Harriet Houdini is going for gold in the London Animalympics! Hearing that Superpetsis going to be part of an international Olympics for animals, Harriet fancies her chances at bringing home some medals. She goes into training with a world famous athlete and brings a whole new meaning to the hop-skip-and-jump of the triple jump. But not everyone wants to see Harriet win, least of all The Great Maldini, and she has to take some unconventional transport to make to the Animalympics final.

In studies of copular clauses, the relation between specificational and predicative clauses has been a contentious issue. While most studies agree on the analysis of predicative clauses, specificational clauses have sparked much debate. A key concern is how specificational clauses with indefinite ‘variable’ NP (e.g. "A popular holiday go-to is Rome") compare to, and contrast with, other copular clauses, especially specificational clauses with definite ‘variable’ NP (e.g. "The main can’t-miss in Italy is Rome") and predicative clauses with indefinite predicate nominative (e.g. "Rome is a great city"). This book addresses this concern by offering a functional-structural analysis of these three clause types in terms of their common characteristics and distinguishing features. The analysis of the clauses’ structure and meaning is substantiated by evidence from corpus research which probes into various aspects of their actual usage (e.g. information structure and prosody, discourse-embedding). In doing so, the book offers an empirical basis for testing existing assumptions about predicative and specificational clauses, while also providing new insights into the interaction between the grammar and discourse usage of copular clauses.

'For a dead man, Elvis Presley is awfully noisy. His body may have failed him in 1977, but today his spirit, his image, and his myths do more than live on: they flourish, they thrive, they multiply.' Why is Elvis Presley so ubiquitous a presence in US culture? Why does he continue to enjoy a cultural prominence that would be the envy of the most heavily publicized living celebrities? In Elvis after Elvis Gil Rodman traces the myriad manifestations of The King in popular and not-so-popular culture. He asks why Elvis continues to defy our expectations of how dead stars are supposed to behave: Elvis not only refuses to go away, he keeps showing up in places where he seemingly doesn't belong. Rodman draws upon an extensive and eclectic body of Elvis 'sightings', from Elvis's appearances at the heart of the 1992 Presidential campaign to the debate over his worthiness as a subject for a postage stamp, and from Elvis's central role in furious debates about racism and the appropriation of African-American music to the world of Elvis impersonators and the importance of Graceland as a place of pilgrimage for Elvis fans and followers. Rodman shows how Elvis has become inseparable from many of the defining myths of US culture, enmeshed with the American dream and the very idea of the 'United States', caught up in debates about race, gender and sexuality and in the wars over what constitutes a national culture.

Conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy was the first celebrity president, in no small part because of his innate television savvy. But, as Kathryn Cramer Brownell shows, Kennedy capitalized on a tradition and style rooted in California politics and the Hollywood studio system. Since the 1920s, politicians and professional showmen have developed relationships and built organizations, institutionalizing Hollywood styles, structures, and personalities in the American political process. Brownell explores how similarities developed between the operation of a studio, planning a successful electoral campaign, and ultimately running an administration. Using their business and public relations know-how, figures such as Louis B. Mayer, Bette Davis, Jack Warner, Harry Belafonte, Ronald Reagan, and members of the Rat Pack made Hollywood connections an asset in a political world being quickly transformed by the media. Brownell takes readers behind the camera to explore the negotiations and relationships that developed between key Hollywood insiders and presidential candidates from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, analyzing how entertainment replaced party spectacle as a strategy to raise money, win votes, and secure success for all those involved. She demonstrates how Hollywood contributed to the rise of mass-mediated politics, making the twentieth century not just the age of the political consultant but also the age of showbiz politics.

"Entertainers and trainers have a lot in common. Both require an audience. Both require a polished, professional delivery. And both must attract -- and keep -- attention. Or else the show is over. Unlike the audience at a show, training participants are often disinterested and easily distracted. In order to keep them tuned in and help them retain information, trainers are constantly in search of new ways to engage learners. Grounded in the latest adult learning and training theories, "Show Biz Training" provides creative techniques that use comedy, props, magic, theater, and music, giving readers all the tools they need to perform the many activities found inside. The book uses specific examples and provides step-by-step instructions, resource lists, and worksheets to help trainers support and further learning by engaging emotion, building rapport, creating the proper atmosphere, and crafting lessons out of a host of entertainment-inspired ideas. Packed with fun, original concepts for serious educators, "Show Biz Training"is a highly informative way to set the stage for exciting, effective learning."

In twenty-four chapters David Kaplan offers ideas, opinions, theories, and facts for someone who wants to be a theater artist today in hopes of creating their own vision of theater-making, one informed by, and in the context of, theater history. This book explores what theater artists have done before and what they, inspired by history, might do next. A non-lineal theater history, Shakespeare Shamans, and Show Biz explores theater as a shaman’s vision, as a storyteller’s heritage, as religious propaganda, as a mirror of life, as a critique of society, as a prompt for hard laughter, as fantasy, and as national epic, with plays as different (and the same) as the writings of August Wilson, Gertrude Stein, Shakespeare, and people who never made it into history. Each chapter explores a particular theme: “The Middle Ages as a State of Mind,” “Commedia dell’arte and Molière,” “Shakespeare—To Begin,” “Euripides—Forever Modern,” “Aeschylus—Writing in an Age of Certainty,” “Sophocles and Aristotle—Defining Tragedy,” “Greek Comedy,” “Roman Theater,” “Asian Classics and Rules” (Bunrakuken, Chikamatsu, Zeami), China—The Pear Garden and the Red Pear Garden,” “Neoclassic Theater and Why There is Such a Thing,” “Shakespeare’s Classic,” “Bad Boys Breaking the Rules” (Brecht, Ibsen, and Jarry), “Inside Outside” (Ibsen, Strindberg, Turgenev, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Antoine), “Beyond Illusion” (Appia, Craig, Poel), “Melodrama and Popular Theater in America” (Aiken, Brice, Cohan, Stone, Tyler, Bert Williams), “American Classic: Eugene O’Neill and Martha Graham,” “Expressionism to Epic” (Brecht, Meyerhold, O’Neill, Piscator, Treadwell), “American Agitprop: Overt and Disguised” (Adler, Clurman, Flanagan, Kazan, Le Gallienne, Miller, Odets, Robeson, Strasberg, Wilder), “Poetry of the Theater” (Artaud, Breton, Cocteau, Ionesco, Kharms, Stein), “Personal Mythology” (Genet, Lorca, Mishima, Strindberg), “Two Masters: Samuel Becket and Tennessee Williams,” “Theater of Identity” (Baraka, Ensler, Kramer, Wilson), and “Missing from History” (Bonner, Fornés, Kennedy, Maeterlinck).