Lithe of build, graceful of tongue and carriage, dark, piercing eyes, and facial features cast from a prince of the underworld, Alexander Herrmann embodied the word "magician." His persona permeated the popular culture of his day, and his image still holds power in our present societal subconscious as the archetypal conjurer. A mesmeric personality both on and off the stage, he was ever the theatrical magician, ever the exhibitor of his craft. The book is intended to be a journey of Herrmann through the lens of his audience, as projected through the newsprint of the day. It does not seek to delve behind the scenes, but to hopefully paint a picture on the canvas of the goal of his craft - mystifying vast audiences of theatrical patrons. A fascinating progression of Herrmann's art and influence, as well as a glimpse of the ubiquitous theater and its value in bygone American culture.

Cosmopolitans... - it is reasonably easy to define what it means; it is increasingly the case that we come across them. But it may be rare to see reflections that are both, sociologically well informed and at the same time entertaining - a Turkish friend from Australia suggested to the author of the present notes to call it sociotainment... - though she admitted that she got the term from her husband from India... Sometimes it's easier to find oneself while being lost. And the present volume invites to get lost, offering the reader the opportunity to think about her and his place. These are notes: reflections (from an academic who considers himself also as politically aware and in some way active) that bring together the different dimensions of being carried away to rest in different places and positions.

A long-overdue biography of the legendary civil liberties lawyer—a vital and contrary figure who both defended Ulysses and fawned over J. Edgar Hoover. In the 1930s and ’40s, Morris Ernst was one of America’s best-known liberal lawyers. The ACLU’s general counsel for decades, Ernst was renowned for his audacious fights against artistic censorship. He successfully defended Ulysses against obscenity charges, litigated groundbreaking reproductive rights cases, and supported the widespread expansion of protections for sexual expression, union organizing, and public speech. Yet Ernst was also a man of stark contradictions, waging a personal battle against Communism, defending an autocrat, and aligning himself with J. Edgar Hoover’s inflammatory crusades. Arriving at a moment when issues of privacy, artistic freedom, and personal expression are freshly relevant, The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade brings this singularly complex figure into a timely new light. As Samantha Barbas’s eloquent and compelling biography makes ironically clear, Ernst both transformed free speech in America and inflicted damage to the cause of civil liberties. Drawing on Ernst’s voluminous cache of publications and papers, Barbas follows the life of this singular idealist from his pugnacious early career to his legal triumphs of the 1930s and ’40s and his later idiosyncratic zealotry. As she shows, today’s challenges to free speech and the exercise of political power make Morris Ernst’s battles as pertinent as ever.

The #1 bestseller that tells the remarkable story of the generations of American artists, writers, and doctors who traveled to Paris, fell in love with the city and its people, and changed America through what they learned, told by America’s master historian, David McCullough. Not all pioneers went west. In The Greater Journey, David McCullough tells the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, hungry to learn and to excel in their work. What they achieved would profoundly alter American history. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, whose encounters with black students at the Sorbonne inspired him to become the most powerful voice for abolition in the US Senate. Friends James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Morse not only painting what would be his masterpiece, but also bringing home his momentous idea for the telegraph. Harriet Beecher Stowe traveled to Paris to escape the controversy generated by her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Three of the greatest American artists ever—sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent—flourished in Paris, inspired by French masters. Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris, and the nightmare of the Commune. His vivid diary account of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris is published here for the first time. Telling their stories with power and intimacy, McCullough brings us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’ phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.”

There were 40,000 Jews in Riga in July 1941, when the Germans occupied Latvia. 33,000 of them were interned in the ghetto, and most of them (according to Schneider's estimate, 29,000) were killed in November-December 1941 in the Rumbuli forest. At the same time, numerous Jews from the Reich began to be deported to the ghetto of Riga. Ca. 20,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews arrived there during the winter of 1941-42; 800 of them survived the war, which is much greater than the numbers of German Jewish survivors from the ghettos of Łódź, Minsk, Kaunas, etc. Presents a story of life and death in the ghetto, focusing mainly on the "German" part of it; the story is largely based on testimonies of survivors, including Schneider's own (she was deported to the Riga ghetto from Vienna in February 1942). Many of the Jews were sent to the Jungfernhof camp near the city, rather than to the ghetto. Later, some were transferred from the ghetto to the Salaspils camp, and in August 1943, 7,874 Jews were sent from the ghetto to the Kaiserwald camp. The rest of the ghetto was liquidated in October 1943, and ca. 60 people were left to remove all traces of the former inhabitants, after which they were also transferred to Kaiserwald. Pp. 157-175 contain a list of survivors, and pp. 177-211 contain documents.

The nexus between travel, writing and media in the contemporary world is dense: travel practice is increasingly interwoven with media; representations in old and new media are co-present and converge. Digitisation has had a profound impact on the practice and mediation of travel, but this volume aims to show that travel and its representation have always been enlaced with media. With contributions by experts in literary and cultural studies, journalism studies and informatics, the book takes a multi- and interdisciplinary approach and covers a wide range of media, from the hand-crafted album to social media. It illustrates how current transformations invite us to revisit earlier periods of travel writing and their media environments, and to explore the ways in which contemporary forms of mediation are prefigured by earlier practices and forms. The book addresses readers interested in travel writing, travel studies and cultural studies. Chapters Introduction, 3, 7 and 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Funded by University of Freiburg.

Music plays an integral role in the experience of film, television, video games, and other media—yet for many directors, producers, and media creators, working with music can be a baffling and intimidating process. The Film and Media Creators’ Guide to Music bridges the gap between musical professionals and the creators of film and other media projects, establishing a shared language while demystifying this collaborative journey. Organized with a modular chapter structure, the book covers fundamental topics including: Why (and when) to use music in a project How to talk about music Licensing existing music Commissioning original music Working with a composer Geared toward emerging and established creators alike, this book takes a practical approach to the process of finding the best music for all forms of moving image. The Film and Media Creators’ Guide to Music offers hands-on advice for media creators, providing readers with the confidence to approach the planning, commissioning, creation, and placement of music in their projects with the awareness, understanding, and vocabulary that will enable them to be better collaborators and empowered storytellers. For students and professionals working across film and media, this book is the essential guide to using music creatively and effectively.

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Since the emergence of social media in the journalistic landscape, the BBC has sought to produce reporting more connected to its audience while retaining its authority as a public broadcaster in crisis reporting. Using empirical analysis of crisis news production at the BBC, this book shows that the emergence of social media at the BBC and the need to manage this kind of material led to a new media logic in which tech-savvy journalists take on a new centrality in the newsroom. In this changed context, the politico-economic and socio-cultural logic have led to a more connected newsroom involving this new breed of journalists and BBC audience. This examination of news production events shows that in the midst of transformations in journalistic practices and norms, including newsgathering, sourcing, distribution and impartiality, the BBC has reasserted its authority as a public broadcaster. Click here for a short video about the book.