Leonard Mustazza – författare

Frank Sinatra's influence on American popular culture has been wide reaching and long lasting. This diverse collection of essays written by historians, music critics, and popular culture personalities offers a myriad of perspectives and commentaries on this multitalented legend. The essays attest to the interest in Sinatra that has spanned six decades and shows no sign of diminishing—even after his death. From singer to actor, from mass media personality to humanitarian and cultural trendsetter, the many contributions of Frank Sinatra are brought to life in this entertaining volume.Written to appeal to Sinatra fans, these unique essays, including one by Frank Sinatra himself, are organized into three sections. The first examines Sinatra's fame and the ways in which his image was formed, the second looks at his music, and the final group of essays are personal reminiscences by the people who knew him. Together these essays will provide new material for the ever-growing dialogue about Frank Sinatra's place in and influence over twentieth-century American popular culture.

From the time he left his job as a publicist for General Electric in 1950 to pursue a career as a writer, Kurt Vonnegut has made an indelible mark on American literature. During the first decade of his career, his work appeared chiefly in paperback. With the hardcover publication of Cat's Cradle in 1963, his writings received increasing attention, with criticism of Vonnegut's work flourishing during the decades that followed. This volume traces the critical response to his work.Included in this book are reviews and critical essays on Vonnegut's writings from the roots of his career to the present day. The critical pieces are arranged chronologically from a review of Player Piano to an article on Hocus Pocus. The book systematically covers the critical response to every one of Vonnegut's novels. The first part of the book covers Vonnegut's rise to critical success with the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969, while the second part focuses on his later work, from Breakfast of Champions (1970) through Hocus Pocus (1990). A selected bibliography concludes the work.

This reference work details Frank Sinatra's extensive creative accomplishments and includes biographical information as it relates to his art. A valuable tool for researchers and fans, this book provides access to extensive data, collected from disparate sources, including the first published listing of Internet resources. The information is divided into three parts, each arranged alphabetically, and covers his music, film, radio, and television appearances, and his concerts and humanitarian contributions. A thorough bibliography provides important information on locating additional resources.The only American performer to span seven decades of recording (1930s-1990s), Sinatra is regarded as an American icon. The wealth of information in this reference attests to Sinatra's well-earned reputation as an American musical legend. This reference aptly includes information not only about his creative endeavors but about his humanitarian efforts as well. Because Sinatra is recognized and admired for his musical talent, a large portion of this reference is devoted to his songs and recordings. The alphabetical arrangements of song entries includes information on the songs, record labels, arrangers, and recording dates. Three appendices at the end of the volume provide additional information about the recordings. The encyclopedia concludes with the many awards and honors bestowed upon Sinatra.

Frank Sinatra, an enduring mass-media personality, was not only an accomplished musician, film actor, and concert performer but also a spokesman for civil rights, a humanitarian, and a cultural trendsetter. This bibliography culls material from a variety of disparate sources and catalogues the numerous writings that encompass Sinatra's accomplishments, public persona, and cultural impact. In addition to the unique listing of liner notes, the books, book chapters, articles, and Internet websites span the 60 years that trace the beginning of Sinatra's career in 1939 through his death in 1998.This comprehensive bibliography will attract scholars and Sinatra fans alike as a useful tool for further research. The different types of literature catalogued are divided among separate chapters. An index provides for easy cross-referencing of material and an appendix lists more than 200 of the more notable essays that appeared following Sinatra's death on May 14, 1998.

This title looks at the evolution and cultural significance of daytime talk shows, concluding that they are more than harmless entertainment.

There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre," Kurt Vonnegut writes in the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, his novel about the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. "Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again." Fittingly, Slaughterhouse-Five is an odd sort of book—both an antiwar novel and science fiction, a dark comedy as well as a tragedy. Published at the height of the Vietnam War protests, it seized the imaginations of thousands of young people and made Vonnegut into an overnight sensation. Now, more than forty years after its publication, scholars are only beginning to assess Vonnegut's unique achievement with this stoic yet compassionate treatment of what remains one of the most deadly military strikes in European history.Edited and with an introduction by Leonard Mustazza, Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Penn State Abington, this volume in the Critical Insights series brings together some of the best classic and contemporary criticism on Vonnegut's famous novel. Mustazza's introduction describes the cultural moment in which Slaughterhouse-Five appeared, and Sarah Fay, writing forThe Paris Review, analyzes Vonnegut's unique comic sensibility.For readers studying Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time, a quartet of introductory essays provide a framework for gaining a deeper understanding of the novel. Jerome Klinkowitz first reviews the vicissitudes of the novel's reputation among critics, readers, and scholars. Kevin Alexander Boon then demonstrates how Vonnegut borrows techniques from film to hold together his fragmented narrative. David Simmons compares Slaughterhouse-Five with another classic antiwar novel, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and Christina Jarvis explains how the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement influenced both Vonnegut and Thomas Pychon as they wrote their novels about World War II.The volume then continues with a selection of classic and contemporary essays. William Rodney Allen offers a comprehensive overview of the novel and its composition, and Donald J. Greiner, Jerome Klinkowtiz, and Maurice J. O'Sullivan, Jr., all examine the autobiographical nature of Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonnegut's attempts to come to terms with the events he witnessed in Dresden. James Lundquist describes the formal techniques Vonnegut devised to meet the challenge of writing about such an unimaginable tragedy as Dresden, and Wayne D. McGinnis treats the novel's unusual structure, showing how its unresolved circularity mimics the irresolution and circularity of death and time. T. J. Matheson also offers an analysis of the novel's formal elements, concentrating in particular on how its first chapter sets up the themes Vonnegut will follow throughout the book.C. Barry Chabot also takes up Vonnegut's treatment of death and his perpetual comment on it, "so it goes," and Hans van Stralen examines Vonnegut's postmodern renewal of existentialist themes. The novel's science-fiction elements are treated by Arnold Edelstein, who argues that Billy Pilgrim's "time traveling" is actually a fantasy Billy concocted to escape his memories and responsibilities, and Susanne Vees-Gulani extends this argument in a psychoanalytic reading of Billy and his creator. Dolores K. Gros Louis, Donald E. Morse, and Leonard Mustazza find biblical allusions in the novel. Gros Louis reads Billy Pilgrim as an ironic Christ figure, while Morse draws parallels between the destruction of Dresden and the book of Job, and Mustazza finds further connections between Eden and the alien world Tralfamador. Joyce Nelson makes a comparative analysis of the novel and its film adaptation.Rounding out the volume are a brief biography of Vonnegut, a chronology of his life, and a comprehensive bibliography of the major pieces of criticism on Slaughterhouse-Five for readers wishing to study the novel in greater depth.