Criticism category: 58377 books

Robin Wood, the renowned scholarly critic and writer on film, has prepared a new introduction and added three essays to his classic text Personal Views. This important book contains essays on a wide range of films and filmmakers and considers questions of the nature of film criticism and the critic....

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1871, but his literary reputation really took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which describes the decay of a marriage. His 1885...

This extraordinary collection of letters sheds light on one of the most important postwar American poets and on a creative woman's life from the 1950s onward. Amy Clampitt was an American original, a literary woman from a Quaker family in rural Iowa who came to New York after college and lived in...

Get ready to obsess over the last twenty-five years of pop culture hits, misses, and cult classics. THE MUST LIST is an elegantly packaged, gift-worthy compilation of 100 top 25 lists celebrating the best in TV, movies, music, and books from the editors of Entertainment Weekly. Beginning with...

Designed to trick the eye and stimulate the imagination, special effects have changed the way we look at films and the worlds created in them. Computer-generated imagery (CGI), as seen in Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Men in Black, and The Matrix,...

Film Music: A History explains the development of film music by considering large-scale aesthetic trends and structural developments alongside socioeconomic, technological, cultural, and philosophical circumstances. The book’s four large parts are given over to Music and the "Silent"...

In this unique and engaging collection, twelve essays celebrate the legacy of one of America's most important playwrights and investigate Williams's enduring effect on America's cultural, theatrical, and literary heritage. ** ** Like Faulkner before him, Tennessee Williams gave universal appeal...

The definitive oral history of heavy metal, Louder Than Hell by renowned music journalists Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman includes hundreds of interviews with the giants of the movement, conducted over the past 25 years. Unlike many forms of popular music, metalheads tend to embrace their...

The biggest edition yet – expanded and updated with 35,000 words of new material Critically acclaimed in its previous editions, The Complete David Bowie is widely recognized as the foremost source of analysis and information on every facet of Bowie’s career. The A-Z of songs and the day-by-day...

  It's perhaps the relative modernity of rock 'n' roll that makes the genre a minefield of myths and legends accepted as truth. History hasn't had time to dissect the bunk. Until now.   Discover the real stories behind rock's biggest crocks, how they came to be but why they...

The First Time I Heard David Bowie is Part III in an ongoing series where musicians and writers tell their stories of first hearing the music of an iconic artist or band. In this third volume (following the opening installments, which covered Joy Division / New Order and Cocteau Twins), forty different...

In the much-anticipated sequel to the bestselling Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, Trunk picks up where he left off by featuring 35 new bands, both legendary and forgotten, and sharing his passion for all things metal. Complete with his favorite playlists, band discographies, memorabilia,...

"[Stanley is] as clear-eyed about music as he is crazy in love with it." —Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times A monumental work of musical history, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! traces the story of pop music through songs, bands, musical scenes, and styles from Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock around...

David Bowie: every single song. Everything you want to know, everything you didn't know. David Bowie remains mysterious and unknowable, despite 45 years of recording and performing. His legacy is roughly 600 songs, which range from psychedelia to glam rock to Philadelphia soul, from avant-garde instrumentals...