Christopher Bigsby: 7 books

First published in 1985, C.W.E Bigsby examines the career and work of playwright David Mamet. Bigsby shows that Mamet is a fierce social critic, indicting an America corrupted at its core by myths of frontier individualism and competitive capitalism. Mamet has created plays whose bleak social vision...

The early years of the twenty-first century saw several losses for the American theatre but also marked the emergence of a new generation of exciting playwrights. In this book, Christopher Bigsby explores the work of nine of these developing talents, and the importance of issues including race, gender...

In a small Southern town, a white man tries to prevent a lynching and finds himself branded by the mob --- and worse, finds himself sheltering the dead man's son. When the killers come around to finish the job, the two victims are forced to flee across the country in the hopes of escaping men with...

One of America's most powerful and original dramatists, August Wilson offered an alternative history of the twentieth century, as seen from the perspective of black Americans. He celebrated the lives of those seemingly pushed to the margins of national life, but who were simultaneously protagonists...

Something has happened in the world of television drama. For the last decade and a half America has assumed a dominant position. Novelists, screenwriters and journalists, who would once have had no interest in writing for television, indeed who often despised it, suddenly realised that it was where...

A New Introduction to American Studies provides a coherent portrait of American history, literature, politics, culture and society, and also deals with some of the central themes and preoccupations of American life. It will provoke students into thinking about what it actually means to study a culture. Ideals...

In his first novel, British scholar Christopher W.E. Bigsby provides a prequel to The Scarlet Letter, introducing readers to a younger Hester Prynne. He tells of her attempts to flee an oppressive marriage to Roger Chillingworth, her love affair with Arthur Dimmesdale, and her life in the New World....