January 6, 2011

"The best 30’s movie you may never have heard of; other must-see Cagney films from the early 30’s are Public Enemy, Picture Snatcher, and Lady Killer."

"The finest recent anthology of drama by Renaissance playwrights not named Shakespeare."

"Though it never dazzles as Benjamin’s writings do, this is a refreshingly rigorous attempt to define and explain mass entertainment."

"The most imaginative and persuasive book on pre-war Hollywood talkies that I’ve read."

lucidly translated new five-volume collection of work from the one of the most influential cultural critics of the 30’s, with all three versions of his famous essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.'"

"A candidate for the best Shakespeare play that’s rarely read; when Shakespeare takes command of this collaborative effort in Act 3, his arrival on the scene is unmistakable."

"An exhilarating book that explodes one conventional assumption about Shakespeare after another, especially the standard view that he had no interest in publishing his plays."

"A scholarly whodunit on the murder of Shakespeare’s chief early rival Christopher Marlowe in 1592; more than any other book on the period, it evokes the seaminess, instability, and menace of the London theater in Shakespeare’s time."

"An unforgettable account of the relationship between Shakespeare’s life and his work."