The Thrill Makers

The Thrill Makers
Author: Jacob Smith
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520952367

Well before Evel Knievel or Hollywood stuntmen, reality television or the X Games, North America had a long tradition of stunt performance, of men (and some women) who sought media attention and popular fame with public feats of daring. Many of these feats—jumping off bridges, climbing steeples and buildings, swimming incredible distances, or doing tricks with wild animals—had their basis in the manual trades or in older entertainments like the circus. In The Thrill Makers, Jacob Smith shows how turn-of-the-century bridge jumpers, human flies, lion tamers, and stunt pilots first drew crowds to their spectacular displays of death-defying action before becoming a crucial, yet often invisible, component of Hollywood film stardom. Smith explains how these working-class stunt performers helped shape definitions of American manhood, and pioneered a form of modern media celebrity that now occupies an increasingly prominent place in our contemporary popular culture.

The Thrill Makers

The Thrill Makers
Author: Jacob Smith
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520270886

“Starring human flies, daredevil aviators, bridge jumpers, and lion tamers, The Thrill Makers is a great read, as evocative as it is theoretically savvy, and convincingly argued. Culling telling details from a host of long-overlooked sources, Jacob Smith’s account of sensational, high-risk public performance from the Victorian age to the 1930s unearths and illuminates the interwoven histories of public spectacle, masculinity, the motion picture industry, new forms of celebrity, and the expanding American metropolis.”—Greg Waller, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University. “The Thrill Makers is an historical tour-de-force that illuminates the origins of risk-taking performance in American entertainment, and shows how its practitioners were gradually marginalized as invisible stunt doubles during the rise of the motion picture industry. Smith’s analysis of the lion tamer, the human fly, and the airplane wing-walker—as well as the many others who thrilled audiences before and during the advent of cinema—inspires us to reconsider the nature of media spectacle, masculinity, performance, celebrity, and labor at the turn of the last century. Impeccably researched, this book is a captivating read that re-frames the emergence of cinema in the context of its relationship to other forms of modern entertainment.”—Barbara Klinger, author of Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home.

Serials and Series

Serials and Series
Author: Buck Rainey
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2015-06-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476604487

While many fans remember The Lone Ranger, Ace Drummond and others, fewer focus on the facts that serials had their roots in silent film and that many foreign studios also produced serials, though few made it to the United States. The 471 serials and 100 series (continuing productions without the cliffhanger endings) from the United States and 136 serials and 37 series from other countries are included in this comprehensive reference work. Each entry includes title, country of origin, year, studio, number of episodes, running time or number of reels, episode titles, cast, production credits, and a plot synopsis.

Bucketfoot Al

Bucketfoot Al
Author: Clifton Blue Parker
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786486406

Al Simmons, at top form in the Roaring Twenties, sparked one of baseball's greatest dynasties, the Philadelphia Athletics, to multiple championships, before becoming just another ballplayer. While his achievements demonstrated greatness, he was not an easy man to like--for those competing against him or with him--and he seemed to play to the level of team expectation. Contemporary accounts and other recollections give us a sense of Al Simmons the person and the ballplayer, his connections to people, his teams and his ability to capture the fans' imagination in his halcyon days.

Photoplay

Photoplay
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1042
Release: 1914
Genre: Motion pictures
ISBN:

Thrill Me

Thrill Me
Author: Stephen Dolginoff
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2006
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780822221029

THE STORY: Relationships can be murder. THRILL ME: THE LEOPOLD & LOEB STORY is a two-character musical drama that recounts the chilling true story of the legendary duo who committed one of the most infamous and heinous crimes of the twentieth centu

St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 778
Release: 1910
Genre: Children's periodicals
ISBN:

Your Company Sucks

Your Company Sucks
Author: Mark Stevens
Publisher: BenBella Books
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2011-08-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1935618547

It's every businessperson's nightmare: his or her company is failing, dysfunctional, stuck in neutral, and is disappointing overall, from the finances to the customer feedback. Put bluntly—but candidly—the company sucks. That's the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. Every business can rebound from its lows, regain its momentum, thrill its customers, and be the source of pride and profits its owners and shareholders seek. This U-turn must begin with you, the owner or senior manager, declaring war on yourself. By facing the fact that the malaise is the business suffers from ultimately is your responsibility and your doing, and even more important, will not be rectified unless you take the lead. Face the hard truth. Take the difficult actions. Demonstrate determination, creativity and resolve. Your Company Sucks pulls back the curtain on business performance. To reveal the four real-world reasons businesses decline, to identify them as red flags, and to provide a powerful and innovative methodology to transition from failure to flourish. Mark Stevens reveals that there are not thousands of reasons businesses fail. The reasons fall under four major categories: 1. rudderless leadership 2. the lust-to-lax syndrome 3. incompetence 4. conventional thinking Identifying and addressing the reasons for your company's failure is the focus of the war. This insightful book shows that the key to long-term business success is for the leader to declare war on him/herself so that the company never rests on its laurels. It also demonstrates how customer satisfaction is a curse in disguise. You don't want to satisfy your customers—you want to thrill them.

The Bookman

The Bookman
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 738
Release: 1903
Genre: Book collecting
ISBN:

Maker's Curse

Maker's Curse
Author: Trudi Canavan
Publisher: Orbit
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316421170

Together, Rielle and Tyen face a dazzling world of political intrigue, treacherous villains, and unforgettable magic in this powerful and thrilling final novel of the Millennium's Rule series. Rielle is now the Maker, restorer of worlds. She has lost count of the number of worlds she has been sent to save. Tyen has cast off his old identity. No longer a spy, he now attempts to teach new sorcerers and find ways to counteract the war-machines that are spreading throughout the worlds. But when an old enemy brings news of something worse than magically dead worlds and dangerous sorcerers—a threat unlike anything the worlds have faced before—Rielle and Tyen must reunite if they are to have any chance of saving humanity. Millennium's Rule series: Thief's Magic Angel of Storms Successor's Promise Maker's Curse More books by Trudi Canavan: The Magician's Apprentice Traitor Spy trilogy: The Ambassador's Mission The Rogue The Traitor Queen