the saga of skin as signage. Through compelling anecdotes and cleverly astute analysis, she shows and tells us new histories about women, tattoos, public pictures, and private parts. It’s an indelible account of an indelible piece of cultural history.” —Barbara Kruger, artist

Described by The New York Times as, "a treasure of fashion insiders," Take Ivy was originally published in Japan in 1965, setting off an explosion of American-influenced "Ivy Style" fashion among students in the trendy Ginza shopping district of Tokyo. The product of four sartorial style enthusiasts, Take Ivy is a collection of candid photographs shot on the campuses of America's elite, Ivy League universities. The series focuses on men and their clothes, perfectly encapsulating the unique academic fashion of the era. Whether lounging in the quad, studying in the library, riding bikes, in class, or at the boathouse, the subjects of Take Ivy are impeccably and distinctively dressed in the finest American-made garments of the time. Take Ivy is now considered a definitive document of this particular style, and rare original copies are highly sought after by "trad" devotees worldwide. A small-run reprint came out in Japan in 2006 and sold out almost immediately. Now, for the first time ever, powerHouse is reviving this classic tome with an all-new English translation. Ivy style has never been more popular, in Japan or stateside, proving its timeless and transcendent appeal. Take Ivy has survived the decades and is an essential object for anyone interested in the history or future of fashion.

From Washington Square Park and Café Society to WNYC Radio and Folkways Records, New York City's cultural, artistic, and commercial assets helped to shape a distinctively urban breeding ground for the famous folk music revival of the 1950s and '60s. Folk City, by Stephen Petrus and Ronald Cohen, explores New York's central role in fueling the nationwide craze for folk music in postwar America.

In this debut novel, a ghostwriter of the memoirs of a reclusive folk music icon—part Woody Guthrie, part Bob Dylan—attempts to glean fact from fiction, only to discover the deeper he digs into the musician’s past, the more his own past rises to the surface Despite his fame, Eli Page is a riddle wrapped in a myth, inside decades of mask-making. His past is so shrouded in gossip and half-truths that no one knows who he is behind the act. Jack Wyeth, a budding writer, joins Eli in Galesville, a small town on the border of New York and Vermont, only to learn that the musician’s mind is failing. As he scrambles to uncover the truth, Jack is forced to confront his own past, his own hang-ups, and his own fears. At the same time, he falls for a local artist who has secrets of her own, he becomes linked to a town controversy, and he struggles to let go of his childhood idols and bridge the divide between myth and reality. Set against a folk Americana aesthetic, Lay Down Your Weary Tune is an emotionally charged exploration of myth-making, desire, and regret, and the inescapable bond between the past and present.

As one of the top folk musicians in the country, Christine Lavin has seen it all--and she still loves the music and the life she feels privileged to lead. Published in honor of her twenty-fifth anniversary as a full-time, independent touring musician, Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha? is a memoir of road stories and adventures across the United States, Canada, and Australia. ''I've changed a few names to spare hurt feelings,'' Christine notes, ''but all these stories are true. Hey, I have eight brothers and sisters--you think they'd let me make things up?'' Cold Pizza for Breakfast is rich with details from two-plus decades of songwriting and performing. The memoir begins with the hysterical tale of Christine's being booed in West Palm Beach when she opened for Joan Rivers--with a coda that demonstrates Christine's nimble mind and sense of the absurd--and recounts her circuitous route to becoming one of folk music's most respected and beloved songwriters and performers. Christine explains: ''Instead of a business plan, I've followed hunches, my intuition, and my heart, and I have had the good fortune of meeting astounding people along the way who helped point me in the right direction. OK, a few pointed me in the wrong direction, too. But I always somehow managed to recover.'' Christine is an engaging and generous writer, often putting an informative and warm spotlight on other musicians. Learn delicious details about Dave Van Ronk's unique method of writing music, the stanza of a famous song that Bob Dylan had never heard, and how Ervin Drake came to write ''It Was a Very Good Year.'' Read about the unlikely beginnings of the folk super-group ''The Four Bitchin' Babes,'' still going strong today, and how Christine's music has found a home with some of today's brightest Broadway stars. Photographs and memorabilia from Christine's fantastic voyage, song lyrics, an extensive appendix including an index and Christine's list of her 1,000 favorite songs that she has played while guest-DJing in New York City--all this combines with Christine's incomparable sense of humor to make Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha? an irresistible read and an invaluable resource for anyone who is interested in how songs get made, how musicians learn, and the business of music.

A novel in autobiographical vignette form