A truly international, authoritative A–Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history. This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to propaganda, its changing nature, its practitioners, and its impact on the past five centuries of world history. Written by leading experts, it covers the masters of the art from Joseph Goebbels to Mohandas Gandhi and examines enormously influential works of persuasion such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, techniques such as films and posters, and key concepts like black propaganda and brainwashing. Case studies reveal the role of mass persuasion during the Reformation, and wars throughout history. Regional studies cover propaganda superpowers, such as Russia, China, and the United States, as well as little-known propaganda campaigns in Southeast Asia, Ireland, and Scandinavia. The book traces the evolution of propaganda from the era of printed handbills to computer fakery, and profiles such brilliant practitioners of the art as Third Reich film director Leni Riefenstahl and 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose works helped to bring the notorious Boss Tweed to justice.

This is the first book-length study of the rich operatic repertory written and performed in France during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Steven Huebner gives an accessible and colorful account of such operatic favorites as Manon and Werther by Massenet, Louise by Charpentier, and lesser-known gems such as Chabrier's Le Roi malgré lui and Chausson's Le Roi Arthus.

Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian subculture of Montmartre, with its artists' cabarets and cafés-concerts. Yet apologists have all too often downplayed this background as potentially harmful to the reputation of a composer whom they regarded as the progenitor of modern French music. Whiting argues, on the contrary, that Satie's two decades in and around Montmartre decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies. He gives the fullest account to date of Satie's professional activities as a popular musician, and of how he transferred the parodic techniques and musical idioms of cabaret entertainment to works for concert hall. From the esoteric Gymnopédies to the bizarre suites of the 1910s and avant-garde ballets of the 1920s (not to mention music journalism and playwriting), Satie's output may be daunting in its sheer diversity and heterodoxy; but his radical transvaluation of received artistic values makes far better sense once placed in the fascinating context of bohemian Montmartre.

An examination of the female opera singer during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Opera Acts explores a wealth of new historical material about singers in the late nineteenth century and challenges the idea that this was a period of decline for the opera singer. In detailed case studies of four figures - the late Verdi baritone Victor Maurel; Bizet's first Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié; Massenet's muse of the 1880s and 1890s, Sibyl Sanderson; and the early Wagner star Jean de Reszke - Karen Henson argues that singers in the late nineteenth century continued to be important, but in ways that were not conventionally 'vocal'. Instead they enjoyed a freedom and creativity based on their ability to express text, act and communicate physically, and exploit the era's media. By these and other means, singers played a crucial role in the creation of opera up to the end of the nineteenth century.