THE STORY: For a battle hardened combat soldier the peacetime Army can hold terrors that make him wish he were back in action again. Take the case of First Lieutenant Stanley Poole, a career Sergeant who earned a battlefield commission, and is now

Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater. Second Edition covers theatrical practice and practitioners as well as the dramatic literature of the United States of America from 1930 to the present. The 90 years covered by this volume features the triumph of Broadway as the center of American drama from 1930 to the early 1960s through a Golden Age exemplified by the plays of Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Lorraine Hansberry, and Edward Albee, among others. The impact of the previous modernist era contributed greatly to this period of prodigious creativity on American stages. This volume will continue through an exploration of the decline of Broadway as the center of U.S. theater in the 1960s and the evolution of regional theaters, as well as fringe and university theaters that spawned a second Golden Age at the millennium that produced another – and significantly more diverse – generation of significant dramatists including such figures as Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Maria Irené Fornes, Beth Henley, Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, and numerous others. The impact of the Great Depression and World War II profoundly influenced the development of the American stage, as did the conformist 1950s and the revolutionary 1960s on in to the complex times in which we currently live. Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary American Theater, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1.000 cross-referenced entries on plays, playwrights, directors, designers, actors, critics, producers, theaters, and terminology. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about American theater.

Praise from Jesse Green, New York Times Chief Theater Critic, Arts, in the 2023 Holiday Gift Guide: “From A (the director George Abbott) to Y ('You Could Drive a Person Crazy'), The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, by Rick Pender, offers an astonishingly comprehensive look, in more than 130 entries, at the late master’s colleagues, songs, shows and methods." The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive reference devoted to musical theater’s most prolific and admired composer and lyricist. Entries cover Sondheim’s numerous collaborators, from composers and directors to designers and orchestras; key songs, such as his Academy Award winner “Sooner or Later” (Dick Tracy); and major works, including Assassins, Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, and West Side Story. The encyclopedia also profiles the actors who originated roles and sang Sondheim’s songs for the first time, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Mandy Patinkin, and Bernadette Peters. Featuring a detailed biographical entry for Sondheim, a chronology of his career, a listing of his many awards, and discussions of his opinions on movies, opera, and more, this wide-ranging resource will attract musical theater enthusiasts again and again.