James Urbaniak

It was the best summer of his life and the darkest days he ever lived. At thirteen years old, Danny Novak faced challenges of self-acceptance, abuse, mortality, and death. It was the best summer of his life and the darkest days he ever lived. When Danny arrives at Camp Baker in June 1978, he is happy to be away. Away from his mom, his bratty little brother, their crappy house, and his sad life. Danny is the youngest boy hired to work as camp staff, but he’s confident he’ll fit in. He quickly learns that he doesn’t. Mark Colby, at sixteen, has a bad reputation that follows wherever he goes. He works on the waterfront and is the strongest, meanest boy on staff. When Danny fails a swim test to work on the waterfront, a senior staff member forces Mark and Danny to spend every afternoon together. Mark wants nothing to do with the boy who has ruined his summer, but he must teach Danny to swim or get sent home. Home is the last place Mark wants to go. The other boys on staff are afraid of Mark. Danny fears Mark too, but he’s determined to be on the waterfront crew. If Danny passes the test to work on the waterfront, will the boys accept him as one of them? On the Waterfront is an engaging tale of two boys. Their struggles for acceptance, understanding, friendship, and learning that suffering can lead to a meaningful life.

Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, and NPR In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keaton’s unique creative genius in the context of his time. Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman. Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keaton’s life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak: first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Over the course of his action-packed seventy years on earth, his life trajectory intersected with those of such influential figures as the escape artist Harry Houdini, the pioneering Black stage comedian Bert Williams, the television legend Lucille Ball, and literary innovators like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett. In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs. Far more than a biography or a work of film history, Camera Man is a wide-ranging meditation on modernity that paints a complex portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist.

To much of the world, Jamie Farr will always be Corporal Maxwell Klinger, forever trying (and failing) to get a Section 8 discharge from the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital - more often know as M*A*S*H. M*A*S*H was more than just a TV show. It entertained people, and it also tried to say something- that people count, that life is sacred, and that war is stupid. Summing up 50 years of television history, TV Guide's editor's declared M*A*S*H the best sitcom in history. It's final episode, a 2 1/2 hour special on February 28th 1983, turned out to be the highest-rated show in TV history, with 125,000,000 views. People still watch M*A*S*H reruns in fact. Jamie Farr, born of Lebanese immigrant parents in Toledo, learned to live with Klinger and make Klinger's comic character work for him. When he didn't get cast in Hollywood because of his the public's identification with the characters in M*A*S*H, he worked on stage all over the US and Canada. This book is a memoir of his acting and Broadway career.