Behind the Red Curtain, a Memoir is a true-life account told in the voice of a growing teenager. In this harrowing tale of coping and survival, the author walks readers into the metamorphosed world of a Vietnamese family inside fallen Saigon during the period following the end of the Vietnam War. No details were spared within and without this broken world after an abrupt change of regimes of international consequences. Within the context of this bigger drama is the author's private journey of coming of age in an uncertain time.

"Swept up in the drama of the Bolshevik revolution, Joseph Stalin's Communist Party purges and World War II, the Rakitova family faces innumerable obstacles to survival. But young Maya knows only that her father is gone and that she must hide her Jewish identity. With what Maya calls "uncommon courage, " her mother fights to protect her, relying on the kindness of friends and strangers, and the tenuous hope that Maya can keep her identity a secret."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

A rock climbing expedition to Mars 2043. A science fiction novel based on real climbing and real science. The future of this world is shouldered on a team of NASA climbers. Climbing writing has never ventured onto a stage this big.

The expatriate, one of America's greatest black writers, giving a bold assessment of the world's outlook on race, a report of the Bandung Conference of 1955.

Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl follows the true-life story of 23-year-old American, Miss Amelia, as she takes on the Communists and beats the odds to open China's first burlesque nightclub. Based on her personal diary, she exposes the details of her astonishing story - on stage and off - as well as eye-opening insights into what it's really like to live, love, and do business in China, set against the backdrop of forbidden cabaret and nightlife at its naughtiest.

Craving the spotlight is in her blood. Ever since high school student Anastasija Parker discovered she was vampire royalty, her life has been sort of crazy. The half-vampire- half-witch just wants some normalcy, and trying out for the spring musical seems like the perfect fix. But when the ancient talisman that stands between vampire freedom and slavery to witches is stolen, Ana has to skip rehersal and track down the dangerous artifact before someone uses it to make this year's curtain call her last...

Cassandra Lightman grew up making trinkets and toys. She was on her way to inventing a "flying machine" when she was committed to a sanatorium for hysteria. That's where Dr. Timothy Brown found Sandra and saw her promising intelligence. After Sandra shows Dr. Brown how to cure hysteria in women, she begins to work under him in his medical practice. Since Sandra cannot practice medicine and has no support from her family, she must carry on her position in secret. She goes into Dr. Brown’s office through the back door, speaking to no one, and always covering her face. Sandra soon meets Bedelia Morten, one of her patients behind the red curtain. Bedelia Morten is an upper class wife with a banker husband and three children of her own. She suffers from insomnia and nightmares, which leads her to seek out Dr. Brown’s practice. Though Bedelia is initially skeptical of Sandra’s skill, she soon learns to appreciate Sandra’s talent and company. When their relationship becomes too close, Sandra is encouraged by Dr. Brown to invent a "stand-in" for herself. Sandra goes back to her experimental roots and visits her idol-inventor Marlin Manchester. Sandra works many long nights in hopes of creating the first steam-powered vibrator. When Sandra’s invention takes off, she is forced to reconsider her role both in and out of the examination room, her future, and who she wants by her side.

Examining the significant influence of the Soviet Union on the work of four major African American authors—and on twentieth-century American debates about race—Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain remaps black modernism, revealing the importance of the Soviet experience in the formation of a black transnationalism. Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, and Paul Robeson each lived or traveled extensively in the Soviet Union between the 1920s and the 1960s, and each reflected on Communism and Soviet life in works that have been largely unavailable, overlooked, or understudied. Kate A. Baldwin takes up these writings, as well as considerable material from Soviet sources—including articles in Pravda and Ogonek, political cartoons, Russian translations of unpublished manuscripts now lost, and mistranslations of major texts—to consider how these writers influenced and were influenced by both Soviet and American culture. Her work demonstrates how the construction of a new Soviet citizen attracted African Americans to the Soviet Union, where they could explore a national identity putatively free of class, gender, and racial biases. While Hughes and McKay later renounced their affiliations with the Soviet Union, Baldwin shows how, in different ways, both Hughes and McKay, as well as Du Bois and Robeson, used their encounters with the U. S. S. R. and Soviet models to rethink the exclusionary practices of citizenship and national belonging in the United States, and to move toward an internationalism that was a dynamic mix of antiracism, anticolonialism, social democracy, and international socialism. Recovering what Baldwin terms the "Soviet archive of Black America," this book forces a rereading of some of the most important African American writers and of the transnational circuits of black modernism.

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1,3, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: By using music, dancing, colorful settings and costumes to accompany the dramatic story, Baz Luhrmann's films stimulate all senses and intensify the movie experience to a degree that makes viewers aware of the artificiality and artistry involved. So-called "Red Curtain" films keep the audience engaged at all times by using theatrical rather than naturalistic cinema devices. This approach of storytelling is a conscious choice that can be attributed to Luhrmann’s comprehensive experience in arts and media. Although he is best known for his visually and symbolically charged films, Luhrmann has also worked in theater and opera – both behind and on stage. In addition, he has produced music videos and worked in journalism and fashion. Thus, it is not surprising that all these experiences influence his current work. Luhrmann’s films are characterized by a theatric style that combines dancing and singing with rapid cuts and editing, giving the impression that one is participating in the live action rather than just sitting passively in the auditorium.