This powerful book will show you how to write a great screenplay, teleplay, or novel by helping you create one-of-a-kind heroes and villains that audiences will never forget. Includes analysis of such films as The Dark Knight, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Casablanca, and The Silence of the Lambs as well as interviews with the screenwriters of Die Hard, Gladiator, Spider-Man, and Fatal Attraction. Foreword by Steven de Souza (Die Hard, 48 Hrs., and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life)

"This imaginative, wordless book of color photographs is a visual treat, offering witty and subtle sets of images for enriching the eyes of children and adults....[A] satisfying, intriguing book."--School Library Journal. Shadows and reflections are all around us -- under our feet, over our heads, directly in front of us. But only Tana Hoban can make us look at -- and see -- what is right before our eyes. She makes us look with our minds and hearts and imaginations -- and our surroundings are forever changed.

What happens when light is blocked? How can we redirect light? Readers will discover the answers to these questions and more in this fact-filled title. Readers will explore the properties of transparent, translucent, opaque, and reflective materials, and learn how to redirect light beams and create shadows. Teacher's guide available.

As The New Yorker's genius cartoonist, Saul Steinberg was universally admired for his playful and profound images of the life and times of his adopted homeland, the USA. In Reflections and Shadows, the artist evokes an equally enchanting portrait of his own life, conjuring images from his childhood in poverty-stricken Romania, his artistic education in Milan and his first taste of freedom and opportunity, in Washington and New York. Written in collaboration with his close friend, the author Aldo Buzzi, Reflections and Shadows offers a wonderful insight into the life and work of one of the twentieth century's great talents.

For thousands of years, spiritual and religious practitioners in India, Tibet, and elsewhere have made special use of prayer bead garlands called "mala" in chanting the divine Name and other words of power. Even today, these sacred objects are believed to aid the seeker in establishing a rhythmic centering of consciousness, reconnecting him or her with the energies believed to sustain the natural world. In the spirit of this same meditative tradition, 108 original poetic insights form the body of this powerful and nuanced exploration of individual and cosmic identity, acceptance, and psychological freedom. With a thematic structure corresponding to the seven major "chakras" or energy centers of the human body, "A Light from the Shadows" guides the reader on a journey of personal revelation: from an introduction to personal mythology and its power to shape our life experience; to the role of suffering and love in the creation of identity; to the subjective nature of time, separateness, and linear causality. This unique and engaging collection of quotable wisdom is the perfect companion gift, not just for the spiritual seeker or adept, but for anyone interested in taking his or her first step towards a larger understanding of the universe and our place in it. For more information and accompanying images, readers are encouraged to visit the author's virtual gallery at www.theartofemergence.com

Takes a look at shadows and reflections, and examines how light is reflected, how shadows are made, and the difference between transparent and opaque objects.

"David Bell wrote the essays in this collection over the course of more than fifteen years, each in response to a new book or political event and published in the New Republic, New York Review of Books, or London Review of Books. Their common thread is France and French history, of which Bell is one of the world's acknowledged experts. Shadows of Revolution is divided into seven sections: The Longue Duree; From the Old Regime to the Revolution; The Revolution; Napoleon Bonaparte; The Nineteenth Century; Vichy; and Parallels: Past and Present. Bell argues that so much of French (and European) history revolves around and returns to the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799. So much happened in so short a time that Chateaubriand later claimed that many centuries had crammed themselves into a single quarter-century. Bell's other main focus is World War Two and the French Vichy regime. He has followed the long and painful process by which the French have come to terms with their collaboration with Nazi Germany, including the creation of monuments to the Holocaust, exhibitions devoted to Vichy and the fate of the French Jews, and the speech that President Jacques Chirac gave in 1995, finally recognizing French responsibility for the deportation of Jews to the death camps. In its way, each of the essays in this collection--Bell's first book of the kind--reflects upon the ways that political and cultural patterns first set in the age of the Revolution continue to resonate, not just in France, but throughout the world"--