Practiced internationally between 1960 and 2000, opera piracy (the illegal practice of recording live operatic performances in the opera house) was rampant. How fortunate! Through this we are provided documentation of famous voices as they sounded in real life, not as they were altered in the sound chambers of recording companies.

This book guides opera lovers as to what to listen for in a given singer's voice and performances. The author discusses the performer's individual singing characteristics (and, sometimes, their shortcomings) in specific roles and, sometimes, specific performances of those roles. Bootlegged recordings can even provide a comparison between a star's performance of a given role on Tuesday to one sung that Thursday while comparing both of those to commercial recordings of that role.

Concentrating on divas, there are lengthy individual technical discussions of the singing abilities and recording histories of Magda Olivera, Leyla Gencer, Leonie Rysanek, Faith Esham, Beverly Hoch, Ashley Putnam, Gianna Rolandi, Diana Soviero, Olivia Stapp, Ruth Welting, Sheryl Woods, and many others.

Limansky's own experience is woven into a history of pirating. Who were the pirates? How did they get away with it? (They didn't always.) How and where did they do their recording? The author, a pirate himself, tells us. He examines the moral dilemma of being a pirate while also performing as a professional musician.

What did the stars think of pirating? Many promoted the practice. Why? Publicity was part of it. Limansky clarifies the rest of it.

As a bonus, the book concludes with a rare, previously unpublished interview that the author conducted with the great American soprano, Roberta Peters in 1985. It includes an analysis of her recorded legacy; both commercial and pirated.

The Author:

Nicholas Limansky studied voice at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and has a performance degree from the University of West Virginia. He has sung with professional choral groups in New York City that include The Bach Aria Group, Musica Sacra, New York Choral Artists (New York Philharmonic), Opera Orchestra of New York, The Netherlands Ballet, and Alvin Ailey (Revelations and Rainbow Round My Shoulder).

He has written performance reviews for the Italian publication, Rassegna Melodrammatica and reviewed new vocal releases of historical singers for Opera News, The Record Collector, Classical Singer, and Opera Quarterly. He lectures at the New York Vocal Record Collectors Society and has for more than ten years been a member of its board of directors.

Limansky has written a career overview and critical analysis of the 1950s Peruvian singer, Yma Sumac, Yma Sumac: The Art Behind the Legend, published by YBK Publishers. It is now considered to be the definitive work on this elusive artist.

Limansky also wrote Early 20th Century Opera Singers: Their Voices and Recordings from 1900-1949 published by YBK Publishers.

This work, Pirates of the High Cs: Opera Bootlegging in the 20th Century is the third of Limansky's YBK books.

Bob Holman, 21 years old in 1971, and ready to take on life, takes on life by writing and submitting his (this) Life Poem for the "United States Award." "Desperate now," he says then, "I've started to write down everything that comes into my head." And, in doing that it is set down here as well as having been submitted for recognition in 1971. Holman was (and continues to be) desperate not to let anything escape him.

In the almost fifty years that intervenes between its writing and its publication, Bob Holman's life has been in pursuit of being the poet. Success may change a man, but success does not change the poet. The poet will always seek that nothing escape him. Holman succeeds and shows you here the underpinnings of that success.

Another Holman work, this title speaks for itself (or not)!

You will have to read the book to understand why the authors chose to end Reality in the Shadows or What the Heck's the Higgs with the following paragraph:

Until positive proof arising from direct observation and experiment occurs, superstring/M-Theory, braneworld scenarios, and whatever other ideas will emerge from the fertile imaginations of theorists, these ideas must continue each to be borne into a shadow of reality. Each is an enigma to be resolved in the expectation that we are bringing them a light-step forward, rather than casting them into new darkness in the cosmos. Observation is the true test of hypothesis. When observation yields direct evidence, we will have met the challenge of bringing reality out of the shadows.

Click here to view selected pages from this book

Reality in the Shadows or What the Heck's the Higgs describes how humanity came to learn the workings of the universe as groundwork for the science that found the Higgs particle just as it now seeks the graviton and other unseen particles that promise to unveil a great deal more about what we still don't know. Throughout the book are descriptions of important developments in theoretical physics that lead the reader to a step-by-step understanding of them.

Scientists have noted billions of other stars like our sun, and tens of thousands of other galaxies, nebulae, and still more undiscovered matter—black holes, pulsars, neutron stars, dark energy, the graviton, and much more. You will learn how we think they work and what lies beyond their discovery.

Work over the past forty years has created string theory and quantum mechanics, new approaches to understanding the universe in a way we now know can unify the quantum world with Einstein's perception of the world. It explores questions about the big bang that do not quite mesh with present theories, how gravity works, and how to unify gravity with quantum mechanics. It tells us why studies have moved to string theory, superstring theory, and M-theory and how they are used to find the answers.

These revealing additions to our knowledge have caused scientists and the clergy to reconsider many previous conclusions about what the universe is and how it works. In the twenty-first century, ideas and theories once regarded as scientific truth have come under increasing scrutiny and challenge. This book explores those concepts, presenting them in a manner the non-scientist can readily follow.

S. James Gates Jr.'s (Jim Gates) interest in science began at age four when his mother, Charlie, brought her children to a science fiction movie when the family was living at Ft. Pepperell near St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four years later at Ft. Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, Sylvester James Gates, Sr., his father—a member of the U.S. Army and a veteran of WWII—gave him books about the coming of the space age that solidified an early interest in science (and kindled his wish to become an astronaut). Science fiction, comic book superheroes, a fantastic high school physics teacher, Mr. Freeman Coney, and the Orlando Public Library served as the launch pad for a life in physics.

Gates became the Ford Foundation Professor, Physics and Affiliate Professor of Mathematics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island after retiring in 2017 as a University System Regents Professor; Center for String and Particle Theory Director; Distinguished University Professor; John S. Toll Professor of Physics; and Affiliate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland — College Park.

He received the 2011 National Medal of Science, the 2006 Public Understanding of Science & Technology Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the 2003 Klopsteg Award for excellent physics teaching from the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the 1994 Bouchet Award of the American Physical Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the American Philosophical Society.

Gates has contributed to the mathematical foundation of supersymmetry since authoring M.I.T.'s first Ph.D. written on the subject in 1977. Among his discoveries has been four dimensional string theory using the mathematics of the standard model and connections to graph theory, information theory, and indications of the possibility that following the big bang there might have been an "inchoate epoch" during which processes similar to evolution acted on the mathematical laws that describe our universe. His research continues to expand the understanding of supersymmetry in unique and innovative ways.

In 2017, he completed forty-five consecutive years as a college instructor in physics and/or mathematics. He has appeared in many TV science documentaries, on-line videos, and in 2006 completed Superstring Theory: The DNA of Reality, a video series of twenty-four half-hour non-technical presentations.

Frank Blitzer received his B.S.E.E from Purdue University with a second major in mathematics. After graduating, he continued his studies toward the Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. Frank spent fifty years working for several major companies in the aerospace industry on such things as the design of the B-52 bomber and various missiles and space systems. He facilitated operations with inertial guidance, communications, and surveillance systems. He contributed to the design of systems for the Lacrosse Missile, Patriot Missile, the APOLLO Manned-Space Program, and the Strategic Defense Initiative Program. He developed and patented several missile guidance and control systems, and space systems, as well as pattern recognition and surveillance systems, in which fields he is published. He received the Honeywell Top Performer Award in 1992.

Stephen Jacob Sekula's parents, Annetta and Stephen, fed Steve's early science habits with dangerous chemistry sets, providing his writing interest with endless pads of paper, typewriters, and, eventually, word processing software, as well as intellectual criticism of that writing. His sister, Kate, was essential in dragging him back to reality when he spent too much time in the same shadows this book explores.

SJS is Associate Professor of Experimental Particle Physics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his B.S. from Yale University.

He has been involved in particle collider experiments since his undergraduate days; first at Fermilab, then at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and presently at CERN. He led a team within the BaBar collaboration in 2008 that discovered a state of matter, the lowest energy configuration of bottom quark and its antimatter counterpart, that was first predicted to exist in 1977. He participated in the discovery and measurement of the Higgs Boson in 2012 and 2013, culminating in the announcement of its discovery on the Fourth of July in 2012. He continues still to be fascinated by the potential of this particle to explain even more about the presently unknown origins of our universe.

He is a recipient of the 2017 SMU Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor Award and he received the Texas Section American Physical Society's Robert S. Hyer Award for excellence in the supervision of undergraduate research.

With a mix of in-your-face journalism . . . and a knack for communicating musical sound through the written word,...Fernando has created a fast-paced oral history that will prove important even when the dust settles from this still-developing form.
—Publisher's Weekly

Fernando has written an excellent social history of hip-hop culture . . . and rap music . . . . He also discusses the prominence of gangs in most urban areas and the music's unique expression of contemporary urban experience. Fernando outlines the role of rap as a chronicle for youth culture and uses examples to demonstrate the pleas of many rappers for a more humane, cooperative, less violent, Afrocentric community.
—Library Journal

Donna Marie Merritt's sixth book of poetry begins with her husband's infidelity and makes clear from the start that no woman (certainly not this poet) will put up with that. Searching for answers and navigating new territory alone, Merritt's poems sing out that strong women (and men) may bend, but they won't break. This collection of sixty poems includes a wide range of reflections and observations about society, human behavior, and the healing gift of nature.

You think of yourself as an ordinary person. That said, you can be a leader and make a difference in other people's lives. Yes! You absolutely can!!

God calls many types of people to lead and to succeed—you have the necessary qualification. You need only follow Noah's historic voyage in an ark filled with animals to discover how timeless, simple leadership principles will enable you to become the leader that God has called you to be. Noah's leadership will inspire your own.

The account of Noah in Genesis, with references to other biblical leaders, In an Ark with the Animals on a Rainy Day will identify and develop your potential as a Christian leader. Author, educator, and Christian leader, Dr. Cherry Johnson, EdD, uses fun, easy-to-follow animal themes to show how you will become stronger in your leadership abilities and make a positive impact on those around you and, more important, on the next generation.

God challenged Noah to construct a boat that seemed impossible to build. How did Noah, not a sailor, but an ordinary man, not only build that boat, but organize and lead the historic voyage that saved the human population and all of the animal species of the earth? He succeeded because he understood, modeled his actions on, and practiced biblical principles of leadership. This book is a “here's how” that honors God with the unique retelling of a story we all know so well, but today has new meaning and new use.

Dr. Johnson, who lives with her husband and family on a farm in the rolling hills of central North Carolina, near Raleigh, knows about the animals she writes about. Much like Noah, she is a community leader who recognizes and sees to her responsibilities in the daily needs of her charges.

YBK PHOTOGRAPHER PORTFOLIO

There is much beauty to behold in this world: moments that the eye collects, sorting out the wonders that it captures—moments that should be committed to perpetual memory, but sadly become only fragments of a faded recollection, or are simply forgotten entirely.

I am inspired to record these timeless, special moments—to capture them in my mind's eye and, through my lens, to transform these images to visual records, thus enabling me to share them with others in the hope that they, too, will see what I see, and find equal enjoyment.

— Nicholas Teetelli

Mr. Teetelli is both a published and international-award-winning fine art photographer. He travels extensively in pursuit of the perfect photographic image. He has recently brought his portfolio to the public eye and, in short order, has had more than one hundred of his photographs juried and invited into exhibition at dozens of galleries and museums across the United States. He has won awards in international competitions in Moscow and London, was featured at exhibitions at the Red Dot Spectrum in Miami, artexpo New York, and has private gallery placements in Vienna and Bologna.

Historical recordings by opera singers have proven since 1900 to offer much reward to the singer, student, listener, and collector alike.

In the first book of this kind to appear in decades, Nicholas Limansky explains why critical listening is important and describes the merits of analyzing and comparing the recordings of previous generations of singers with those of the present. He also recounts how markedly record collecting has changed through the decades—especially in large cities like New York—mainly due to technological advance. He not only treats collecting 78 rpm disks, but LPs and CDs as well.

Expired copyright now enables many of these early recordings to easily be acquired and collected, enabling the broad-scale comparison of style, technique, and vocal quality among the famous performers of earlier eras. The author points out what to look for among these differences in style, technique, and ability—both good and bad. (On occasion, the most famous are not the best!)

With emphasis on today's student and collector, Limansky provides information about where, how, and on what labels given recordings can be found. He discusses printed resources that offer the interested even more information. Beginners and veterans alike will find much of interest in this far-ranging book.

Nicholas Limansky studied voice at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and has a performance degree from the University of West Virginia. He has sung with major professional choral groups in New York City that include The Bach Aria Group, Musica Sacra, New York Choral Artists (NY Philharmonic), Opera Orchestra of New York, The Netherlands Ballet, and Alvin Ailey (Revelations, Rainbow).

He has written performance reviews that appeared in the Italian publication, Rassegna Melodrammatic, and reviews new vocal releases of historical singers for Opera News, The Record Collector (in existence since 1946), Classical Singer, and Opera Quarterly. He lectures at the New York Vocal Record Collectors Society and a member of its board of directors.

He has authored a career overview and critical analysis of the 1950s Peruvian singer, Yma Sumac— Yma Sumac: The Art Behind the Legend—published in May of 2008. He is working on a third book, an examination of the differences in listener value between operatic live performance and commercial studio recordings.

Please address an email to info@ybkpublishers.com to learn about the forthcoming supplement or CD-ROM.

This collection of new and selected poems by Angelo Verga, the quintessential poet's poet, is like nothing you've read or heard before. Contained are both long and short poems that work the same themes from multiple and closely crafted angles--all in a diction and attitude that is American, current, and urban.

From religion to sex; from domesticity to conflict; from real workers to economic vampires; from literary commentary to actual life lived on the street, Verga's seventh book is essential reading for those who want to discover what contemporary American poetry can do in the hands of a master.

Professor H. V. Craig (1900–1981), a firm believer in the power of invariant methods in mathematical physics, introduced extensors in 1937 as "tensors relative to the extended point transformation." Both Craig and A. Kawaguchi, another giant in the field of differential geometry, began to develop extensor theory in their independent research. Their leadership inspired many others to work on generalizations, derivations, and physical applications of extensors.

Certain Extensor Structures in the Calculus of Variations is a compilation of independent, unpublished research originally created as a doctoral dissertation by William Clifton Bean under the supervision of H. V. Craig. It is provided as a building block to stimulate further research in the application of extensors to mathematical physics and differential geometry. The serious student of tensor analysis will find great value in Chapter One's thorough introduction to extensors and related topics. This is especially true given the paucity of sources in print that collect this information in one place.

William Clifton Bean is a retired senior engineer, NASA—Houston; an instructor of mathematics at the University Of Houston—Clear Lake; and a fifty-year member of the Tensor Society, an international organization devoted to research in vector and tensor analysis, mathematical science, and information science. Bean worked in applied variational methods, trajectory optimization, lunar gravity models, pattern recognition, and navigation while at NASA—Houston. His current research interests include the automation of deep causal reasoning, backward causation, and the possible mediation of backward causation in quantum physics.

In the author's 1960s working class neighborhood on New York's Upper East Side, Devil Dogs were a nickel, hydrants were often open, and the street game called Ringalario let boys put their arms around girls for the first time. Nuns slugged you for humming baseball beer jingles in class. Junkies scrambled up fire escapes with stolen TVs. And, like other fathers, Tommy's took him to saloons all day, and no one thought it strange.

In this funny and bittersweet portrait of his first 18 years, Tommy relives his adventures and misadventures—the day Yogi Berra stepped on his toe, the mystery behind Dad's vanished pants, and the airborne manhole cover that crushed Pete Palermo's cherished Patrician Green Thunderbird.

With ample photographs, the author revisits a world that echoes TV's "The Wonder Years"—just add taverns, subways, and Checker cabs.

Thomas R. Pryor is a writer, storyteller, and photographer living in New York City. His work can be found on his blog: "Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts."

When Nelson Bryant was managing editor of the Claremont, N.H. Daily Eagle  he enlivened his telling of bedtime stories to his two young sons with the adventures of a Martha's Vineyard Island youngster he called, "Mill Pond Joe."

"I was Mill Pond Joe, and my yarns were based on actual events during my boyhood. I spent fifteen years as managing editor of the Daily Eagle and devoted another thirty to writing an outdoors column for The New York Times."

Bryant began writing the Times Wood, Field and Stream column—later called "Outdoors"—in 1967, and continued to do so until 1998. Born in 1923, he moved with his parents to West Tisbury on the Vineyard in 1932. A dedicated environmentalist, he writes with passion, sensitivity, and humor about the natural world; its flora, its fauna, its human inhabitants, and their hunting and fishing rituals. Currently living on the Vineyard, he has traveled widely, gathering material for his pieces in the Times and other publications.

Shortly before his 90th year he decided to chronicle Mill Pond Joe's adventures.

More than 120 recipes with both American and European measurements, this book draws its great-tasting and healthy recipes from hermitages in which the author lived throughout India. Now executive chef of a five-star hotel in Mumbai (and past participant in OCLD, India's cooking internship more difficult to get into than Harvard Law), Zubin D'souza has chefed all over the world and traveled much of India to compile this collection of recipes gained from his first-hand living of Ayurvedic principles.

• Salads and soups
• Masalas and curries
• Raitas and paneers
• Vegetables of every kind
• Dals, rice, and breads
• Dips, chutneys, and pickles
• Desserts that are good for your
They're all here, gathered from hermitages all over India by a master chef who has modified these recipes especially for your kitchen.

There is even a brief explanation of Ayurveda for those unfamiliar with its principles, while not delaying those who are—those eager to get to cooking and enjoying!

The author of Judgment Day Must Wait was born in Copenhagen in 1936. He was raised a Jehovah's Witness. In 1959, Poul Bregninge severed ties with the Witnesses. In 1964, after Bregninge had written several controversial letters and articles about the Witnesses, a three-man committee expelled him.

The Witnesses' main organization, the Watch Tower Society, maintain a strong, efficient structure to focus their members on the Day of Judgment. It is the fear of that moment of accounting that keeps their followers firmly in the fold. Critical questions are not allowed. If one decides to leave the movement, the consequences are often made very destructive for both the individual and his or her family.

Bregninge presents the reader with a critical, but fair, distillation of the movement's historical and ideological background. Distorted and suppressed by Watchtower leaders, Bregninge clarifies the drama of Mr. and Mrs. Russell's strife and separation. It is a treasure trove of historical and often revealing details not widely known. Weaving into it his own experiences and interviews with present and former Witness members who relate the difficulties and the consequences of living under the iron heel of Witness policies, Bregninge tells his sto ry.

Sky Self Love Life turns from the Heavens to a vaster Self—from piquant Love to encompassing Life—from particular to general and back through metrical and more practical forms. A series of poems about the Half-Quarter days, which fall at the midpoint of our seasons and mark weather as lived on Earth rather than as it is measured by the Sun, is this book's lynchpin, connecting the sense of oneself to love for others.

Born in Manhattan, John Wander returned there to earn a B.A. in English (Phi Beta Kappa) and a Ph.D. in American Studies, while writing for the NY Shakespeare Festival, the NY Review of Books and The Westchester Eagle, after stints in the military, work as a bouncer, roofer, housepainter and car salesman. He went on to a job in international publishing, financial documentation and research. His five children, deceased wife Melanie and the countryside surrounding the small Normandy town where he lives inspire many of these poems: he continues to teach in cities in the region.

Inspired by the tranquil view waiting to be transferred to canvas in Constable's English countryside, a new curiosity disturbed the painter's concentration. How did America, escaping her burdened beginnings, come to adapt Europe's artistic superiority to her own first great school of landscape painting?

Landscape Painting Comes to America, written by a painter, details the development of landscape painting from blank canvas to exhibition, documenting its long struggle to become a genre unto itself while relating that development to its historic migration across an ocean.

Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before —and after— Roe v Wade gives a unique perspective on the days of back alley abortions — one of which the author experienced in 1956 following what would today be known as workplace rape — and includes contemporary stories that indicate those grim days are returning. It is written for lay readers, making a strong case for reproductive choice and a plea for informed dialog. Author Fran Moreland Johns' comments on abortion rights have appeared recently in the New York Times and New Yorker magazine. Perilous Times expands on the issue through true stories of women and men whose lives have been impacted by unplanned pregnancies, and comments from leaders in the field of reproductive rights.

Fran Moreland Johns is no stranger to difficult topics, having written extensively on end-of-life issues; her last book was Dying Unafraid, a storyteller's book about people who did just that. Johns grew up in Ashland, Virginia in the 1940s, a place and time that come alive in many of her short stories and nonfiction works. She is a graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman's College (BA, Art,) holds an MFA in Short Fiction from the University of San Francisco and is a lifelong freelance writer. The mother of three and grandmother of five, she lives with her husband, writer/editor Bud Johns, in San Francisco where she is active in arts, literary and interfaith causes.

My connections to the photos and locations in this book go back to 1960 and my first bicycle. Dad owned a three-speed Raleigh. I had a single-speed Schwinn. In the spring of 1961 the two of us began our river-to-river tours. I was six years old and had never felt the release of having freedom like that.

Dad took his Yashica 44 camera on every trip. Following his methods taught me to look everywhere for something to shoot as we rode. He regularly demonstrated to me how being patient for a shot paid off. I couldn't wait for his pictures to be developed. Even if it were a familiar place, I'd find something new in the light or in the angles that Dad chose. My love for his work and the memory of those trips are alive in these pages.
—Thomas R. Pryor

Wittgenstein's Folly is a translation of Françoise Davoine's La Folie Wittgenstein.

"Folly" has many meanings, referring to the "madness" of the fool, as well as to the madness of what we call the "mentally ill." "Folly" is linked with the fools of medieval plays, with the fools of Renaissance satires, and with the folly that speaks as a woman in Erasmus's Praise of Folly. In this book by Francoise Davoine, "folly" often refers to the madness of those isolated by historical catastrophes that have not been processed across generations, and which can only be studied by exploring the fields of madness, by finding ways to hear Folly herself speaking. The title does not refer specifically to the madness or folly of Wittgenstein himself. Wittgenstein's Folly is about psychoanalytic experience, and specifically about the madness or folly that comes to reside, in a way, in what Françoise Davoine refers to as a "psychotic transference."

Françoise Davoine is a psychoanalyst trained in the 1970s at Lacan's École freudienne de Paris. With advanced degrees in the Classics and in French Literature, she obtained a doctorate in sociology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), at the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux (Center for the Study of Social Movements), led by Alain Touraine. She and her husband, Jean-Max Gaudilliere, have led a weekly seminar (Madness and the Social Link) at that Center for over thirty years.

Françoise Davoine is convinced that psychosis is a field of research for both analyst and analysand, in which the events of History, or perhaps pieces of those events, which could not be processed by the individual or even by human beings as a group, can be identified, recognized, and finally put in a place where they can be fully experienced within a symbolic framework created by social links; i.e., with others, within a social world.

Tsaurah Litzky finds the sublime in the ridiculous and beauty in the garbage. Cleaning the Duck, her honest, invigorating, and luminous second poetry collection, will help you think, grow, come. Tsaurah lives in Brooklyn and believes it is a privilege to be a poet.

"In Cleaning the Duck, Tsaurah Litzky brilliantly captures the contradictions of what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century. These poems sing off the page leaving the reader enchanted, entertained, and blissfully exhausted."
—Danny Shot, publisher and editor of Long Shot

"Transgressive, informative, totally original, funny as hell, Cleaning the Duck will take your breath away."
—Steve Cannon, author of Groove, Bang, and Jive Around; founder of A Gathering of the Tribes

Duet Yourself is a collection of eleven solo pieces and their accompaniments, which consist of fairly simple repetitive patterns. To play a duet, simply record the accompaniment to play along with the melody. The music has been written so that the pieces can even be played on one keyboard by two people. Study notes, hand positions, and finger and rhythm drills are provided.

Self-taught and operating out of a grimy basement studio, the one-time army brat and art school dropout, is, simply put, a creative powerhouse. Black Cracker, a provocatively pop and poetic artistic ingénue, has created for, and been featured in, productions for the Kitchen, the Culture Project, and BAM Harvey Theater, along with having worked on projects with the Whitney Museum of Art, the NY Knicks, and Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.

Twice featured in the New York Times and just back from a tour in India and Europe with Swiss jazz trio Grandpianoramax, Black Cracker's groundbreaking solo record is a blend of lyrical genius and beat-boxing for a sound that is best described as Basquiat meets Tupac.

In addition to being a fierce artistic talent, he was the Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC, one of the nation's leading literary and performance organizations for youth. He was also a regular host at both the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café and the Apollo.

This book is the eleventh in the Bowery Books series.

Foundations derives from a larger project entitled Personal Trainer, a keyboard program offering musical workouts and enrichment activities for piano students of many ages and skill levels.

We felt that extracting the keyboard theory sections, Foundations, from Personal Trainer might serve the needs of certain players primarily interested in reinforcing their understanding of basic theory and, above all, in strengthening their knowledge of the piano keyboard. The keyboard can serve as an excellent map for helping to understand basic elements of theory. The term "keyboard geography" is often used in this regard. Relating keyboard patterns to theory is fundamental to relating the cognitive to the kinesthetic—the mind to the body.

Materials are presented sequentially. "Fitness Challenges" provide the player with carefully constructed drills that can serve the purpose of developing and increasing skills as well as for evaluating progress. Each challenge has a MIDI accompaniment specifically designed for that activity.

Personal Trainer is a training program offering musical workouts and enrichment activities for piano students of many ages and skill levels. The overall structure consists of five books, each containing four sections dealing with specific issues. These four sections are entitled:

• Explorations
• Eye-So-Metrics
• Foundations
• Repertoire

We believe the development of technique, sight playing and analytical skills are part of an integrated approach to total musicianship; all are stepping-stones to aesthetic expression and musical understanding. We want our students to feel comfortable as they learn to hear what they see, see what they hear, and grow in their understanding of the building blocks of music. Those, simply stated, are fundamental goals of Personal Trainer.

One plus One consists of 14 solo pieces (Part I) with optional accompaniments (Part II). Each piece is based on a different scale or mode. The solo pieces can be played independently or with the accompaniment, which can be played on the same keyboard. Part I (solo) appears on either the right- or left-hand page, depending on how the players are to be seated at one keyboard. The accompaniments can be played by the teacher or by another student. Some players may also enjoy working with a cassette recorder: The teacher or student can record Part II so that the other player can play Part I with the recording.

These pieces are suitable for students of different ages and at different levels of advancement. Notes provide suggestions for practice, background material on the scales and modes on which the pieces are based and ideas for creative activities. A table of scales and modes appears at the end of the book.

This book, third in the Eberts' Early Jesus series, breaks ground not covered in other books on the Gospels. First, it views Jesus' life and ministry in a socio-political/economic-religious context. It then presents a never-before-seen chronology of Jesus' ministry (across three chapters) and, something not usually done by other scholars, the Eberts have characterized each Gospel. They posit that Mark shows Jesus as the Healing, Suffering, and Trusting One; that Matthew shows Jesus as the Righteous and Just One; Luke shows Jesus as the Caringly Compassionate and Socially Just One; and John shows Jesus as One with the Living, Loving, and Active God.

The Early Jesus Movement was initially centered in Jerusalem but soon produced four distinct parties—Disciples, Brethren, Hellenists, and Apostles—each ministering to different ethnic groups in Jerusalem and throughout the Roman Empire. Almost inadvertently, this diversity contributed to the movement's strength in speedily spreading through the Mediterranean world.

By going from one Jewish synagogue to another, built all over the Empire in response to earlier Jewish diasporas, by 60 CE at least one of the four parties established congregations in many of the Empire's cities, including its four largest, Rome, Corinth, Alexandria, and Ephesus. Although a patron-client-slave social structure dominated each city, the cities' histories and cultures also differed considerably, challenging Christian congregations with issues of social class antagonisms, gender, slavery, poverty, use of magic, paganism, and Roman rules against promulgating "foreign" religions and even forming associations. Due to their proximity with one another in these cities, the congregations also had to learn to deal with their ministries' differences.

Growing influence of Gentiles within the movement undoubtedly contributed both to controversies among the parties but also to their eventual resolution. The Apostle Paul's Letters (especially Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans) provide an insider's look at the controversies and their consequences on the movement. We see Stephen's blood spilled as Hebrew fought Hellenist. We watch Paul vilified, beaten, and even stoned for his ideas. We learn that in Rome during Nero's persecution of Christians (64 CE on), Christians informed on one another, just as Judas had done to Jesus. Such deep-seated controversies also divided the various parties. Yet a spirit (they called it the Spirit of Christ) kept influential Christians working with one another.

A chapter on each city offers details on how their congregations coped with the problems. In general, Disciples and Brethren parties responded by re-interpreting historically Jewish traditions. In contrast, Hellenists' and Apostles' re-interpretations blended Jesus' teachings with historically Greek traditions. We believe that to observe and understand these issues as they took place is an exciting venture. We invite you to join us in it.

What have generations of New Testament scholars been hiding from us over all the ages?

Harry and Paul Eberts have produced a book that challenges readers to rethink how they approach the New Testament. Most scholars have presumed a reasonably unified movement among the Christian churches led by Peter, Paul, James, and Philip during the period immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection. This book suggests that at least four parties—one led by Peter and the other eleven disciples; one by James the brother of Jesus and as many as 500 "brethren;" one by Stephen, Philip, and Apollos who were Greek-speaking Jews having Alexandria as their base; and one by Paul and Barnabas (among other apostles) "who did not know Jesus in the flesh" vied with each other to portray Jesus as the Son of God.

Up to now, most scholars have presumed the Gospels to be at least somewhat "additive" in developing the character of Jesus. The Eberts' suggest that each Gospel represents the viewpoint of one of the four parties, thus presenting differing views of the meaning of Jesus' life, his death, and his resurrection. For a long time, scholars have presumed the "Jesus movement" was unified in its evangelizing, but the Eberts' posit that the four parties went among different ethnic groups initially, but came to compete for the same converts while undercutting each other, as they did in Ephesus and Corinth, in seeking to convert Jews and Gentiles to Christianity.

Scholars have believed that small differences in churches' governance and worship were "options" chosen by each congregation. But the Eberts' suggest that each party developed its own patterns of church governance, worship, and practices. There has been the regular presumption that St. Paul's letters were unified statements of his views of beliefs, behaviors, and practices in the early churches. The Eberts' instead suggest a shifting over time that is shown by his letters, in Paul's theology and ethics as the apostles struggled with the other Christian parties and with the Gentiles to convert nonbelievers to Christianity.

The book speaks directly to these and other controversies as it carefully documents directly from New Testament writings how, where, and why these four parties emerged to struggle with each other and thereby generate what are now considered the major sacred writings about that historical figure identified first as Jesus of Nazareth and later known as Jesus the Christ.

The Hate that Cures by Evelyn Liegner, the second book in the series, The Development of Modern Psychoanalysis, gives a moment-by-moment account of the reversal of psychosis using Modern Psychoanalytic techniques. Detailed notes from sessions are used to illuminate how the patient is healed by the emotional communication of hatred within the transference and countertransference. Liegner shows how Modern Psychoanalytic interventions facilitate the ability of the ego to handle a broad range of feelings and impulses.

The techniques and theory of Modern Psychoanalysis was first introduced to the wider professional community by Hyman Spotnitz in 1961–62 in a series of postgraduate lectures given by Dr. Spotnitz at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City. Modern Psychoanalysis takes its point of departure from the problems left unresolved by Freud and his original associates.

Discover how Sammy, the little green snake, finds out:

• that wishes may sometimes come true in a most unusual way.
• that curiosity can help to find out about other ways of life.
• that getting lost isn't always a bad thing.

Mary Reddick Welsh was born in New York City and raised in Westchester, New York and California. She attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. She has also studied at the Art Student League in New York City and St. Thomas Aquinus College.

She has been an art teacher and a librarian in Sullivan, Maine where she has lived with her husband, Joe, for the past thirty-five years. She has both illustrated and written for the Puckerbrush Review and has created commercial illustrations for many organizations. Sammy is her first book for children.

Charles Renouvier (1815–1903) is properly regarded as one of France's greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century and an important figure in the modern history of French politics and education.

Not only is this memoir, Comment je suis arrivé à cette conclusion, the first work by Renouvier to be translated into English, but as Renouvier claimed for it, the first published philosophical memoir, tracing the development of a philosopher's mature philosophical position.

In critically distinguishing his views from from those of the major philosophers including those of Immanuel Kant, he has written a most useful ancillary text for the study of modern western philosophy. More, both as a philosopher and a man, Renouvier influenced the work of the American psychologist and philosopher, William James, who regarded him as a mentor. Among others influenced by Renouvier was the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, the American philosopher, Charles Sanders Pierce, the German philosopher, Karl Marx, the French philosopher, Octave Hamlin, the French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, and the French novelist and critic, Julien Benda.

The most recent attempts to replace philosophical as well as religious explanations of the origins and existence of the universe with purely scientific ones should heighten the interest in Renouvier's memoir. For, while he attempts a purely scientific explanation, he arrives at startlingly different conclusions.

Bernard J. Looks holds a Ph.D. in modern European History from Columbia University. He has published Triumph Through Adversity, a memoir of the life and work of Martin S. Dworkin, a book of Dworkin's poetry, entitled, Unfinished Ruins, and articles on education and film criticism.

Sarah Herrington is a big-apple farmer, dharma bum punk, urban yogi, poet, and writer. She was chosen by O, The Oprah Magazine as an "Up and Coming Poet" in the April, 2011 issue.

I'm thinking about the Earth and about this space-shot of a book by Ms. Herrington, about the nurturing ecology of poetry and consciousness. I would like to thank Spaceship Sarah for Always Moving, and now we must all work hard as we can to keep up!
-Bob Holman

This book is the ninth in the Bowery Books series.

The soloist in the premiere performance in Vienna of Beethoven's monumental Emperor Concerto, Carl Czerny, was a prolific composer but is today only remembered for the exercises and etudes that he composed for piano students. He studied under such masters as Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Antonio Salieri, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Now one does not always love Czerny studies, for they can be rather long and repetitive—and taxing. However, early in my training I came to understand the value of such study. During that early training I worked exclusively in a volume entitled 160 Eight-Measure Exercises (op. 183). This was a wise choice on the part of my mentor because these particular etudes are short and succinct—and absolutely charming and beautiful. From that collection of 160 etudes I have chosen twenty of my special favorites.

The road to developing technical skill involves a considerable amount of repetition. It can be lonely and a bit wearisome. With this in mind, I have added a second piano part for each of the twenty studies. A teacher or another student may play these on a second piano or you make use of the MIDI files that you can easily obtain.
—Paul Sheftel

Professor Sheftel is a member of the faculty of The Juilliard School. He has served on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music, The Manhattan School of Music, and Hunter College.

Paul Sheftel has performed in most of the capitols of Europe and throughout the United States. In New York City alone he has performed in most of the noted performing venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully, Town, and Merkin Concert Halls.

Modern Psychoanalysis takes its point of departure from the problems left unresolved by Freud and his original associates. Modern Psychoanalysis was first introduced to the wider professional community by Hyman Spotnitz in 1961-62 in a series of postgraduate lectures chaired by the author, given at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City.

The Emergence of the Wonder Child will interest all who are concerned to understand and advance Modern Psychoanalysis. It will have special appeal to practicing psychoanalysts seeking to master the science of therapy. While the treatment methods described here differ considerably from the orthodox treatment parameters, they follow along a natural continuum from classical psychoanalytic doctrine.

The Emergence of the Wonder Child is the inaugural volume in The Development of Modern Psychoanalysis series created by the Center for Modern Psychoanalysis in New York City.

This second work in the ethnographic preservation of the traditions of Tibet follows the publication in 2008 of Life and Marriage in Skya rgya, a Tibetan Village.

The book has three distinct sections: a brief historical introduction to Ne'u na Village, a detailed, sequenced description of a generalized Ne'u na wedding accompanied by related songs and speeches, and three interlinked case studies breathing life into and bringing specificity to the description. As background information, the author discusses the ethnic composition of the village, which in addition to Amdo Tibetans comprises both Han Chinese and Hui Muslim families.

Through Tshe dbang rdo rje's minute observation, description of pre-marriage deals and the actual wedding ceremony, readers can almost see it happening before their very eyes. Also, the detailed description of the actual wedding party as well as the careful rendering of each song, opens a door to the marriage ceremony. Song texts are given in free English translation, in oral Tibetan, literary Tibetan, IPA and as word by word renditions in English.

The third section contains the case studies. While the matchmaker in chapter three is a busy, anonymous figure shuttling messages and gifts between the prospective groom and bride's families, the results of Bka' dbang sgrol ma's visit in chapter six to her younger sister sets off a chain of events that forever influence fundamental aspects of the family's life.

The result is a multidisciplinary documentation of the wedding practices in the Amdo Tibetan village of Ne'u na, located in the present-day Qinghai (Mtsho sngon) Province, on the historical frontier between China and Tibet.

Fay Chiang's work is complex. Born of anger, it is ultimately optimistic about the importance of the artist as a preserver and perpetuator of culture, and of the self-determination of the individual in a society in which pressures to conform persist. Her unflinching sense of fairness and justice and her intolerance of hypocrisy seem at odds with her joie de vivre and good humor. In truth, her tenacity and clear vision are the strength of her work, both artistic and political.

Fay Chiang is a writer, artist and community/cultural activist living and working in Chinatown and the Lower East Side of New York City for the past four decades. Raised in the backroom of a laundry in Queens by immigrant parents from Guandong, China, she writes from her experiences as a woman of color from the working class. She believes culture is a psychological weapon to reclaim our past, define our present and to envision possibilities for our future; that the development of culture is an integral part of progressive social change and social justice movements.

". . .through her words we feel the crackle and pain of being othered. . . ." states John Kuo Wei Tchen of New York University and the Museum of Chinese in America.

This book is the eighth in the Bowery Books series.

More than 150 recipes with both American and European measurements, this book draws its great-tasting recipes from throughout India. A corporate chef, and a past participant in OCLD, India's intern program more difficult to get into than Harvard Law, Zubin D'Souza has worked all over the world and traveled much of India to bring you the best of regional cookery that he has elevated to classic form, refining each recipe to reveal nuance that regional cookery usually doesn't convey.

• Masalas and curries
• Rasams and shorbas
• Raitas and paneers
• Vegetables of every kind
• Dals, rice, and breads
• Chutneys, chat, and spice masalas
• Sweets to make your teeth hurt
They're all here, gathered from all over India—the best of the best.

There are whole chapters on chilis and spices; how to stock a useful Indian spice larder and where and how to buy the staples to fill it; you will find treatises on oils and ghee, rice, how to eat "Indian style," what kinds of curries come from where, what special equipment is needed (almost none); and Zubin D'Souza even answers the question: Do Indians eat soup?

Organized by course, many of these recipes, having been collected regionally, are found nowhere else. Be the first on your block to prepare lentil dumplings in mustard sauce.

Click on the links below to view some selected sample pages or visit the author's book blog:
Table of Contents
Indian Provisions
Recipes
Blog

Noted pianist and Julliard professor, Paul Sheftel, asks, "When learning to play a C chord, why not also learn F and G chords, since they all use only white keys?"

The three modules are all about groupings that concentrate on the 12 major scales, their perfect, major and minor intervals, and the 12 major triads in root position and first and second inversions. These are all studied in logical groupings. There is a specific musical composition for each scale, chord and interval.

Sound accomplished with ease.

"My thought, as I composed these pieces, was 'keyboard recreation'. Ideally, I wanted to write pieces which would sound hard without being so. I have tried, in the Study Notes, to outline the approaches to learning each piece which worked best."
—Paul Sheftel

Startling poems of incisive intelligence and deep compassion.

Marie Ponsot finds The Touch "rich, lyrical, sharp, a big world well perceived, Cynthia Kraman's poems are alive with real ideas. . . You have to read this. Pure pleasure."

Bob Holman says, "The Touch, the long-awaited new book of poetry from medievalist and former punk-rocker Cynthia Kraman, tosses New Formalism on its ear, and is rock lyrics . . . resuscitates Wordsworth . . . a superb, extraordinary, shocking, unflinching, charming, hilarious, perfectly gem-cut book."

The book is in two parts: My Heart Was Like A Sword has as its formal basis medieval number theory; Speak in the Dark's form refers to the days of Biblical creation and the weekly life of each of us. The poet writes, "I will leave it to the reader to find her and his own macro and micro readings of the poems' many days and nights, of nature created and creating, and the ongoing annihilations and regenerations of love and war."

These are heights, when they are not depths. A rich vein in our new poetry.
—Richard Howard

This is a book to read and re-read, the real thing.
—Thomas Beller

This book is the seventh in the Bowery Books series.

The Depository Trust Company reports the early 1970s origin and evolution of The Depository Trust Company (DTC), the world's largest securities depository, and how it became the basis of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) in 1999. It describes the basic policies and company culture of DTC and DTCC and shows how these organizations made the clearance and settlement of virtually all trades in U.S. equity, corporate debt, and municipal securities more accurate and less costly, obliterating through automation the conditions that created the Wall Street "paperwork crisis" of the late 1960s.

With mercurial wands, Baal's angels, decks with wild Jacks of oracle bones, tempest Serpens, Lord Byron on the Bridge of Sighs, stallions mottled grey, a "dark blue stronger than the Flemish blue of hummingbirds," and poesis lying in the ashes of a dress, Janet Hamill turns her wizard poet's eye on an immense body of alchemical empathies. This book is a romantic, surreal, lyrical Voyage. It twists and turns with the playful tide of poetic vision, enhanced by the delicate measures of Patti Smith's photography. Kudos all around.
—Anne Waldman

Reading Janet Hamill now, as I have over the last thirty years, I'm amazed again at the particulars of the world her poetry makes—a night world, as I read it, peopled with bright creatures and splashes of color, beautiful and terrifying by turns. With this there is a mix, too, of pop forms and strains, and of catholic and pagan names and images—angels and saints and hermits—as in the vision of her sleeping gypsy: "firebird sweets / a morsel a taste of carrion / . . . as in a dream." With this and much more, she has become indispensable.
—Jerome Rothenberg

With its unbridled surrealistic, hypnotic imagery, Janet Hamill's alchemy of language gives us back communion with our souls. With a magician's grace she reminds us of the enchantment of our being. Hers is a music both modern and magik.
—Maureen Owen

. . . Janet Hamill has sought transcendence in language on the page or sung . . . Hamill's mastery of form and feeling comes together to create a poem that delicately examines celebrity, gallantry, silence, talent, and beauty. Only a poet could do that. Or maybe only Janet Hamill.
—Patricia Spears Jones

This book is the sixth in the Bowery Books series.

What It Has Been

Beginning with a review of the human needs that all religions seek to fulfill, Dr. Williams traces the world's religions as they evolved through four cultural channels: China , India and South Asia , the Near East, and Europe. The histories of all the great religious traditions—Confucianism, the Greek and Roman pantheons, Judaism and Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Islam—evolved through the four great world cultures and often followed empires as they conquered and expanded.

What It Is

The various religious traditions are followed down all four cultural streams to contemporary time—through their confrontations with the Enlightenment, Nietszche (""God is dead!"), Freud, and perhaps most profoundly with Darwin. The fundamentalist and moderate threads of both the Islamic and the Judaeo-Christian fabrics are thoughtfully examined.

About the author

Jay G. Williams is chair of the department of religious studies and director of Asian studies of Hamilton College. He is the author of books and monographs and of many articles in comparative religion.

Click on the links below to view sample pages from the book:
Title and Table of Contents
The Near East - Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia
Early Chinese Buddhism
The Modern Near East and Europe
Index

Life and Marriage in Skya rgya: a Tibetan Village is an important achievement, delving deep into contemporary Tibetan society, enabling us to explore the crucial negotiations between tradition and modernity, both individually and collectively, that confront present-day Tibetan villagers.

The ethnographic discussion of songs, marriage practices, and narratives gives us direct insight into the lives, experiences and expectations of ordinary Tibetans, sharing the joys and pains, and the hopes and fears of these Tibetans, old and young. We observe how the dilemmas and celebrations that characterized an earlier era persist and evolve as the local society is propelled into twenty-first century China. Blo brtan rdo rje's honest rendering of the details of his family life make this a page-turning account of life in a rural Tibetan area that is vanishing.

*    *    *

"Skya rgya is a farming village in A mdo, the Tibetan name by which the northwest of the Tibetan Plateau is known. While Tibetans largely welcome the material benefits that have been brought to them by the march of modernity, it is also inevitable that many of their older traditions have come to be seen as outdated. By juxtaposing voices from earlier periods with those that reflect contemporary experiences, [the author] has provided us with a fascinating window onto the processes of change and development, as they are being experienced by Tibetans in this area.
This book provides a rich resource for all those interested in the history and culture of the region, . . . . [the author's narratives give] us a direct and vivid insight into the lives, experiences and expectations of members of his home community. By letting four of his informants speak to us directly he allows us to enter into the joys and pains, hopes and fears of these Tibetans, old and young. We have a rare chance to observe how the dilemmas and celebrations that characterized an early era have persisted or evolved as local society is propelled into the modern world of twenty-first century China."

—Fernanda Pirie
The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
Oxford University

Blo brtan rdo rje's honest rendering of the details of his family life and his experiences conducting field research make this a page-turning account of life in a rural Tibetan area that is already vanishing. When Blo brtan rdo rje was young, there was not even a bridge to cross the Yellow River into Gcan tsha County; coracle boats were the principle mode of transport across the river. After bridges were built in the late 1980s, life has been changing rapidly.
This is not to suggest that no change had come to this Tibetan village before this time, as the arrival of the troops of the Muslim warlord, Ma Bufang, prior to the Communist period are also documented here. The forced conversion of neighboring (down-valley) Tibetans to Islam was a crucial vehicle for the later commercial changes introduced in the 1990s.

—Gray Tuttle
Department of East Asia Languages and Cultures Columbia University

Click on the links below to view sample pages from the book:
Title and Table of Contents
Full Preface by Fernanda Pirie
The Arranged Marriage of Young Children
Introduction to the Village of Skya rgya

Half the range of the piano keyboard!

At last a serious critical examination of the utterly unique vocalist celebrated for her "four-octave voice," Yma Sumac! A confounding, sometimes heartbreaking, mixture of absurd show-biz hype, stunning virtuosity, and sometimes ravishing artistry, Yma Sumac was a firmly established recording artist of the folk music of her native Peru when she came to America to be "discovered." And discovered she was—by the publicity department of Capitol Records and the "Exotica" pop music maestro Les Baxter.

From there her story becomes ever more tangled and weird—and deeply interesting. Yma herself is an amazingly contradictory mix. Nicholas Limansky (a formally trained professional singer) is able to demonstrate that she was startlingly sophisticated technically even though almost entirely self-taught. What is perhaps even more astonishing than the celebrated 4-octave range of her voice—and its effortless clarity and sweetness—was the nearly incredible longevity—fully 4 decades!—of her ability to command it.

With the enthusiastic collaboration of her quixotic, charming, slightly rascally husband, she went along with the corruption of her artistic identity by the gleefully amoral record-company publicists, creators of her public persona—Inca Princess (sometimes Priestess!)—from a primitive mountain tribe (or, sometimes, descended from a line of kings that was said to go back several hundred years before there were any Incas)! Imperious as any diva with her intimates and musical collaborators, she maintained an unassailable dignity and unaffected graciousness as a performer and in relation to her fans.

All documented in this large, lavishly illustrated volume—an extensively researched biography (her birth date established once and for all!), many personal anecdotes of her intimates, technical discussions of her voice and her music, generous excerpts from reviews and priceless examples of publicity material.

About the author:

Nicholas E. Limansky studied voice at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and has a performance degree from the University of West Virginia. He has sung with The Bach Aria Group, Musica Sacra, New York Choral Artists (of the NewYork Philharmonic), and the Opera Orchestra of New York. He reviews new vocal releases of historical singers for Opera News, The Record Collector, Classical Singer and Opera Quarterly. His vocal specialty is the acuto-sfogato (extended-vocal-range) soprano. His work on Yma Sumac has covered nearly three decades.

To view the discography of Yma Sumac on a separate web page, click here!

To take a look at the Title Page and Table of Contents, click here.

Click the following links to view some sample pages from Yma Sumac!
Return to Peru and Performance in New York
Yma at The Ballroom
Yma for a New Generation

Professor Richard Sheil lays out the fundamentals for singing accurately and clearly in the crucial languages for singers: Roman Church Latin, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.

Emeritus professor of music in the State University of New York, Richard F. Sheil guides students, singers and anyone who wishes to sing properly in a foreign language through an education of the highest degree. His writing is clear and lively. His comprehensive text will be an indispensable tool for every singer from established professionals to voice majors to those who want to sing in church on Sunday morning. A lesson from Professor Sheil will revitalize your expression of all these languages.

Click here to read a sample from this book (NOTE: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the sample pages).
Click here to view the Table of Contents.

What Freud called the "stone wall" was first breached by this pioneering psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with this seminal work in 1969. This substantially revised and enlarged edition is the comprehensive and definitive handbook for practitioners of the talking cure of the disorders that arise before speech.

Click here to read a sample from this book (NOTE: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the sample pages).
Click here to view the subject index.

David Daube's life spanned almost the entire 20th century and he was witness to itshistory. Born a Jew in Germany in 1909, he spent World War II and its aftermath in Britain on the faculties of Cambridge, Aberdeen, and Oxford. He came to the United States in the '60s—to the University of California at Berkeley where he reveled in what he called the "unmanicured, unclubbable, countercultural attitudes." Through it all he never lost his love for the land of his birth—though it didn't love him back for many years: he was on Hitler's list of those to be put to death once Germany had conquered England.

One of the great legal minds of our time, Daube's depth of scholarship in a range of subjects—ancient literature, English literature, ancient law, medical ethics, much more—was matched by a dazzling agility and originality of mind—for instance: though raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, he produced strikingly original work on the New Testament.

Not your typical fusty professor, he was a brilliant and charming commentator onmatters personal, political, social, and philosophical. The reader of these jottings (set down in the 1970s and '80s) will understand within a page or two why those who knew him treasured him as a friend, mentor, and intellectual provocateur. These private reflections, gathered by one of his most distinguished students, are charming, insightful, thought-provoking, sometimes profound, and sometimes just amusing. His commentaries on political and social issues of his time ranged from bravely original thought on Israel and the Palestinians to an amusing and enlightening review of thesensational porn film Deep Throat.

Here are some sample jottings:

"I love women. They provide the unhappiness that I need in life."

"People are more struck by the asininity of the law when they are trapped by it thanwhen they are let off."

"We are all of us survivors all the time; everything that is, is a survivor relative to what has fallen by the wayside. Naturally, having escaped from Hitler's clutches myself, I am a bit more alive to the whole business than the average guy."

Everybody talks about the plight of illegal immigrants in the US, but who gives us their own voices, tells us of the daily lives, of these shadow workers? Estamos Aquí—We Are Here—is a heartstirring collection of poems written by migrant workers, speaks of joy and heartbreak in the direct voices of Mexican and Central American migrant farmworkers. Presented in both Spanish and English, these poems ultimately succeed in humanizing them, revealing them as our neighbors. In workshops after a day's backbreaking, sunbaked labor at migrant camps in upstate New York sponsored by the GENESEO Migrant Center, and led by renowned Beat poet Janine Pommy Vega, here came poems of home, of crossing borders, of the joys and agonies of work. Until now, there's really been no way to tap into the inner worlds of the Latino pickers of the produce that feeds the majority of our populace, while their small earnings return to their families back home. Now, with Estamos Aquí, we realize that we are in this together, a relationship to evolve, not a problem to solve.

The fourth book in the Bowery Books Poetry Series, Estamos Aquí is a must for those studying illegal immigrant farmworkers, interested in contemporary Spanish-English poetry translations, having an awareness of the relationship of outsider arts, arts education, and the political intricacies of US immigration policy.

What tests are used to identify giftedness?
After a battery of tests has been administered to a TAG (talented and gifted) individual, how are the decisions made about their placement and the services they will receive?
Beyond standardized testing, how else can students qualify for services?

This is a guide for parents, teachers, and university students seeking to identify and/or work with the gifted. It conveys:

• A how-was-it-done history of assessing and identifying giftedness.
• Traditional and non-traditional measures for identifying the gifted.
• Procedures and test instruments used for appropriate and accurate assessment.
• Guidance for identifying giftedness among subpopulations.
• Methods for recognizing giftedness in the primary grades.
• The importance of interacting with classroom teachers in the assessment process.

It also provides:

• A full listing of evaluative tests by name, descriptive information on their scope and purpose, applicable age ranges, and the publisher from whom they can be obtained.
• Many practical classroom ideas and activities for nurturing potential giftedness.
• An Activity Book providing templates outlining daily activities to use with students that are keyed to each chapter.

About the author:
Julie Lamb Milligan is Director of Gifted Education at Arkansas State University, having a Ph.D. in Gifted Education with an emphasis in Curriculum and Instruction from Kent State University. She has published numerous professional articles concerning the education of the gifted that have appeared in journals and teacher-education publications throughout the country. Augmenting this, she has a background of almost twenty years of in-classroom teaching and administration.

What is the shortest distance between a poet and the world of humans who might like poetry, but have been taught it is obscure and boring? And what poetry would result from making a living out of that connection?

The answer is The Poetry Dollars, based on the very real life experiences and work of Paul L. Mills, a.k.a. Poez (www.poezthepoet.com), who during a ten-year career starting in 1977, invented himself in the form of a "poet-performer," appearing with a fusion of drama, music, and improvisation, first in the streets of Boston and New York, then in coffee houses, nightclubs, concert halls, theaters, on radio and television, as a straight stand-up performer, in off-Broadway theater, and with a modern dance company, at such well-known venues as The Bottom Line, CBGBs, Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater, and The Bitter End in New York, and Le Theatre du Rond-Point on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, sharing the bill with, among others, beat era novelist William Burroughs, 60's jazz vocalist Mose Allison, and Richard Hell of the new wave rock band Television.

There has never been anyone else like him.

This book is indispensable to anyone interested either in the history of spoken word and performance poetry, or in its future development, because this is pioneering work that, decades ago, went in directions that contemporary artists have yet to surmise. The Poetry Dollars is the inevitable consequence of a web page posted by New York City poetry icons Bob Holman and Jackie Sheeler, Whatever Happened to Poez? during the 15 years Mills spent, after disappearing from the New York scene, as a civil rights lawyer in Los Angeles. Now he is back, married to his former girlfriend, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, with this book from Bowery Books and YBK Publishers.

The work consists of three parts. Part I is an essential instruction guide for anyone who wants to follow his path into the street. Part II, fictionalized memoirs of a career in performance poetry. Part III, the poems themselves.

Author Paul L. Mills is a former rock journalist, whose exploits were recounted by David Felton in a Rolling Stone cover story, and whose work for Boston's Fusion Magazine was hailed by syndicated Boston Globe columnist George Frazier's The Lit'ry Life as "brilliant." He is a 1990 graduate magna cum laude of the Columbia Writing Program.

Click here to read a sample from this book (NOTE: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the sample pages).
Click here to view the Table of Contents.

What is your signature poem? This question was posed to 76 contemporary American women poets who have delighted, inspired, and shocked audiences at New York City's Bowery Poetry Club. And so was born Bowery Women: Poems, an extraordinary anthology including such national treasures as Anne Waldman, Ana Castillo, Sapphire, Jessica Hagedorn, Marie Ponsot, and Marie Howe, former Broadway and HBO Def Jam poets like Ishle Yi Park and Suheir Hammad, slam winners, plus a crowd of new talents.

One poet; one poem; one photo. Each poet offers her greatest hit. In some cases, it is the one poem they're best known for, in others, it is the one most published or most often requested, and in still others, it's a personal favorite.

The works range from elegant classical poems with chiseled lines to free-flowing "slam" pieces to experimental forms. The poets, too, are an unusually diverse group: multi-ethnic, teens to octogenarians, academics to drop-outs, urban to rural.

What emerges is an entertaining, highly readable, challenging and stimulating survey of (mostly) American women poets writing today.

New York's Bowery Poetry Club is where it all started. An extraordinary venue that promotes poetry in all its forms, it's the brainchild of co-editor, poet and educator, Bob Holman. Holman ran readings at St. Mark's and the Nuyorican Poets Café, where he founded and emceed their Poetry Slams from 1988-1996. He's also published seven books, created Mouth Almighty, the spoken word division of Mercury Records, and produced poetry shows for PBS and MTV. Holman teaches at Columbia University.

The book is the third in the Bowery Books series.

Based on years of field work and scholarly research, these independent students of the native American cultures of the southwest have produced both a lively report on contemporary religious and cultural practices, and a readable and engaging study of the history of both the Navajo and the neighboring, even more ancient Puebloans. Forming theories of poorly documented precontact cultural practices based on the forms that evolved during and after Spanish exploration, and that survive today, the Koenigs' "innovative and imaginative study" have developed "ideas that should stimulate much thought and new research," according to David Brugge. 136 illustrations, accompanied by extensive notes. Bibliography. Index.

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Talking Acadian: Communication, Work and Culture provides a look into the lives of the French-speaking American Acadians, and particularly those who left eastern Canada to settle in Massachusetts in the 1960s. This book captures their stories about family life and their values, morés and morals. It also traces the ways that they use communication to develop and maintain their culture.

What the reader learns is that to talk about Acadians you must talk about work. This group gives us new insights into the world of work — a central feature of living for the Acadians and crucial to their self-definition.

There are few sources about this culture and their experiences in the United States. This book makes contributions to communication studies, more specifically the Coordinated Management Meaning by analyzing the situated interactions of this community, demonstrating the capacity of communication to transmit the rules and grammar of a culture, and highlighting Cronen's consequentiality of communication.

John Chetro-Szivos is a communication scholar and chair of the Department of Communication at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from Assumption College, a master's from Anna Maria College, and his doctorate in communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published several works in the field of communication, specifically on the Coordinated Management of Meaning theory and American pragmatism. He is the Chair of the Department of Communication.

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Thirsting for some of that new poetry? Four of New York's Bowery Poetry Club's great bartenders serve up some verse for all what ails you: the devilishly funny pop satires of Firecracker Award-winner Shappy; the trembling white-trash truth serums of Lower East Side Ingenue of the Year, Moonshine Shorey; the rock'n'roll womanifestos of Laurel Barclay; and a series of drink recipe poems by Poetry Slam International's Minister of Fun, Gary Glazner. The Club is known for its all-poet staff, for its 24-hour commitment to serving the world poetry, and for its apple ply bar. Now you can have it all imported into your living room via the technological wizardry of a Book! Cheers!"

Taylor Mead's fourth book—his best and funniest—and his first book in twenty years, A Simple Country Girl, is a collection of poems that are bright, ephemeral, and brilliant downtown Zen.

Once Poet Laureate of Andy Warhol's Factory and now an indomitable octogenarian, Taylor Mead has recently been seen in Jim Jarmusch's latest, "Coffee and Cigarettes." He's a renowned actor, having appeared in innumerable underground classics from Warhol's "Lonesome Cowboys" to the first film of the Beat generation, "The Flower Thief." On stage he created the title role in Frank O'Hara's "The General Returns from One Place to Another" and Michael McClure's "Spider Rabbit."

Taylor Mead continues to be the most avant poet on the block, if he were in Japan, he'd be a National Treasure. Here, he's got a weekly cocktail gig at the Bowery Poetry Club (every Friday at 6:30PM). Who but Taylor Mead could possibly head the list of a series of books published under the Bowery Poetry Club imprint? Described by the New York Times as "that beacon on the Bowery" and proclaimed "the best poetry club in the world" by the Village Voice, the BPC has launched with YBK Publishers a series of books of and on poetry that will bring the freshest poetry to center stage, in fact, much of the work originates right on stage at the Club. Continuing the series of books will bring you the Club's Bartenders, complete with poetry recipes and "The Bowery Girls," five young women poets of the Bowery.

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The author blends a scientist's curiosity with a contagious delight in what he sees. He has the ease of a natural raconteur in showing us how birding has bound together the decades of a long, rich life.

Allen Haydon Benton is professor of Biology, emeritus, at the State University of New York, Fredonia. He has written several books of poetry as well as the definitive "Manual for Field Biology and Ecology and Atlas of Fleas of the Eastern United States.

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YBK Publishers is proud to be the publisher of the psychoanalytic journal, Modern Psychoanalysis.

In continuous publication since 1976, Modern Psychoanalysis, the journal of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, is dedicated to extending the theory and practice of psychoanalysis to the full range of emotional disorders through research.
http://www.cmps.edu/
Subscribe now to Modern Psychoanalysis and save.

Feel its pain—live its pain.

This is not so much a litany of unrequited love as of a wholly pledged but unplaced love. So simply written, its complexity is revealed in the parallel responses felt by the reader.

[from]
Why Can't I Be Like Other Men?

Other men fall in love and marry.
I have fallen in love with you,
but when I am near you
I feel so awkward that I can't even say hello.
How can I marry you if I can't even say hello?

[from]
If You Loved Me

But if you loved me,
oh how my heart would soar.
All my hidden, secret love would
come gushing out,
and I would dedicate my life to you.

[from]
What I'd Do for a Date with You

For a date with you I'd propose to you,
I'd marry you,
I'd spend my life with you,
I'd have twelve kids with you...
OK, 13 kids.

[from]
Hiding My Love

I never look your way.
I look any way but your way.
When you are not in the room,
I cannot even look in the direction where you would have sat.
Someone, I fear, might figure out I was looking at YOUR chair.

No death is more difficult to deal with than the death of one's child. The child's age matters scarcely at all. A parent who grieves the death of an adult child simply has had more years to come to love that child.

Debbie's Stories tells the recollections of her father and the relatives and friends of a young woman who died at the age of thirty-seven after battling lupus, scleroderma, and lung cancer.

These are reminiscences presented by the people in Debbie's life who loved her. They are stories, plain and simple. There is no denouement. There are no suspense-filled passages. And, while this book is about an ending, it, itself, has no ending. It is an outpouring of love exhibited through the recall of feelings and wishes and the love that surrounds those whose lives were touched by this young woman.

This book is a unique opportunity to participate in the lives of people who would otherwise remain unknown to you. It enables sensing somewhat the affect the death of one's child can have even many years after it occurs. And, most importantly, one senses and witnesses the healing effect that storytelling has on those involved. Through its stories this book brings life again through recall and enables communication when communication is obviously impossible.

Debbie's family and friends have been supported in their grief by an international group called The Compassionate Friends and have themselves become involved in forwarding the Friends' efforts. The mission of The Compassionate Friends is to assist families toward the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child of any age and to provide information to help others be supportive.

YBK Publishers is proud to publish Debbie's Stories. The new technology that we use, print-on-demand, enables us to produce very small numbers of books in a commercially viable environment. It provides a platform from which books of limited sales potential can be made nationally available and be successful publishing ventures as well. We are pleased to participate in a process that broadens the publishing base making available to a significant few what would otherwise not be disseminated at all.

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Taoist Healing Gestures is a blend of simple practices with explanations of more complex nontraditional healing methods. The Mudras (patterns of finger placement) illustrated in this book require no knowledge at all of alternative medicine while fostering immediate self-healing. Using the experience of ancient Tao and the masters of Qi Gong, there is special focus on Chinese medical traditions throughout the book.

Emma I. Gonikman, M.D., of Minsk, Belarus, is highly qualified to prepare this work as she was educated at the Medical School at Leningrad, Russia and is now President and Scientific Director of the Center for Natural Medicine, Santana, in Minsk. She is the Chief Consultant on Nontraditional Medicine of the Ministry of Public Health for all of Belarus as well as being the Scientific Director of the Polish Association of Doctors of Alternative Medicine.

Dr. Gonikman has published sixteen other books, some of them, like this one, best-sellers. They are currently available only in Russian.

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Beyond being a poet, Martin S. Dworkin was a writer, photographer and editor of extraordinary ability. As a successful and widely published critic of film, Dworkin broke new ground in maintaining that everything we do in society has an educational aspect. During the fifties and early sixties, he was writing film criticism on a regular basis for such journals as The New Republic, The New Leader, The Progressive, and Canadian Commentator. As a teacher, throughout the sixties and seventies, he offered two highly praised courses of his own origination at Columbia's Teachers College in New York City. He was a research associate at the Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education at Teachers College and was General Editor of his own series, published by Teachers College Press. Also during the sixties and seventies, Dworkin was often invited to lecture at universities on such diverse subjects as photographic education, cinema, film study in higher education, and radio.

Dworkin's poems are mined from the experiences of his life, especially what he lived through during World War II. According to Bernard Looks, the editor of this collection, "They are pervaded by a profound pessimism which, I can attest, characterized him throughout his life. But, despite this pessimism, Dworkin never ceased his struggle to make sense of the wreckage that the war brought and left in its wake during the post war period."

Bernard J. Looks is Emeritus Head of the Social Studies Department of the Great Neck South High School in New York. He has been a lecturer in humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University's department of history, and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University's department of history. In preparation are a collection of the film criticism of Martin Dworkin as well as a memoir of Dworkin's life and work, and a translation of the philosophical memoir, How I Arrived at This Conclusion, by Charles Renouvier, distinguished French philosopher.

Praise for Martin S. Dworkin:

It is not often ...that I meet with the consistent quality and subtle perception to be found in the reviews and critical pieces of [The Progressive by] your columnist Martin Dworkin.
—Amos Vogel, founder, New York Film Festival

It would be hard to find courses anywhere that give teachers a deeper understanding of what education is all about than the two which Martin Dworkin of Teachers College offers in Aesthetics and Education and Education, Ideology, and Mass Communication.
—Charles E. Silberman, author of Crisis in the Classroom and Crisis in Black and White

Can you really learn how to stay in love?

Give up these destructive myths:

• There is a natural gulf between men and women
• Unconditional love is the ideal model for relationships
• Relationships are a contest
• Independence and freedom is the best path to happiness
• Men don't want lasting love as much as women do
• Real love depends on finding the right person

Half of all marriages end in divorce. Staying in love is easier said than done. Too often we find ourselves exhausted by arguments, frustration and disappointment. What it takes is changing the way you think about love, and changing what you do about it!

Find out how loving relationships can last for you—

• Frustration is inevitable—and survivable
• You can create and enjoy the benefits of emotional generosity
• There is power in your relationship that you never knew was there
• You can learn how to express emotion to support, not damage, your relationship
• Learning from conflict is the smart alternative to arguing

Take charge of your relationship instead of just letting it happen.

Tina Birnbaum MA, LCPC and Judy Kelpsas, MS, LCPC are two of the co-founders of Transitions: Associates in Psychotherapy in Chicago where they are well known as the developers of Parenting As Partners. They have each appeared in radio and television features on child development, women's issues and family health, including T. Berry Brazelton's What Every Baby Knows.

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