Breaking onto the scene in 1982 with Diner, which was hailed by one critic as a masterpiece of observation, Academy Award-winner Barry Levinson has since become recognized as one of the preeminent writer/directors of our time. Diner was set in Levinson's native Baltimore, during the late 1950s of his youth, and is, as Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker, "that rare autobiographical movie made by someone who knows how to get the texture right."...With Tin Men Levinson returned to richly detailed middle class milieu of Baltimore and introduced another group of characters -- the "tin men" who make their living hard-selling aluminum siding to unsuspecting homeowners...In Avalon Levinson continues his cycle of Baltimore stories.

In Rose Eichenbaum's latest book on the confluence of art making and human expression, she sits down with thirty-five modern day storytellers—the directors of theater, film, and television. Eichenbaum's subjects speak with revealing clarity about the entertainment industry, the role and life of the director, and how theatrical and cinematic storytelling impacts our culture and our lives. The Director Within includes interviews with Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show), Julie Taymor (The Lion King), Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles), Tim Van Patten (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire), Hal Prince (The Phantom of the Opera), Barry Levinson (Rain Man), and many others. The interviews are skillfully crafted, sensitively executed, and brimming with honesty and insight. The accompanying portraits demonstrate Eichenbaum's mastery of photography and convey the truth, depth, and intimacy of their subjects. The Director Within is an inspirational, informative, and entertaining resource for anyone interested in creativity, art making, and artistic collaboration. The book includes a listing of works from each of the directors. Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

* New insights into modern consumer culture by a master critic

God wants your whole heart. So let him have it. Does your relationship with God feel stale and predictable? Do you struggle to find the time and energy for prayer? Then perhaps you’re being too polite with God. If your prayers lack passion and honesty, then God may be as bored as you are. Guarded and “religiously correct” prayers might sound nice, but to God they sound half-hearted. He wants you to pray with freedom, boldness, and raw honesty. The prayers we find in the Psalms run the gamut from awed worship to stunned silence to doubt, desperation, and rage. David and others like him had no time for safe, sanitized prayers. They wrestled with God when they prayed–with no holds barred. Starting today, you can enjoy an energizing intimacy with God. No Holds Barred will help you plunge deeper into different types of prayer–asking, thanking, praising, and confessing. It also will lead you into new forms of praying–prayers of desperation and doubt, prayers that question God’s apparent slowness, prayers that demand answers. These are the prayers that hold your attention–and that capture God’s attention. Don’t wait any longer to begin a rich new conversation with God.

Movie-Made Jews focuses on American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition includes fiction and documentary films that make Jews through antisemitism, Holocaust indirection, and discontent with assimilation, and through unapologetic assertion of Jewishness, queerness, and alliances across race and religion. While it's a truism that Jews make movies, this book demonstrates how movies make Jews.

“A superb, thought-provoking analysis tracing the metamorphosis of the image of the Jew as portrayed through 80 years of American cinema.” —Library Journal Like the haggadah, the traditional story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt read at the Passover seder, cinema offers a valuable text from which to gain an understanding of the social, political, and cultural realities of Jews in America. In an industry strongly influenced by Jewish filmmakers, the complex, evolving nature of the American Jewish condition has had considerable impact on American cinema and, in particular, on how Jews are reflected on the screen. This groundbreaking study analyzes select mainstream films from the beginning of the sound era to today to provide an understanding of the American Jewish experience over the last century, from the time when Hollywood’s movie moguls, most of whom were Jewish, shied away from asserting a Jewish image on the screen, to a period when Jewish moviemakers became more comfortable with the concept of a Jewish hero and with an overpowered, yet heroic, Israel, and the way that the Holocaust assumed center stage as the single event with the greatest effect on American Jewish identity. Recently, as American Jewish screenwriters, directors, and producers have become increasingly comfortable with their heritage, we are seeing an unprecedented number of movies that spotlight Jewish protagonists, experiences, and challenges. This is “a wonderful book for any lover of American films” (Hadassah Magazine).