Best Selling Books by David Mamet

Compared to some of its New England neighbors, Vermont has seemed to long-time resident David Mamet a place of intrinsic energy and progressiveness, love and commonality. It has lived up to the old story that settlers came up the Connecticut River and turned right to get to New Hampshire and left to get to Vermont. Is Vermont''s tradition of live and let live an accident of geography, the happy by-product of 200 years of national neglect, an emanation of its Scots-Irish regional character? Exploring the ways in which his decades in Vermont have shaped his character and his work, Mamet examines each of these strands and how the state''s free-thinking tradition can survive in an age of increasing conglomeration. The result is a highly personal and compelling portrait of a truly unique place.

David Mamet has been a controversial, defining force in nearly every creative endeavor-now he turns his attention to politics. In recent years, David Mamet realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview. In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a ''Brain-Dead Liberal''", in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book True and False. Now Mamet employs his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming. The legendary playwright, author, director, and filmmaker pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, Mamet will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America''s current direction.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet ranks among the century''s most influential writers for stage and screen. His dialogue--abrasive, rhythmic--illuminates a modern aesthetic evocative of Samuel Beckett. His plots--surprising, comic, topical--have evoked comparisons to masters from Alfred Hitchcock to Arthur Miller. Here are two screenplays demonstrating the astounding range of Mamet''s talents. The Spanish Prisoner, a neo-noir thriller about a research-and-development cog hoodwinked out of his own brilliant discovery, demonstrates Mamet''s incomparable use of character in a dizzying tale of twists and mistaken identity. The Winslow Boy, Mamet''s revisitation of Terence Rattigan''s classic 1946 play, tells of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and the tug of war for truth that ensues between his middle-class family and the Royal Navy. Crackling with wit, intelligent and surprising, The Spanish Prisoner and The Winslow Boy celebrate Mamet''s unique genius and our eternal fascination with the extraordinary predicaments of the common man.

If theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, "many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical." As always, Mamet delivers on his promise: in Theatre, the acclaimed author of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed the Plow calls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. For Mamet, either actors are good or they are non-actors, and good actors generally work best without the interference of a director, however well-intentioned. Issue plays, political correctness, method actors, impossible directions, Stanislavksy, and elitists all fall under Mamet''s critical gaze. To students, teachers, and directors who crave a blast of fresh air in a world that can be insular and fearful of change, Theatre throws down a gauntlet that challenges everyone to do better, including Mamet himself.

In these two moving early plays, David Mamet displays the humor, sensitivity, and ear for language that have made him one of the most celebrated playwrights in American theater today. Reunion depicts the awkward, tender meeting between a father and a daughter drawn together by their loneliness after twenty years of separation. Their cautious small talk, filled with evasion and cliché, gradually exposes the terrifying isolation in which they live, and ultimately, their great need for each other. In the short vignette Dark Pony, a father tells a favorite bedtime story to comfort his young daughter as they drive home late at night. A foray into the realm of legend, the story of a young Indian brave and his trusty horse, Dark Pony has been called “a lovely, tiny moment of a play” by Julius Novick of The Village Voice.

From the Pulitzer Prize- winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross, here is a collection of thirty-two one-act plays and short dramatic pieces that David Mamet himself considers to be some of the best writing he has ever done.

An old man uses an antique watch to teach a young boy facing his first Bar Mitzvah about man and God, about the Holocaust, and about the richness and responsibility of being a Jew, in a wonderful illustrated gift book. 15,000 first printing.

So, what happens in Uncle Vanya? Not much; just life, played out over four acts. There are rich people, and there are people who work for the rich people, whom the rich people don''t really care about. There is a gun fired in anger and desperation, but there aren''t any bodies to carry off stage. There are men making fools of themselves over women. There are those who accept their fates and wait for their rewards in heaven, and there are others who don''t care one way or another. Chekhov''s play moves so languidly that, without a vibrant cast, an understanding director, and a lively translation, it stands the chance of passing under the radar of the average audience. The reworking of the script aims at accessibility, replacing the "outdated colloquialisms" and "brittle prose" of earlier translations.

Unpublished printer''s proof of the title: The old religion.

Spanning centuries and continents, Mamet uses war and its players to explore, among other themes, redemption and forgiveness as they unfold in the context of conflict in the form of three novellas. In The Redwing, the first of the three novellas, a 19th-century Secret Service naval officer turned prisoner, then novelist, and finally memoirist recounts his own transformations during the course of his service and imprisonment. The protagonist in Notes on Plain Warfare examines religion through the prism of the American Indian wars. Finally, The Handle and the Hold is a vivid, dialogue-driven tale of two ex-military men who steal a plane in the month before the Israeli War of Independence.

Five unique short plays for television by one of America''s most celebrated playwrights. A ''Waitress in Yellowstone'' (or: ''Always Tell the Truth'') is a parable about an honest waitress and a corrupt congressman. In Bradford, a new police chief arriving in a small New England town is plunged into the midst of its cozy secrets and uncovers the truth behind his predeces-sor''s mysterious fatal hunting accident. The Museum of Science and Industry Story is a fantasy about the adventures of a man locked in a museum overnight. A Wasted Weekend is a 1987 episode of Hill Street Blues focusing on four cops and their ill-fated hunting trip. In We Will Take You There, Danny and Mike, partners in an unusual "taxi service to the wilds," offer themselves as guides to the most remote areas of the world. Displaying Mamet''s characteristic ear for language and unsettling moral vision, these plays are among his darkest, funniest, and most entertaining. Includes: ''A Waitress in Yellowstone'' (or: ''Always Tell the Truth'') ''Bradford'' ''The Museum of Science and Industry Story'' ''A Wasted Weekend'' ''We Will Take You There''

In this new collection, fans will discover the author''s literary sharing on the nature of creativity, the challenge of aging, and his most intimate interests.

Part of the Jewish Encounter series As might be expected from this fiercely provocative writer, David Mamet’s interest in anti-Semitism is not limited to the modern face of an ancient hatred but encompasses as well the ways in which many Jews have themselves internalized that hatred. Using the metaphor of the Wicked Son at the Passover seder—the child who asks, “What does this story mean to you?”—Mamet confronts what he sees as an insidious predilection among some Jews to seek truth and meaning anywhere—in other religions, in political movements, in mindless entertainment—but in Judaism itself. At the same time, he explores the ways in which the Jewish tradition has long been and still remains the Wicked Son in the eyes of the world. Written with the searing honesty and verbal brilliance that is the hallmark of Mamet’s work, The Wicked Son is a scathing look at one of the most destructive and tenacious forces in contemporary life, a powerfully thought-provoking and important book.

Short Plays / Comedy / 2m, 3f / 3 ints. This long-running Off Broadway hit features the work of three gifted playwrights. David Mamet''s AN INTERVIEW is an oblique, mystifying interrogation. A sleazy lawyer is forced to answer difficult questions and to admit the truth about his life and career. The why and where of the interrogation provide a surprise ending to this brilliant twenty minute comedy. In HOTLINE by Elaine May, a neurotic woman with enough urban angst to fill a neighborhood calls a

A “curiously compelling” novel by the Pulitzer prize–winning playwright in which the internet crashes and the past is reconstructed from memories. (Publishers Weekly) When the Internet—and the collective memory of the twenty-first century—crashes, the past is reassembled from the downloaded memories of Ginger, wife of ex-President Wilson. The transcripts take the reader on an intellectually breathtaking tour through David Mamet’s baroque, fragmented world, where nothing is certain except the certainty bestowed by the academy. “As erudite as can be, engagingly mischievous and occasionally a little chilling.” —The Sunday Times “Enticing . . . Mamet targets with luscious savvy and deadpan irony the limitless pretense of academics.” —Review of Contemporary Fiction fiction;speculative;novel;satire;pastiche;academic life;scholarship;near-future;experimental;Mars;settlement;colonization;science fiction;internet;dependency;social;political;historical;impact;futurist;modernist;literary;criticism;popular;culture;philosophical;humorous FIC052000 FICTION / Satire FIC064000 FICTION / Absurdist FIC028120 FICTION / Science Fiction / Humorous 9781683358794 Seeing Central Park Miller, Sara C

Bobby Gold is a smooth-talking Jewish homicide detective. He is annoyed when he becoems involved in a routine investigation into the murder of an elderly Jewish woman in a black ghetto. He is more interested in a high-profile murder case that he nd his partner are on the verge of breaking. But the old woman''s murder draws him into a world of anti-Semitism and Jewish terrorism, where his loyalties are blurred, and he is forced to confront his own attitudes about being Jewish.

First staged in Britain in 1983, Glengarry Glen Ross is the tale of four real-estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and was made into a film, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin, in 1992.

David Mamet shows us one evening, night and morning in the life of a couple, Nick and Ruth, who are spending some time in a summerhouse. As they pass the time, sharing stories and arguments, the mechanics of their relationship - and by implication, the relationships between women and men generally - come into focus.

The purpose of theater, like magic, like religion . . . is to inspire cleansing awe. What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? David Mamet, one of our greatest living playwrights, tackles these questions with bracing directness and aphoristic authority. He believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature, that we create drama out of everything from today''s weather to next year''s elections. But the highest expression of this drive remains the theater. With a cultural range that encompasses Shakespeare, Bretcht, and Ibsen, Death of a Salesman and Bad Day at Black Rock, Mamet shows us how to distinguish true drama from its false variants. He considers the impossibly difficult progression between one act and the next and the mysterious function of the soliloquy. The result, in Three Uses of the Knife, is an electrifying treatise on the playwright''s art that is also a strikingly original work of moral and aesthetic philosophy.

''A Life in the Theatre'' shows the relationship between two stage actors - Robert, the older, and John, the younger - who are playing side by side in a season of plays. We see them both off stage and on as their relationship evolves from one of professional solidarity to one marked by bitterness and division, with John''s promise as a young actor beginning to be realised just as Robert''s talent starts to wane.