The Broadway tomboys, rebel nuns, and funny girls, who upset the 1950s gender norms: Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Julie Andrews, and Barbra Streisand

A Labour Whip once revealed that in their office they sang songs about certain backbenchers. In the case of the Member for Maryhill, their choice was 'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? 'A frank account of fourteen years in Westminister from the rebellious Maria Fyfe - the only female Labour MP in Scotland when she was first elected. Fyfe recounts some of the most significant moments of her political career, from the frustrating and infuriating, to the rewarding and worthwhile. A significant aim of writing this book was to set the record straight on that period in our UK Parliament. Another aim was to encourage interest in a political life when widespread cynicism discourages good people from thinking about it. MARIA FYFE Covering some of the most turbulent years of British and Scottish political history, A Problem Like Maria takes the female's perspective of life as an MP in the male-dominated Westminister. This book reaches the parts of politics some people hope you never reach. The intimidating Maria Fyfe sounds like strong Scottish domestic drama. Edward Pearce, LONDON EVENING STANDARD The terrifying Maria Fyfe stamped in ... her of the sharpened claws. Matthew Parris, THE TIMES An incorrigible Bevanite. THE OBSERVER

Anecdotes and illustrations accompany music Maria von Trapp and her siblings sang during their childhood.

Recounts the history of the Von Trapp family, traces the evolution of the popular musical from stage to screen, and describes the contributions of its composers, writers, and performers.

Musical representations of wildness in an era of revolution Recipient of the 2020 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society What are the uses of musical exoticism? In Wild Music, Maria Sonevytsky tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of "wildness" as they manifested in popular music during a volatile decade of Ukrainian political history bracketed by two revolutions. From the Eurovision Song Contest to reality TV, from Indigenous radio to the revolution stage, Sonevytsky assesses how these practices exhibit and re-imagine Ukrainian tradition and culture. As the rise of global populism forces us to confront the category of state sovereignty anew, Sonevytsky proposes innovative paradigms for thinking through the creative practices that constitute sovereignty, citizenship, and nationalism.

Anthony Lane on Con Air— “Advance word on Con Air said that it was all about an airplane with an unusually dangerous and potentially lethal load. Big deal. You should try the lunches they serve out of Newark. Compared with the chicken napalm I ate on my last flight, the men in Con Air are about as dangerous as balloons.” Anthony Lane on The Bridges of Madison County— “I got my copy at the airport, behind a guy who was buying Playboy’s Book of Lingerie, and I think he had the better deal. He certainly looked happy with his purchase, whereas I had to ask for a paper bag.” Anthony Lane on Martha Stewart— “Super-skilled, free of fear, the last word in human efficiency, Martha Stewart is the woman who convinced a million Americans that they have the time, the means, the right, and—damn it—the duty to pipe a little squirt of soft cheese into the middle of a snow pea, and to continue piping until there are ‘fifty to sixty’ stuffed peas raring to go.” For ten years, Anthony Lane has delighted New Yorker readers with his film reviews, book reviews, and profiles that range from Buster Keaton to Vladimir Nabokov to Ernest Shackleton. Nobody’s Perfect is an unforgettable collection of Lane’s trademark wit, satire, and insight that will satisfy both the long addicted and the not so familiar.

Drastic changes in lay religiosity during the High Middle Ages spurred anxiety about women forsaking their secular roles as wives and mothers for religious ones as nuns and beguines. This anxiety and the subsequent need to model an ideal of feminine behavior for the laity is particularly expressed in the German versions of Latin and French narratives. Using thirteenth-century penitentials, monastic exempla, and sermons, Karina Marie Ash clarifies how secular wifehood was recast as a quasi-religious role and, in German epics and romances from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, how female characters are adapted to promote the salvific nature of worldly love in ways that echo the pastoral reevaluation of women at that time. Then she argues that mid and late thirteenth-century German literature not only reflects this impulse to idealize women's roles in lay society but also to promote an alternative model of femininity that deploys ways of privileging secular roles for women over religious ones. These continuously evolving readaptations of female protagonists across cultures and across centuries reflect fictive solutions for real historical concerns about women that not only complement contemporary pastoral and legal reforms but are also unique to medieval German literature.