Art Study

"Why do conservatives hate comedy? Why is there no right-wing Jon Stewart?" These sorts of questions launch a million tweets, a thousand op-eds, and more than a few scholarly analyses. That's Not Funny argues that it is both an intellectual and politically strategic mistake to assume that comedy has a liberal bias. Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx take listeners—particularly self-described liberals—on a tour of contemporary conservative comedy and the "right-wing comedy complex."

In this startling group memoir, four friends - Black and White, gay and straight, immigrant and American-born - use Toni Morrison’s novels as a springboard for intimate and revealing conversations about the problems of everyday racism and living whole in times of uncertainty. Tackling everything from first love and Soul Train to police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors take up what it means to read challenging literature collaboratively and to learn in public as an act of individual reckoning and social resistance.

With his characteristic clarity and elegance A. C. Grayling takes the listener from the worldviews and moralities before the age of the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, through Christianity's dominance of the European mind, to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and on to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre and philosophy today. And, since the story of philosophy is incomplete without mention of the great philosophical traditions of India, China and the Persian-Arabic world, he gives a comparative survey of them, too.

What happens when we push past the surface and allow real, grounded, mutually challenging, and edifying friendships to develop? We need only look at the little-known friendship between eminent Christian thinkers Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis to find out. Born out of a fan letter that celebrated mystery novelist Sayers wrote to Lewis as his star was just beginning to rise, this friendship between a married woman and a longtime bachelor developed over years of correspondence as the two discovered their mutual admiration of each other's writing, thinking, and faith.

Those who enjoy J. R. R. Tolkien—even those new to his classic stories—will love A Hobbit Devotional, featuring 60 humorous, challenging, and encouraging devotionals. The Hobbit has fascinated readers for more than 70 years. Now, this tale of humble folk who overcome fear, discouragement, and despair through steadfastness, courage, and hope forms the basis of a brand-new devotional book.

Recently named the #1 piece of 20th century literature, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is more than a great story. It's a much-needed reminder that, like J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits, Christians are all on an epic quest. In examining the Christian themes in the trilogy, authors Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware find that truth and fiction are not as far apart as they seem.

Since the dawn of time, magic has been the node around which all human activities and culture revolve. As magic entered the development of science, art, philosophy, religion, myth, and psychology, it still retained its essence: that we have a dynamic connection with all other forms of life. Exploring the source magic that flows beneath the surface of culture and occulture throughout the ages, Carl Abrahamsson offers a “magical-anthropological” journey from ancient Norse shamanism to the modern magick of occultists like Genesis P-Orridge.

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.

Lo has hecho todo bien este semestre. Asististe a todas tus clases y tomaste copiosos apuntes en cada conferencia. Por lo que a ti respecta, estás preparado para los finales. Lo único es que, esos apuntes que te parecían tan geniales... ¡Ya no tienen ningún sentido! Imagínate otra situación en la que estás en una reunión de trabajo importante. Estás garabateando furiosamente, temiendo perderte algo de lo que se dice sobre el gran proyecto. Después, tu jefe se te acerca para pedirte una copia.

The content of this piece covers Enoch's journey through the multiple heavens, meeting the angels Gabriel and Michael, Enoch instructing Methuselah and his other sons on moral and ethical lessons, which he had written out in 366 books and which he eventually passes on to Methuselah and his other sons, so that his teachings wouldn't be lost and finally, Enoch's eventual assumption into heaven. This is essentially the sequel to the fabled Book of Enoch.

If I were a ballerina, I would wear pointe shoes. I would stretch my legs and leap across the stage! Dream big, and see what fun it is to be a ballerina.

Unique insights into Shakespeare, from one of the world’s most revered theatre directors. Who was the man who wrote Shakespeare’s plays? Why does Shakespeare never go out of date? How should actors approach Shakespeare’s verse? In this short but immensely wise book, visionary theatre director Peter Brook debates the questions that are central to our understanding of Shakespeare, and revisits the plays he has directed with notable brilliance, including King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and, of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Pure Act tells the story of poet Robert Lax, whose quest to live a true life as both an artist and a spiritual seeker inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, William Maxwell and a host of other writers, artists and ordinary people.

Who works in a theater? What is the green room? How do actors know where to stand on stage? Who controls the lights? Go on a guided tour of a theater to find out! Meet an actor and a director, see how the lighting works, hear the orchestra tune up, and watch as cast and crew get ready to perform.

Labor Day, 1969: Two recent college graduates move to New York to edit a new magazine called the National Lampoon. Over the next decade, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, along with a loose amalgamation of fellow satirists such as Michael O’Donoghue and P. J. O’Rourke, popularized a smart, caustic, ironic brand of humor that has become the dominant voice of American comedy. Ranging from sophisticated political satire to broad raunchy jokes, the National Lampoon introduced iconoclasm to the mainstream, selling millions of copies to an audience both large and devoted.

It’s 1985. The Bellport Evening Star, a weekly community paper headed by its sassy editor Vivian Allegra, covers both the humorous and serious issues that regularly erupt in this small village. When she agrees to host a teen exchange student from Catania for a year, Francesca, who descriptively discusses her ancient home city and is hilarious in her observations of American life and who teams up with Black student Keisha with her beautiful Broadway dancer aunt for the upcoming Step competition, life starts taking off. Actually it does for all of them. These are three strong women who in ...

Perhaps all of Jonathan Ames' problems, and the genesis of this hilarious audiobook, can be traced back to the late onset of his puberty. After all, it can't be easy to be 16 with a hairless penis "undistinguishable from that of a five-year-old's".

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children

The story of five best-selling novels beloved by evangelicals, the book industry they built, and the collective imagination they shaped. Who are evangelicals? And what is evangelicalism? Those attempting to answer these questions usually speak in terms of political and theological stances. But those stances emerge from an evangelical world with its own institutions - institutions that shape imagination as much as they shape ideology.

Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking presents the author’s often provocative and always engaging thoughts on sexuality. Here, fourteen essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot-button topics such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay bashing and the U.S. Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac.