From 1981 to 1994, music patron and art collector Betty Freeman (1921--2009) hosted a series of monthly musicales, or salons, in Los Angeles. Most of these salons were held in a room off the den of Freeman's Beverly Hills home--a space she dubbed "the music room." Freeman saw these salons as an important space to foster the development of contemporary composition among leading and upcoming composers in both America and Europe. Over the span of thirteen seasons, 144 composers, performers, a...

The local and regional shows staged throughout America use musical theater’s inherent power of deception to cultivate worldviews opposed to mainstream ideas. Jake Johnson reveals how musical theater between the coasts inhabits the middle spaces between professional and amateur, urban and rural, fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, and truth and falsehood. The homegrown musical provides a space to engage belief and religion—imagining a better world while creating opportunities to expand w...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopted the vocal and theatrical traditions of American musical theater as important theological tenets. As Church membership grew, leaders saw how the genre could help define the faith and wove musical theater into many aspects of Mormon life. Jake Johnson merges the study of belonging in America with scholarship on voice and popular music to explore the surprising yet profound link between two quintessentially American institutions. Through...

When Leigh Harline and Ned Washington penned "When You Wish Upon a Star" for Disney's 1940 film Pinocchio, the song came like a bolt out of the blue. Like Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg's "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz one year earlier, "When You Wish Upon a Star" comes on the heels of the Great Depression and just shy of America's sudden jolt into a second global conflict. Both tunes reach outward and upward with their memorable octave leaps. Both have aged into ...

If you want to understand and train your adorable Golden better, without spending hundreds on a dog trainer, then keep reading…Goldens are charming fur-balls of energy! They are loyal, intelligent, friendly and change their owners lives forever.Un-trained Goldens can be a little… “ruff” around the edges though! Jumping on strangers out of joy, chewing on pillows or your kids homework are just some of the issues inexperienced owners run into.This i...

Singular and star-studded writings on America’s neon-lit playgroundAt once a Technicolor wonderland and the embodiment of American mythology, Las Vegas exists at the Ground Zero of a reverence for risk-taking and the transformative power of a winning hand. Jake Johnson edits a collection of short essays and flash ideas that probes how music-making and soundscapes shape the City of Second Chances. Treating topics ranging from Cher to Cirque de Soleil, the contributo...

A multi-author collection of eighteen original superhero tales ranging from the dark to the hysterical to the downright bizarre, including 2016 Aurora Award nominee "Super Frenemies" by Stephen Kotowych.

Popular speaker and New York Times bestselling author of Woman Evolve, Sarah Jakes Roberts shows women they are not disqualified by their pain and failures and offers encouragement and strength to believe God’s best is still possible.Everyone has experiences in their lives that stop them in their tracks and become burdens they carry with them everywhere they go. No one knows this better than Sarah Jakes Roberts.Pregnant at fourteen, marrie...

So, that's how my life ends, what a waste of time... These were the last thoughts of a young man, shot by accident in a fight between local gangs. Little did he know that he would soon wake up in another world, a world of Cultivation! Thrust into a new world, Noah Balvan will need to overcome social injustices, magical beasts, and the cutthroat world of Cultivation. This is the story of the Balvan Family bastard, of a transmigrator who previously had no purpose in life, of a boy who will b...