Since adolescence Iâve written scripts, stories, and songs. For ten years I wrote songs and sketches for NPRâs Morning Edition as âMoe Moskowitz and the Punsters.â Among my young-adult novels, my favorite remains Alex Icicle: A Romance in Ten Torrid Chapters, a literate howl of romantic obsession by an over-educated and under-loved madman. I think my funniest comedy novel is Whoâs Killing the Great Writers of America?that not only kills off some famous writers, but simultaneously parodies their style. And, of course, Stephen King ends up solving the whole crazy conspiracy. I taught writing for many years, and Iâm pleased to report that my students taught me more than anything I ever taught them.
The cover of this biography is J-O-S-H spelled out in huge theatrical lightsâand Logan really was a Broadway legend as a director/producer/writer. The book chronicles his successes and failures, and he analyzes each show he worked on with an unsentimental and critical eye. He astutely argues for what audiences want to see, and what they reject. Particularly compelling are his personal portraits of Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein II.
While the prose style of Act One is a little fussy, florid, and overly eager to impress, this is still a moving, funny, and emotional biography of a talented, ambitious young man who is determined to make his mark as a Broadway playwright. And, at the end, when he single-handedly turns his out-of-town failure (co-written with George S. Kaufman) into a hit, you want to stand up and cheer.
Moss Hart's Act One, which Lincoln Center Theater presented in 2014 as a play written and directed by James Lapine, is one of the great American memoirs, a glorious memorial to a bygone age filled with all the wonder, drama, and heartbreak that surrounded Broadway in the early twentieth century. Hart's story inspired a generation of theatergoers, dramatists, and readers everywhere as he eloquently chronicled his impoverished childhood and his long, determined struggle to reach the opening night of his first Broadway hit. Act One is the quintessential American success story.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilsonâs postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one byâŚ
The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley is a long novel from 1929âand itâs one of the few long novels I have eagerly returned to more than once. Three Britons (a young man, young woman, and older man) are dissatisfied with their lives, and they take to the open road. Along the way they create a travelling musical-comedy troupe, The Good Companions, and we travel along with them for the tryouts, the opening nights, the standing ovations, the missed opportunities, the lucky breaks: and the glories of friendship. The novel offers readers the delicious chance to live entirely in a world now completely vanished.
Three unhappy characters, flee from their old lives to seek adventure on the open road. Fate brings them together and into the presence of a broken-down theatrical touring company. Throwing caution to the winds they save the group and set off on an unforgettable tour of the pavillions and provincial theatres of England. First published in 1929.
Gibson wrote a hit two-character play called Two for the Seesaw in 1958. It starred Henry Fonda and Ann Bancroft. The following year, Gibson published The Seesaw Log, which reprints the play, but, more interestingly, is prefaced with a diary that runs longer than the play. The diary is the hair-raising, exhausting, and terrifying chronicle of what it took to get that play to Broadway and to make it a hit. Itâs about the compromises between art and commerce, and itâs a cry from the heart of an artist trying desperately to preserve his vision.
Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink
by
Ethan Chorin,
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages ofâŚ
I read this biography in 1972 when it was first published; I was in high school. Twenty-two years later I would write my novel that was clearly inspired by Housemanâs detailed and absorbing account of his theatrical careerâparticularly his collaboration with the 21-year-old Orson Welles whom Houseman immediately recognized as a dangerous firestorm of talent. Their years together and the eventual destructive splintering of their partnership make for a story that will stay with you. It made this young person feel that with sufficient nerve, talent, and vision, I might accomplish anythingâwhich is exactly what you should feel when youâre young.
John Houseman describes with extraordinary self-knowledge and grace a life full of fantastic episodes that took him from a bizarre childhood to a seemingly hopeless and conventional business career to his brilliant debut in the world of the theater.
This is the story of one week in my life. I was seventeen. It was the week I slept in Orson Wellesâs pajamas. It was the week I fell in love. It was the week I fell out of love. And it was the week I changed my middle nameâtwice.
Set against the background of Orson Wellesâs debut production of the Mercury Theatre on Broadway, Me and Orson Welles is the tale of Richard Samuels, a stage-struck kid from New Jersey who, miraculously, ends up with a small role in Caesar, Wellesâs brash and brilliant modern-dress version of Shakespeareâs play. Richard finds himself at the center of an exhilarating vortex of celebrity, ego, art, and love. The novel was filmed by Richard Linklater starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes.
Part romance/erotica and part family drama, but all heart.
Scarlett loved horses since she was a child, living amidst the chaos of a family ravaged by mental illness. Years later, as she rebuilds a relationship with her often-absent father, she wrangles with needy clients, a manipulative mother, a nosy uncle,âŚ
I grew up thinking that being adopted didnât matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courtâs overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over womenâs reproductive rights placesâŚ