Bøger udgivet af McFarland & Company

This is a critical history of spy fiction, film and television in the United States, with a particular focus on the American fictional spies that rivaled (and were often influenced by) Ian Fleming's James Bond. James Fenimore Cooper's Harvey Birch, based on a real-life counterpart, appeared in his novel The Spy in 1821. While Harvey Birch's British rivals dominated spy fiction from the late 1800s until the mid-1930s, American spy fiction came of age shortly thereafter. The spy boom in novels and films during the 1960s, spearheaded by Bond, heavily influenced the espionage genre in the United States for years to come, including series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Matt Helm. The author demonstrates that, while American authors currently dominate the international spy fiction market, James Bond has cast a very long shadow, for a very long time.

Theaters worldwide have exhibited a bewildering array of form, style, tone and subject in the late 20th- and the early 21st centuries, and this range of work has been determined largely by its directors. This book documents this procession of theatre in interviews with 28 directors who've been most recognized and influential on the global stage. Their ideas are varied, even dissonant, indicating the protean nature of theatre and the rich weave of work that's made our theater so rewarding. Interviewees include Judith Malina, Ping Chong, Julie Taymor and Robert Icke, among others who have defined modern theater.

Presented here is a selection from the professional and personal correspondence of Northrop Frye, one of the preeminent literary critics of the last century. With frank and accessible appraisals, the letters reveal Frye's attitudes toward scores of topics: the value of James Bond thrillers, the gap between faith and reason, surrealism, hippies, Milton's imagery, comparative literature, political hysteria in the U.S., the nature of the educated imagination, anarchism, the teaching of religion in the university, the Proteus myth, the distinction between subjects and themes, the connection between Nietzsche and Yeats, the difference between cliche and aphorism, the fussy rules of copy editors, and scores of other issues.

This is a biography of Dan Levenson, an old-time banjo and fiddle player from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1987 and 1991, Dan worked for Goose Acres Folk Music Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he dove deeply into old-time music. In the late 1980s, he formed the Boiled Buzzards; they recorded four albums between 1989 and 1994 and were a consistently active presence at old-time music festivals. He also played with Bob Frank during that time as one-half of the Hotfoot Duo. In 1995, he teamed up with Kim Murley and recorded New Frontier: Instrumentals from China and America. Levenson undertook his first cross-country trip as a solo performer in 1996. His traveling workshop "Meet the Banjo" ran with the sponsorship of Deering Banjos from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Dan recorded three projects in the first five years of the 2000s and began editing the quarterly "Old Time Way" section for Banjo Newsletter in 2005. He continues performing old-time music, teaching fiddle and banjo, writing instructional and repertoire books featuring banjo and fiddle tunes for Mel Bay, and making plans for more old-time music projects.

What makes a kaiju a kaiju? What makes an ape a large ape, and why do we sympathize with some, such as King Kong, and not with others, such as Konga? And what makes a giant person become a "monster"? This book provides a new perspective on kaiju and reveals that our boundaries for the genre are perhaps not so solid. This work focuses primarily on newer kaiju works, ranging from Colossal to Shin Godzilla to Godzilla vs. Kong, but also touches on classics such as King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, Godzilla Raids Again, and lesser-known works such as What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? and Agon. Like our ancestors we have collectively adopted giant monsters into our culture, especially our pop culture. Within the domains where giant monsters walk, we experience the rigidity of our moral structures, and the fleeting borders of our definitions of humanity. Within the kaiju film genre rest our own assumptions about what makes a monster a monster, and, more importantly, what makes a human a human.

The creation of the Confederate States of America and the subsequent Civil War inspired composers, lyricists, and music publishers in Southern and border states, and even in foreign countries, to support the new nation. Confederate-imprint sheet music articulated and encouraged Confederate nationalism, honored soldiers and military leaders, comforted family and friends, and provided diversion from the hardships of war. This is the first comprehensive history of the sheet music of the Confederacy. It covers works published before the war in Southern states that seceded from the Union, and those published during the war in Union occupied capitals, border and Northern states, and foreign countries. It is also the first work to examine the contribution of postwar Confederate-themed sheet music to the South's response to its defeat, to the creation and fostering of Lost Cause themes, and to the promotion of national reunion and reconciliation.

In 1911, a legally deaf, beginner pilot with limited training and only 90 minutes of solo flying experience took on newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst's $50,000 challenge to be the first aviator to fly across America in 30 days or less. The transcontinental flight was considered by most to be an extremely dangerous and nearly impossible feat, considering roughly half of all pilots perished in the early years of aviation. Less than a decade since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, a time when less than two percent of the country had even seen an airplane, Calbraith "Cal" Perry Rodgers drew tens of thousands of people to watch him fly. He survived a grueling journey, making history by becoming the first person to complete an east-to-west transcontinental flight. In a flimsy aircraft prone to mechanical failure, Rodgers crashed an astonishing 16 times, narrowly avoiding death on numerous occasions. By the time he had reached California and the coast where he would land, on the sand at Long Beach, his story of courage and determination had captured the imagination of an entire nation. This book chronicles the life of Cal Rodgers and depicts the world of aviation during its adventurous, if dangerous, beginnings.

In this collection of 22 interviews (with Ralph Bellamy, Angela Cartwright, Barbara Eden, Kathy Garver, Gale Gordon, Don Grady, Linda Kaye Henning, Anne Jeffreys, Meredith MacRae, Gary Owens, Paul Peterson, Kasey Rogers, Rose Marie, James Stacy, Connie Stevens, Deborah Walley, Ray Walston, Julie Newmar, Dawn Wells, Jane Wyatt, Dick York, and Alan Young) some of the biggest stars of 1950s and 1960s television reminisce about their experiences, look at the show's impact on their life, and provide insight into the creative process of those classic television shows.

A sequel to the author's autobiographical trilogy--Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin, In the Jaws of the Crocodile, and Farewell, Mama Odessa--this book is part memoir and part cultural study about the challenges of immigration and American accculturation. With self-deprecating humor, the author, a former Soviet satirist who was punished for trespassing the boundaries of public criticism, recollects his growing pains as he overcame his indoctrinated upbringing in a totalitarian society to embrace America's defining values.

This work traces the history of a remarkable troop of Hoosier horsemen--the East Wing of the Third Indiana Cavalry--during the Civil War. From the backwaters of the war in eastern Maryland to the epicenter of cavalry action in the eastern theater, they fought at Antietam, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and around Petersburg, and helped subdue Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Along the way they served as spies and fought in dozens of vicious skirmishes and battles. At Appomattox, they escorted one of the most famous generals to come out of the war.

Taken for granted by fans today, Sunday baseball was made possible only after decades of contention between evangelical Sabbatarians seeking enforcement of antiquated "blue laws," and an alliance of "Pro-Sabs" who prevailed against them with strategy and tenacity. At the heart of the struggle was a debate over the First Amendment and the place of religion in public life. Drawing on case records, this book details the legal and political battles and describes the roles of the judges, law enforcement officers and politicians, and the ordinary citizens who wanted to enjoy baseball on Sunday. The contributions of unheralded civil rights pioneers--such as Joe Neet, John Powell and Lewis Perrine--are documented.

Although often overlooked today, James Fenimore Cooper's novels represent the very beginnings of American literature. Singlehandedly, the gentleman farmer from upstate New York created the American historical, spy, sea, frontier, science fiction, and courtroom novels. His books became both national and international bestsellers, were quickly translated into other languages, and impacted the development of the American publishing industry. This literary companion is a useful resource covering the major themes, characters, settings and more found in Cooper's works. It includes an overview of his fiction; a brief biography; a chronological list of his major publications; and topics for discussion, research, and study.

World War II was over and the U.S. was still using the captured Japanese island of Okinawa as a major naval base. Hundreds of vessels dotted the numerous bays and inlets, and thousands of military personnel occupied the island. In October 1945, Typhoon Louise tore into Okinawa, slamming ships together and tossing them onto reefs and beaches. Terrible winds tore up tent cities and disintegrated corrugated tin Quonset huts. One hundred people died and 383 ships of all sizes were sunk or damaged. This book tells the full story of the typhoon historian Samuel Eliot Morison called "the most furious and lethal storm ever encountered by the United States Navy."

This work offers a critical examination of 130 commercially-released film comedies of the 1970s. It considers the socio-political circumstances of each year of the decade, then critiques each film released that year with a focus on its effect on the film industry and the art of big screen comedy, as well as the emergence of talents whose work influenced (or was influenced by) the zeitgeist of the decade. Covering popular titles like M*A*S*H, Blazing Saddles, American Graffiti, The Bad News Bears, Smokey and the Bandit and many more, it argues that the 1970s may rightly be considered the last golden age of film comedy.

Has John Adams been forgotten? He is the only Founding Father without a major memorial in the nation's capital. When he lamented that "monuments will never be erected to me," he predicted as much. His pessimism was understandable, but it was unjustified: Adams has since been portrayed in numerous biographies, plays, musicals, poems, novels, and television shows. This is the first comprehensive overview of John Adams as he appears in scholarship and in popular culture. The second president is one-dimensional at times, and perhaps best known to the public as "obnoxious and disliked," but he is always fascinating. The varied ways in which biographers and artists represented Adams provide a glimpse into his character. These portrayals also provide insight into the various ways in which people continue to find meaning in the American Revolution and its aftermath.

This book critically examines how movies that feature real or imagined explorers and expeditions creatively feature the geography of Latin America. It focuses on how locales are scripted into film plots and artistically depicted, and demonstrates that place is as important as any character in a film, especially in this genre. Nineteen key films are analyzed. Some, like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, The Other Conquest, Embrace of the Serpent, and The Lost City of Z are based on the exploits of real explorers. Others are fictional, including Apocalypto, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Dora and the Lost City of Gold. The author also discusses the evolution of exploration-discovery films, including trends that will likely be found in forthcoming movies.

How did Friday the 13th begin as a movie about a grieving mother killing camp counselors and spawn a movie in which a nanobot enhanced, hockey masked man destroys a space station? Similarly, how did A Nightmare on Elm Street evolve from a film by Wes Craven about Freddy Krueger into a film about Wes Craven making a Freddy Krueger movie? Film series are destined to change with time, but horror film series are often unrecognizable after multiple sequels and reboots. This work examines horror films and their sequels to determine the glue that holds individual franchises together, which films matter to a series' continuity, which should be considered as canon, and what goes into the process of continuing--or, in some cases, abandoning--the overarching storyline. Series covered include Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Leprechaun, and Scream.

Spying in the United States began during the Revolutionary War, with George Washington as the first director of American intelligence and Benedict Arnold as the first turncoat. The history of American espionage is full of intrigue, failures and triumphs--and motives honorable and corrupt. Several notorious spies became household names--Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, the Walkers, the Rosenbergs--and were the subjects of major motion pictures and television series. Many others have received less attention. This book summarizes hundreds of cases of espionage for and against U.S. interests and offers suggestions for further reading. Milestones in the history of American counterintelligence are noted. Charts describe the motivations of traitors, American targets of foreign intelligence services and American traitors and their foreign handlers. A former member of the U.S. intelligence community, the author discusses trends in intelligence gathering and what the future may hold. An annotated bibliography is provided, written by Hayden Peake, curator of the Historical Intelligence Collection of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than six decades, reggae legend Glen DaCosta has worked as a musician, songwriter and producer. As a session player, his distinctive sax sound backed many international reggae stars at Joe Gibbs' Studio and Lee Scratch Perry's Blackheart Studio. Twenty-two years in the writing, his revealing memoir gives an insider's view of the Jamaican popular music industry, and recounts his fascinating childhood and years on the road with Bob Marley and the Wailers and Zap Pow.

This book examines translations of Icelandic sagas and the Victorian and Edwardian children's literature they inspired, some of which are canonical while others are forgotten. It covers authors like William Morris, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Gray, Walter Scott, H. Rider Haggard, W.H. Auden, John Greenleef Whittier and more. In lavish volumes and modest schoolbooks, British and American writers claimed Nordic heritage and explored Nordic traditions. The sagas offered a rich and wide-ranging source for these authors: Volsunga saga's Sigurd the dragon slayer; King Olaf's saga of opposing Nordic Gods and Christianity; Frithiof's model of headstrong youth beset with unfair opposition and lost love. Grettir and Njal tell of men who accepted fate and met conflict and enemies unflinchingly; Aslaug, Gudrida, Hallberga and Hervar exerted remarkable influence; and Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky provided Americans with a Nordic heritage of discovery.

The 1994 Major League Baseball season promised to be memorable. Long-standing batting and pitching standards were threatened, including the revered single-season home run record. The Montreal Expos and New York Yankees were delivering remarkable campaigns. In August, acting commissioner Bud Selig called a halt to the season amid the League's latest labor dispute. The shutdown led to a lockout as well as cancellation of more than 900 regular season games, the scheduled expanded rounds of playoffs, and that year's World Series. Like all labor struggles, it was fundamentally about control--of salaries, of players' ability to decide their own fates, and of the game itself. This book chronicles Major League Baseball's turbulent '94 season and its ripple effects. It highlights earlier labor struggles and the roles performed by individuals from John Montgomery Ward, David Fultz and Robert Murphy to Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Jim "Catfish" Hunter and Donald Fehr. Also examined are the ballplayers' own organizations, from the Players League of the early 1890s to the still potent Major League Baseball Players Association doing battle with team owners and their representatives.

The Revolutionary War was nearing its end in early 1783. In his Hudson Highlands stronghold, General Washington kept a wary eye on the British force in New York City, 60 miles away. His army, owed months of back pay, and his officers frustrated by the negotiations over their promised pension, chafed under martial authority. A nationalist faction in Congress seized upon this discontent to instigate the Newburgh Conspiracy, a plot by Continental Army officers to menace civil officials who opposed the Impost, a 5% tax on imports to be collected by the central government, to satisfy the nation's debts. The army--by this time a formidable force of seasoned veterans--was provoked into threatening the very liberties it had fought to defend. This book examines this last major crisis of the Revolution, when Washington stood between his men and the American people.

In the summer of 1937 the Salisbury Indians, a Class D minor league team in rural Maryland, achieved national celebrity playing one of the most amazing comeback seasons in baseball history. Starting with 21-5, the club allegedly violated the Eastern Shore League's rules by fielding more than four players with professional experience. Forfeiting their 21 wins and plummeting to the bottom of the standings, they went on to win 59 of their last 70 games, capturing the league pennant and playoffs championship. This game-by-game account chronicles the extraordinary pitching and relentless hitting of one of the greatest minor league teams ever assembled, under the redoubtable leadership of D'Arcy "Jake" Flowers.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the U.S. Coast Guard served as the Alaskan 911. Known then as simply the Revenue Cutter Service, it was comprised of skilled navigators, judges and law enforcement specialists tasked with preventing the frontier from descending into anarchy, and securing its status as a "cash cow" for the mainland states. This is the history of the early U.S. Coast Guard, with special focus on its former whalers-turned-cutters, the Bear and the Northland, and their voyages along the coast of Alaska, Hawaii and Greenland. Following the two vessels through history, chapters detail the diverse responsibilities that the "Coasties" had to face at the time, including capturing seal poachers and pirates, delivering babies, pulling natives' teeth and even engaging in combat with a German warship.

This is a book about composite materials, written from the perspective of someone who has been in the industry for more than four decades and had to learn about them the hard way. Aimed at the curious citizen scientist or maker, it is written in an accessible, entertaining, and jargon-free style, introducing and explaining the how and why of composite materials. Following a history of composites, the book discusses the periodic table of elements and why getting to know this table is so important. It then introduces strings (fibers) and glues (matrices or resins) and explains how they're put together, how to design with them, and how to analyze what you've designed. The work also describes the composites business and includes a list of good schools and their involvement with industry.

This biography is about one of North Carolina's early governors, an advocate for public education in the post-Colonial period. Benjamin Smith (1757-1826) came from a distinguished South Carolina family and acquired enormous wealth in the Cape Fear region as a member of the planter class. Like his elite white peers, Smith was active in public life, in county government and as a legislator in state politics. He promoted public schools, the University of North Carolina, domestic manufacturing, banking, penal reform, and internal improvements. Earning the nickname "General" because of his militia activities, he rose to governorship but ended up dying in poverty.

This expanded second edition traces the development and popularity of the sportscast highlight--the dominant news frame in the crowded medium of electronic sports journalism--as the primary means of communicating about sports and athletes. The book explores the intricate relationships among media producers, sports leagues and organizations, and audiences, and explains that sportscast highlights are not a recent development. They were often used within a news context in every medium--from early news film actualities and newsreels to network and cable television to today's new media platforms. New to this edition are three chapters that explore developments in sports media from cultural, economic and technological perspectives. An obsession with highlights has seen video replay increasingly used to adjudicate sporting events, marking a new level of reliance on technology. The media's quest for greater certitude and integrity corresponds with the rise of sponsorship of pro teams by gambling operators--with sports betting ads and on-screen odds now routinely appearing in sportscasts. Long-form sports documentaries have become popular, often highlighting a fascination with "firsts"--rooted in notions of human conquest over nature--that has remained an important source of sports mythmaking.

Dwight Little's Hollywood career includes directing and producing major motion pictures for multiple studios, acclaimed television series and even video games. In this memoir, he takes readers along on a movie-making adventure that is by turns funny and brutally honest. There are many on-set interactions with well-known producers and stars along with detailed descriptions of film shoots from the wilds of India to the banks of the River Kwai. Included are tales from the jails of Madrid to the jungles of Fiji and the cold war streets of Budapest. The work seamlessly connects the Golden Age of Hollywood to the highly successful premium television of today. Make or break creative battles, Hollywood intrigues, unpredictable studio executives, and temperamental actors are all documented in colorful detail. Whether the reader is an aspiring filmmaker or just a movie lover, this book has it all, including a unique insight into television directing in the new streaming age and 41 photos, many on-set.

Designed to locate and sink German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, the escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE-9) became the most successful Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) carrier of World War II. This book covers the construction and commissioning of the Bogue, as well as the deployment of Naval Aviation composite squadrons that launched missions from the flight deck. Day-to-day operations are chronicled in comprehensive detail, along with developments in ASW tactics and the breaking of Germany's Enigma Naval Code, which enabled U.S. Navy forces in the Atlantic to take the offensive.

The 1940s saw the birth of many enduring superheroes like Superman, Batman, Captain America and Captain Marvel. Outside of the superhero genre, the golden age of comics also featured a host of lesser-known, evil-fighting action figures, and this book contains a wealth of information about these heroes without capes. Covered here are jungle heroines like Sheena, Rulah and Princess Pantha; science fiction stalwarts including Spacehawk, Hunt Bowman and Futura; adventurers such as Kayo Kirby, Werewolf Hunter and Senorita Rio; and Western heroes ranging from Tom Mix to the Ghost Rider.