In the book twelve Catholic doctors tell their own life stories with honesty, with wit, and with passion. In these intimate portraits we get a glimpse beneath the white coat into the heart of each physician. How have these physicians come to a profound faith? How have they kept their faith amidst the pressures and temptations of a secular society? How have these doctors tried to follow Jesus Christ not only in their work, but also in their personal and family lives?

During the early decades of the twentieth century symphonic jazz involved an expansive family of music that emulated, paralleled, and intersected the jazz tradition. Though now largely forgotten, symphonic jazz was both a popular music -- arranging tradition and a repertory of hybrid concert works, both of which reveled in the mildly irreverent interbreeding of white and black and high and low music. While the roots of symphonic jazz can be traced to certain black ragtime orchestras of the...

The most successful bandleader of the 1920s, Paul Whiteman was an entertainment icon who played a major role in the mainstreaming of jazz. Whiteman and his band premiered Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Duke Ellington acknowledged his achievements. His astonishing ear for talent vaulted a who’s who of artists toward prominence. But Whiteman’s oversized presence eclipsed Black jazz musicians while his middlebrow music prompted later generations to jettison him from jazz history.W. Anth...

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) is widely considered the jazz tradition's most celebrated composer. This engaging yet scholarly volume explores his long career and his rich cultural legacy from a broad range of in-depth perspectives, from the musical and historical to the political and international. World-renowned scholars and musicians examine Ellington's influence on jazz music, its criticism, and its historiography. The chronological structure of the volume allows a clear understanding of t...

Hearing Luxe Pop explores a deluxe-production aesthetic that has long thrived in American popular music, in which popular-music idioms are merged with lush string orchestrations and big-band instrumentation. John Howland presents an alternative music history that centers on shifts in timbre and sound through innovative uses of orchestration and arranging, traveling from symphonic jazz to the Great American Songbook, the teenage symphonies of Motown to the “countrypolitan” sound of...

The author of the bestselling The Third Man Factor examines the shockingly common phenomenon of the "Angel Effect": when people feel visited by an otherworldly presence in times of great danger or desperation.Do "angels" exist?I If so, are they heaven-sent or products of the human brain? After the publication of the bestseller The ThirdMan Factor, which examined the phenomenon of explorers who found themselves at the edge of death and experienced a...

A poignant and powerful spiritual memoir about how the lives of the saints changed the life of a modern woman.In My Sisters the Saints, author Colleen Carroll Campbell blends her personal narrative of spiritual seeking, trials, stumbles, and breakthroughs with the stories of six women saints who profoundly changed her life: Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Faustina of Poland, Edith Stein of Germany, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Mary of Nazareth. Drawing upon...

Why Stay Catholic? by Michael Leach is an uplifting book about what's right in the Catholic Church today and why tomorrow offers such hope and promise. Scandals in the Catholic Church won't go away. The uninspiring sermons keep coming and lay people who don't feel fulfilled find themselves asking Catholic questions and looking for Catholic answers. This leads them to the greater question Why Stay Catholic? In Why Stay Catholic? national best-selling author Michael Leach offers ...

The only book that shows how the Blues Scales (Major and Minor) are used to create jazz solos. Designed to help beginners quickly learn how to create meaningful solos without having to first master all the scales and chords of a tune. Great transcriptions of solo phrases by Miles Davis, Dave Sanborn, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. showing how the Blues Scales are used. The accompanying CD has the author and his NY rhythm section demonstrating each exercise, and also great as a jazz play-along! Endo...

Imagine your life has been in turmoil since birth. Then, you find your soul mate, the love of your life intending to spend years of marital bless together. Suddenly, you die prematurely.  You awaken to peaceful joy and are embraced in warmth of exceeding love and surrounded by heavenly hosts. Then, you hear your soul mate’s pleas for you to return. What would you do? Would you leave the celestial atmosphere or return to a world of craziness intertwined with the love that you a...

A landmark in jazz studies, Thinking in Jazz reveals as never before how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea.The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines partici...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The legendary star of Superman and author of Still Me reflects on the power of hope and the limitless potential in each of us.“Graceful, persuasive . . . A reflective mixture of policy advocacy, personal philosophy, and candid self-observation.”—The Philadelphia InquirerChristopher Reeve has mastered the art of turning the impossible into the inevitable. In these candid reflect...