Warning: The plays of Political Stages do not make for a quiet evening of theatre. These are the plays which got audiences out of their seats, and sometimes out into the streets. Their words and ideas rumbled ominously down the marble hallways of legislatures and challenged, even threatened, and often changed, the thinking of millions. These are the plays which either lit or reflected the fires of those political controversies which blazed across the American Twentieth Century. Individuall...

“Emily Mann is one of our most urgently engaging, provocative and significant American playwrights.”—Joyce Carol Oates“Elizabeth Packard emerges as a vibrant, passionate force of nature.”—The New York TimesIllinois, 1861: Without proof of insanity, Elizabeth Packard is committed by her husband to an asylum. Based on historical events, Emily Mann’s play tells of one woman’s struggle to right a system gone wrong in this winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New Ameri...

“Gloria: A Life is a unique, deeply moving performance created in the hopeful, conversational spirit of its extraordinary subject.” —Sara Holdren, New York Magazine’s Vulture“One part theater, one part consciousness-raising group therapy session, Gloria: A Life offers an experience that promises to be a more intimate recollection of Steinem’s journey, not only because it’s been singularly shaped by the hands of women.” —Noor Brara, VogueF...

William Penn was an instrumental and controversial figure in the early modern transatlantic world, known both as a leader in the movement for religious toleration in England and as a founder of two American colonies, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. As such, his career was marked by controversy and contention in both England and America. This volume looks at William Penn with fresh eyes, bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines to assess his multifaceted life and career. Contribu...

The Angel of His Presence by Grace Livingston Hill A sweet Christian fiction. JOHN WENTWORTH STANLEY stood on the deck of an Atlantic liner looking off to sea and meditating. The line of smoke that floated away from his costly cigar followed the line of smoke from the steamer as if it were doing honest work to help get Mr. Stanley to New York. The Sea in the distance was sparkling and monotonous and the horizon line empty and bright, but Mr. Stanly seeme...

When Margaret learns of the death of her former husband, she recalls their earliest days together as Ph.D. candidates, beginning a journey through her past. Told through the sensations of Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the subject of her uncompleted thesis, Margaret evokes beautiful, ordinary and painful sexual memories from before, after and during their marriage. Stevens, a guiding voice in her head for twenty-five years, cajoles Margaret into unearthin...

Some sample anecdotes: 1) Simon and Schuster once published a children's book titled Dr. Dan the Bandage Man. As a publicity gimmick, they decided to include a half-dozen band-aids in each book, so publisher Richard Simon sent this telegram to a friend at Johnson and Johnson: "PLEASE SHIP TWO MILLION BAND-AIDS IMMEDIATELY." The following day Mr. Simon received this telegram in reply: "BAND-AIDS ON THEIR WAY. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOU?" 2) As a young woman, ballerina Margot Fonteyn wish...

Every day people tune in to The Writer's Almanac on public radio and hear Garrison Keillor read them a poem. And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, chosen by the narrator for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their "utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m."The title Good Poems comes from common literary parlance. For writers, it's enough to refer to somebody having writ...

"The book is full of strong, memorable poems that stick with readers like a friend during a long, hard night. " - The Christian Science MonitorHere, readers will find solace in works that are bracing and courageous, organized into such resonant headings as "Such As It Is More or Less" and "Let It Spill." From William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman to R. S. Gwynn and Mary Oliver, the voices gathered in this collection will be more than welcome to those who've been str...

A "mesmerizing" biography of the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Sophie's Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Darkness Visible ( Entertainment Weekly).William Styron was one of the most highly regarded and controversial authors of his generation. In this illuminating biography, James L. W. West III draws upon letters, papers, and manuscripts as well as interviews with Styron's friends and family to recount ...

Roberts Liardon chronicles the lives and legacies of men and women who were empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring worldwide revivals.

From bestselling, nationally celebrated author Howard Frank Mosher, a wildly funny and deeply personal account of his three-month, 20,000-mile sojourn to discover what he loved enough to live for.Several months before novelist Howard Frank Mosher turned sixty-five, he learned that he had prostate cancer. Following forty-six intensive radiation treatments, Mosher set out alone in his twenty-year-old Chevy Celebrity on a monumental road trip and book tour across twenty-first-century ...