A movie buff periodically receives tips from the spirit of Humphrey Bogart on how to make it with women.

The trade paperback edition of Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir includes a new Afterword about the bonds between mother and daughter. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • People • Vogue ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR —Financial Times • Chicago Sun-Times The Independent • Bookreporter The Sunday Business Post Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK. So begins Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy, struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years. More than the autobiography of a legendary actress, Then Again is a book about a very American family with very American dreams. Diane will remind you of yourself, and her bonds with her family will remind you of your own relationships with those you love the most. Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.

A film by film guide through the career of Woody Allen, from his masterpieces Annie Hall and Manhattan, to lost gems like Shadows and Fog. The book also goes into Woody's cameos and performances in other people's movies, such as Antz and Fading Gigolo. There are also new interviews with people who have worked with him over the years, including Jerry Lacy (Play It Again Sam), and Gloria Norris, who was Woody's personal assistant on Stardust Memories, Zelig and A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy.

The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time—Now a New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller. In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

In this extended essay, Vittorio H sle develops a theory of the comical and applies it to interpret both the recurrent personae played by Woody Allen the actor and the philosophical issues addressed by Woody Allen the director in his films. Taking Henri Bergson's analysis of laughter as a starting point, H sle integrates aspects of other theories of laughter to construct his own more finely-articulated and expanded model. With this theory in hand, H sle discusses the incongruity in the characters played by Woody Allen and describes how these personae are realized in his work. H sle focuses on the philosophical issues in Allen's major films by exploring the identity problem in Play It Again, Sam and Zelig, the shortcomings of the positivist concept of reality in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, the relation between reality and art in The Purple Rose of Cairo, the objective validity of morality in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the power of evil in Shadows and Fog, and the relation between art and morality in Bullets over Broadway. He cites Allen's virtuosic reinterpretation of older forms of expression and his integration of the fantastic into the comic universe--elements like the giant breasts, anxious sperm, extraterrestrials, ghosts, and magicians that populate his movies--as formal moves akin to those of Aristophanes. Both an overview of Allen's work and a philosophical analysis of laughter, H sle's study demonstrates why Allen's films have more to offer us--morally, philosophically, and artistically--than just a few laughs. "In Woody Allen, Vittorio H sle goes a long way toward explaining everything you wanted to know about Allen but were afraid to ask. Just why exactly is he funny, and why does his humor have a strong appeal for academics? In his comprehensive analysis of Allen's work, H sle outlines a workable theory of humor, illustrates his conclusions by referring to the films and prose, and points out several philosophic motifs underlying Allen's deceptively complex comedies. H sle's work elevates the enjoyment of Allen's films from guilty pleasure to satisfying intellectual engagement with an intriguing contemporary thinker and artist." --Richard A. Blake, S.J., Boston College "Vittorio H sle presents a compelling overview of Allen's work in which he discusses different theories of laughter and argues for the priority of the incongruity theory as the only one able to answer the normative question, what distinguises good from bad laughter? On this theoretical basis he goes on to delve into both the humor and the philosophical profundity of Allen's films." --Sander Lee, Keene State College