In a follow-up to Knock Wood, the Emmy Award-winning actress traces the milestone events of her life, including her first marriage, the birth of her daughter, her work on Murphy Brown and her struggles with widowhood.

In A Fine Romance, David Lehman looks at the formation of the American songbook—the timeless numbers that became jazz standards, iconic love songs, and sound tracks to famous movies—and explores the extraordinary fact that this songbook was written almost exclusively by Jews. An acclaimed poet, editor, and cultural critic, David Lehman hears America singing—with a Yiddish accent. He guides us through America in the golden age of song, when “Embraceable You,” “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “My Romance,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Stormy Weather,” and countless others became nothing less than the American sound track. The stories behind these songs, the shows from which many of them came, and the shows from which many of them came, and the composers and lyricists who wrote them give voice to a specifically American saga of love, longing, assimilation, and transformation. Lehman’s analytical skills, wit, and exuberance infuse this book with an energy and a tone like no other: at once sharply observant, personally searching, and attuned to the songs that all of us love. He helps us understand how natural it should be that Wizard of Oz composer Harold Arlen was the son of a cantor who incorporated “Over the Rainbow” into his Sabbath liturgy, and why Cole Porter—the rare non-Jew in this pantheon of musicians who wrote these classic songs shaped America even as America was shaping them. (Part of the Jewish Encounter series)

A Fine Romance - Falling in Love with the English Countryside is travel writing at its best by New York Times best-selling author Susan Branch. This charming book is part love story, part travel guide - a hand-written and watercolored diary/journal of Branch's six-day transatlantic crossing on board the Queen Mary 2 and two-month ramble over the backroads of rural England. There are over three hundred photos, countless watercolor illustrations, wonderful quotes, recipes, a book list, a movie list, hand-drawn maps and much more. Travel with Susan as she makes her way around hedgerows and through wildflower meadows to visit the homes and gardens of her literary and artistic heroes, including Beatrix Potter and Jane Austen. It's a travel guide that will help you plan a trip of your own, lovely for the armchair traveler because Susan really does take you there, and perfect for all Downton Abbey anglophiles. When you are finished, go to Susan's website where there is an interactive Appendix to the book .... you can experience driving across the Dales with Susan's own videos and find links to everything she writes about, the cottages and gardens you will want to see yourself. A Fine Romance is book three of Susan Branch's autobiographical trilogy. First in order is The Fairy Tale Girl, followed by Martha's Vineyard - Isle of Dreams, and finally A Fine Romance - Falling in Love with the English Countryside. All three are hand-lettered, watercolored, filled with photos, recipes and quotes and, as Susan says, "as much magic as I could possibly stuff between the covers." Bon Voyage!

Fans of musicals will sing when a division president of MGM and industry insider presents her entertaining, illuminating insights on exactly what happens when stage meets screen.

Originally published by Linden Press in 1984.

"Feminist film theory will soon be a quarter of a century old. It has known the euphoria of the 1970s, experienced the contradictions of the 1980s, and glimpsed the reversals and political gains, which include women of color, of the 1990s." But, Patricia Mellencamp asks, what is the next move? In this challenging look at twenty years of feminist film theory, Mellencamp elaborates on its rich history, drawing on her personal academic life, and offering inventive readings of a remarkable variety of films: recent Hollywood releases like Forest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Thelma and Louise, Basic Instinct, and Silence of the Lambs, and features and independent films made by women, such as The Piano, Angie, Orlando, Bedevil, Daughters of the Dust, Privilege, and Forbidden Love. With a clever sense of irony and wit, Mellencamp poses a question from which her analysis takes off: What did Rapunzel, Cinderella and Snow White forget to tell Thelma and Louise? According to Mellencamp, they forgot what comes after "the end," after the wedding to the prince. So many women's stories, often by choice, stop after the prince whisks the princess away to live happily ever after. This book asks, what does "happily" mean for women? And what does "ever after" cost women? This creative call to shift film feminism's infamous "gaze" from sex and bodies to money and work ascertains where film feminism has been and what it needs to progress. Rather than recycling and regaining the same ground, Mellencamp urges film feminism to explore and claim new territory. Author note: Patricia Mellencamp is Professor of Film and Cultural Theory, Department of Art History, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. She has published several books, including High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Ageand Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film, Video, and Feminism.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Crooners, wailers, shouters, balladeers some of our greatest pop vocalists have poured their hearts and souls into the musical gems of the Great American Songbook. They sang in nightclubs and concert halls, on television and in films, and left us a legacy of recordings still in play today. Their interpretations entertained us, moved us to tears, and wove lyrics and music into the fabric of our lives, making us see ourselves in these quintessentially American songs. This folio features 100 of these classics by Louis Armstrong (Hello Dolly * What a Wonderful World), Tony Bennett (I Left My Heart in San Francisco), Rosemary Clooney (Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep), Nat "King" Cole (Route 66), Bing Crosby (True Love), Doris Day (Bewitched), Ella Fitzgerald (How High the Moon), Judy Garland (Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody), Dean Martin (Everybody Loves Somebody), Frank Sinatra (Young at Heart), Barbra Streisand (People), Mel Torme (Heart and Soul), and many, many more.