Winner of the ASCAP Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Outstanding Musical Biography The musical landscape of New York City and the United States of America would look quite different had it not been for William Schuman. Orpheus in Manhattan, a fully objective and comprehensive biography of Schuman, portrays a man who had a profound influence upon the artistic and political institutions of his day and beyond. Steve Swayne draws heavily upon Schuman's letters, writings, and manuscripts as well as unprecedented access to archival recordings and previously unknown correspondence. The winner of the first Pulitzer Prize in Music, Schuman composed music that is rhythmically febrile, harmonically pungent, melodically long-breathed, and timbrally brilliant, and Swayne offers an astute analysis of his work, including many unpublished music scores. Swayne also describes Schuman's role as president of the Juilliard School of Music and of Lincoln Center, tracing how he both expanded the boundaries of music education and championed the performing arts. Filled with new discoveries and revisions of the received historical narrative, Orpheus in Manhattan confirms Schuman as a major figure in America's musical life.

"Working On A Song is one of the best books about lyric writing for the theater I've read."—Lin-Manuel Miranda Anaïs Mitchell named to TIME's List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World of 2020 An illuminating book of lyrics and stories from Hadestown—the winner of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical—from its author, songwriter Anaïs Mitchell with a foreword by Steve Earle On Broadway, this fresh take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has become a modern classic. Heralded as “The best new musical of the season,” by The Wall Street Journal, and “Sumptuous. Gorgeous. As good as it gets,” by The New York Times, the show was a breakout hit, with its poignant social commentary, and spellbinding music and lyrics. In this book, Anaïs Mitchell takes readers inside her more than decade’s-long process of building the musical from the ground up—detailing her inspiration, breaking down the lyrics, and opening up the process of creation that gave birth to Hadestown. Fans and newcomers alike will love this deeply thoughtful, revealing look at how the songs from “the underground” evolved, and became the songs we sing again and again.

Classical composers seeking to create an American sound enjoyed unprecedented success during the 1930s and 1940s. Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Howard Hanson and others brought national and international attention to American composers for the first time in history. In the years after World War II, however, something changed. The prestige of musical Americanism waned rapidly as anti-Communists made accusations against leading Americanist composers. Meanwhile a method of harmonic organization that some considered more Cold War-appropriate--serialism--began to rise in status. For many composers and historians, the Cold War had effectively "killed off" musical Americanism. In The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War, Emily Abrams Ansari offers a fuller, more nuanced picture of the effect of the Cold War on Americanist composers. The ideological conflict brought both challenges and opportunities. Some Americanist composers struggled greatly in this new artistic and political environment. Those with leftist politics sensed a growing gap between the United States that their music imagined and the aggressive global superpower that their nation seemed to be becoming. But these same composers would find unique opportunities to ensure the survival of musical Americanism thanks to the federal government, which wanted to use American music as a Cold War propaganda tool. By serving as advisors to cultural diplomacy programs and touring as artistic ambassadors, the Americanists could bring their now government-backed music to new global audiences. Some with more right-wing politics, meanwhile, would actually flourish in the new ideological environment, by aligning their music with Cold War conceptions of American identity. The Americanists' efforts to safeguard the reputation of their style would have significant consequences. Ultimately, Ansari shows, they effected a rebranding of musical Americanism, with consequences that remain with us today.

In their first encounter, demigod Percy Jackson and magician Carter Kane had to battle a giant crocodile on Long Island. A month later, Annabeth Chase ran into Carter's sister, Sadie, on the A train to Rockaway, where the pair fought a god named Serapis. Now trouble is brewing again, this time on Governor's Island. An ancient Egyptian magician named Setne has come back from the dead and is experimenting with Egyptian and Greek magic, trying to become a god himself. He's so powerful and tricky that all four—Percy, Annabeth, Carter, and Sadie—have to team up against him. But their usual weapons and spells aren't going to cut it this time. Will the heroes be taken down by a wannabe god who looks like Elvis, or will they rise to the challenge? Told from Percy's point of view, this third demigod-magician crossover story has all of the spunk and action that Rick Riordan fans crave.

Vincent Persichetti: Grazioso, Grit, and Gold is the first critical biography of the esteemed American composer, bringing together scholarly work and short contributed essays of prominent performers. Andrea Olmstead weaves a captivating narrative of the composer from his early life to his musical activities at Juilliard and death in 1987.

In this incisive study, Sarah Ehlers returns to the Depression-era United States in order to unsettle longstanding ideas about poetry and emerging approaches to poetics. By bringing to light a range of archival materials and theories about poetry that emerged on the 1930s left, Ehlers reimagines the historical formation of modern poetics. Offering new and challenging readings of prominent figures such as Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, and Jacques Roumain, and uncovering the contributions of lesser-known writers such as Genevieve Taggard and Martha Millet, Ehlers illuminates an aesthetically and geographically diverse matrix of schools and movements. Resisting the dismissal of thirties left writing as mere propaganda, the book reveals how communist-affiliated poets experimented with poetic modes—such as lyric and documentary—and genres, including songs, ballads, and nursery rhymes, in ways that challenged existing frameworks for understanding the relationships among poetic form, political commitment, and historical transformation. As Ehlers shows, Depression left movements and their international connections are crucial for understanding both the history of modern poetry and the role of poetic thought in conceptualizing historical change.

This volume comprises papers prepared for the 8th World Conference on Continuing Professional Development (Bologna, Italy, 18-20 August 2009). Within the broad theme of creating a positive work environment for a multi-generational workforce in library and information organizations, the conference addresses managing between and across generations, mentoring and coaching, attracting people to the profession and developing a new generation of leaders, re-skilling and transferability of skills, succession planning and passing on knowledge.