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Fleabag: The Sunday Times Bestseller (Nhb Modern Plays Ser.)
by Phoebe Waller-BridgeBestseller in the UK, Sunday Times, November 2019.The complete Fleabag. Every Word. Every Side-eye. Every Fox.Fleabag: The Scriptures includes new writing from Phoebe Waller-Bridge alongside the filming scripts and the never-before-seen stage directions from the Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA winning series. 'Perfect' Guardian'Perfect' Daily Telegraph'Perfect' Stylist 'Perfect' Independent'Perfect' Evening Standard 'Perfect' Metro'Perfect' Irish Times 'Perfect' RTE'Perfect' Spectator'Perfect' Refinery29'Perfect' Catholic Herald'Perfection' Financial Times***HAIRDRESSERNO.(pointing to Claire)That is EXACTLY what she asked for.FLEABAGNo it's not. We want compensation.HAIRDRESSERClaire?CLAIREI've got two important meetings and I look like a pencil.HAIRDRESSERNO. Don't blame me for your bad choices. Hair isn't everything.FLEABAGWow.HAIRDRESSERWhat?FLEABAGHair. Is. Everything. We wish it wasn't so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is. It's the difference between a good day and a bad day. We're meant to think that it is a symbol of power, a symbol of fertility, some people are exploited for it and it pays your fucking bills. Hair is everything, Anthony.
Fleabag: The Scriptures
by Phoebe Waller-BridgeGo deeper into the groundbreaking, Emmy-winning series with this must-have collection—&“a completist&’s dream of a book, including the show&’s full scripts and Waller-Bridge&’s commentary&” (Vogue). &“Her coat falls open. She only has her bra on underneath. She pulls out the little sculpture of the woman with no arms. It sits on her lap. Two women. One real. One not. Both with their innate femininity out.&” Phoebe Waller-Bridge&’s critically acclaimed, utterly unique series Fleabag took the world by storm with its piercing dialogue, ruthlessly dry wit, and deeply human drama. In Fleabag: The Scriptures, Waller-Bridge brings together for the first time the complete filming scripts of the first and second seasons, annotated with never-before-seen stage directions and exclusive commentary on her creative process and the making of the series. Now recognized as one of today&’s most essential voices, she delivers powerful insights into her now-iconic protagonist: the hilarious, emotionally damaged, sexually unapologetic woman who can make viewers laugh, cry, and cringe in a single scene. Essential for any fan, Fleabag: The Scriptures is the ultimate companion to a landmark series.
Flesh and Other Fragments of Love
by Evelyne de la Chenelière Linda GaboriauWhen Pierre and Simone planned a vacation to the Irish coast, they were hoping to revive their failing marriage. What they weren't expecting was to stumble upon the body of Mary, a drowned woman, during a walk along the beach. It's not long before curiosity and obsession take over, and the couple begin to piece together Mary's history using both facts and their imaginations. As her story comes alive, Mary's presence integrates itself into Pierre and Simone's lives, resurrecting their memories and regrets, fears and obsessions. Now they must struggle more than ever to revisit the past in order to write their own story.
The Flick
by Annie Baker"Funny, heartbreaking, sly and unblinking...The Flick may be the best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity and profound uniqueness of theater." --Jesse Green, New York "Hilarious and ineffably touching...Ms. Baker's peerless aptitude for exploring how people grope their way toward a sense of equanimity, even as they learn to accept disappointment, is among the things that make her such a gifted writer...This lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness." --Charles Isherwood, New York Times "This hypnotic, heartbreaking micro-epic about movies and moving on is irreducibly theatrical." --David Cote, TimeOut New York In a rundown movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees sweep up popcorn in the empty aisles and tend to one of the last thirty-five-millimeter projectors in the state. With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country's most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. ANNIE BAKER'S works include The Aliens (Obie Award), Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation (Obie Award), Nocturama, and an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Her work has been produced at more than a hundred theaters in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries. Recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Steinberg Playwright Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. She is a resident playwright at Signature Theatre.
Flickering Empire
by Michael Glover Smith Adam SelzerFlickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry tells the fascinating but too little known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of film production in America in the years prior to the rise of Hollywood (1907--1913). As entertaining as it is informative, the book straddles the worlds of academia and popular non-fiction alike in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures like Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux and Orson Welles are major players in Flickering Empire -- in addition to important but forgotten industry giants like 'Colonel' William Selig, George Spoor and Gilbert 'Broncho Billy' Anderson.
Flight (Wingfield)
by Garth WingfieldDrama / 4m, 2f / Unit Set / When he touched down in Paris after more than 30 hours in the air, he became the first person to cross the Atlantic in an airplane... and an instantaneous star, adored the world over. But that was only the first leg of his complicated journey. Welcome to the world of FLIGHT, a powerful, provocative new play. Following Charles Lindbergh during 14 perilous years of his life - from the journey to Paris through the kidnapping of his son and up to the beginning of World War II - FLIGHT is a rich examination of a singular American life... and a thoroughly fascinating theatrical experience.
Flip
by Tom RooneyAll Groups / Comedy/Drama / 4 m., 4 f. / Interior unit set or in the round / Hypocrisy among modern America professionals is examined with wit and irony. Dick is a prominent lawyer handling a high profile child custody case. David is a notorious OB/GYN and Lisa is his rambunctious girlfriend who is ten years younger than everyone else. Judy is a burned out party girl willing to settle for dull but kind Arthur. They gather in the proper middle class home of Jake and John for a fifth wedding anniversary celebration. When Jake turns up inexplicably pregnant, the party goers must somehow reconcile things they have been saying with reality. / Winner of the James D. Phelen Award for Literature awarded by the San Francisco Foundation: "Tom Rooney's play creates an ordinary meeting of people speaking an apparently ordinary language, but charged with Rooney's sense of humor, timing and an ever changing focus."
The Floating Island Plays
by Eduardo MachadoIncludes The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa, Fabiola, In the Eye of the Hurricane and Broken Eggs.
The Flood: and other misadventures of the female prisoners of the St. Lawrence Market
by Leah Simone Bowen“I bore him fourteen children and he had me down here faster than lightning.” In 1887, women were property and could be imprisoned for any reason. Jail was considered a place for the criminal, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the marginalized. In the basement prison below Toronto’s largest market, two women named Mary—one a shunned, pregnant Irish immigrant, the other a vilified Mississauga woman—become an unlikely pair as they form a friendship within their cold, shared cell. Their bond threatens fellow inmate Sophia—who calls herself the first Black woman in Canada and the leader of the prisoners—and she plots to use the women to gain better treatment for herself. But as melting ice water pours into the prison from Lake Ontario, the forgotten women of Toronto must come together to survive. Inspired by true accounts and the history of Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market, The Flood gives voice to the little-known stories of early female prisoners in Canada.
Flop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century: How They Happened, When They Happened (And What We’ve Learned)
by Stephen PurdyFlop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century offers a provocative and revealing historical narrative of a group of musicals that cost millions, that were created by world-renowned writers and directors, and that had spectacular potential… but bombed anyway. Stephen Purdy asks the reader to consider what the legendary creators of Les Misérables, pop superstar Elton John, and wunderkind Julie Taymor have in common besides being inspired storytellers of iconic Broadway musicals. The answer is that they also all created shows that, for one reason or a dozen, flopped. This book shares the story of what can happen when formidable creative teams of sell-out musicals attempt to repeat their success but miss the mark. First-hand accounts from the cast members, backstage staff, and the creative team, combined with a wealth of secondary sources gathered from press articles, reviews, and critical commentary, offer an intriguing insight into the factors behind success and failure in the musical theatre business. This is a fascinating book for students, scholars, practitioners, and fans of musical theatre that contains thoughtful observations about luck and creative differences, botched adaptations, and alienated audiences, all of which can determine the fate of a musical.
Flop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century: Part I: The Creatives
by Stephen PurdyFlop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century offers a provocative and revealing historical narrative of a group of musicals that cost millions and had spectacular potential ... but bombed anyway. Stephen Purdy examines at length the production histories, which are all bound together by a common thread. The book focuses the lens on several seemingly infallible theatre creatives who weren’t destined to repeat their successes with the shows discussed in this volume. As such, Purdy grounds the discussion by examining what the legendary creators of Les Misérables, pop superstar Elton John, wunderkind Julie Taymor, and many others have in common besides being inspired storytellers of iconic Broadway musicals. The answer is that they also all created shows that, for one reason or a dozen, didn’t find an audience. Flop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century shares the story of what can happen when formidable creative teams of sell-out musicals attempt to re-create their success but miss the mark. This is an engaging book for students, practitioners, and fans of musical theatre that contains thoughtful observations about luck and creative differences, botched adaptations, and alienated audiences, all of which can determine the fate of a musical.
Flora Fantastic: From Orchidelirium to Ecocritical Contemporary Art (ISSN)
by Corina L. Apostol Tashima ThomasThis book delves deep into colonial botany, utilizing mediums such as historical investigation, cinema, photography, live performance, and installation art.Surveying perspectives from Europe, the U.S., Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, it positions plants—both native and foreign—as active participants and silent observers in colonial narratives. By viewing through the prism of visual and performance art, this book touches on diverse topics like the economic value of plants, traditional and Western medicine, state‑endorsed scientific endeavors, migration patterns of flora and people, bio‑contact areas, nationalistic views, and botanical diplomacy. It offers fresh insights into colonial botany’s multifaceted history, emphasizing the intricate interplay between Eastern, Western, and Southern nations during the twentieth century and its enduring impact today.Serving as an invaluable addition to the realms of art history, performance studies, botany, visual culture, decolonial initiatives, and environmental politics, this book arrives at a pivotal moment when its insights are most crucial.
A Florentine Tragedy: La Sainte Courtisane (fragments)
by Oscar WildeA Florentine Tragedy is a fragment of a never-completed play by Oscar Wilde. The subject concerns Simone, a wealthy 16th century Florentine merchant who finds his wife Bianca in the arms of a local prince, Guido Bardi.
Flowers in the Attic: A Stage Play (Dollanganger)
by V. C. AndrewsThe only official stage play of V.C. Andrews's enduring classic of forbidden love--adapted by Andrew Neiderman (The Devil's Advocate). Experience in this new format the original story that captured the world's imagination and earned V.C. Andrews a fiercely devoted readership.At the top of the stairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent, and struggling to stay alive . . . They were a perfect family, golden and carefree--until a heartbreaking tragedy shattered their happiness. Now, for the sake of an inheritance that will ensure their future, the children must be hidden away out of sight, as if they never existed. Kept on the top floor of their grandmotherds vast mansion, their loving mother assures them it will be just for a little while. But as brutal days swell into agonizing months and years, Cathy, Chris, and twins Cory and Carrie, realize their survival is at the mercy of their cruel and superstitious grandmother . . . and this cramped and helpless world may be the only one they ever know.Book One of the Dollanganger series, the sequels include Petals in the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. Then experience the attic from Christopher's point of view in Christopher's Diary: Secrets of Foxworth and Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger.
Flowers in the Attic: A Stage Play (Dollanganger)
by V.C. AndrewsA Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
The Flu Season and Other Plays
by Will Eno"Will Eno is one of the finest younger playwrights I have come across in a number of years. His work is inventive, disciplined and, at the same time, wild and evocative. His ear is splendid and his mind is agile."--Edward Albee "An original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humor and pain of life. Eno specializes in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged."--Guardian Winner of the 2004 Oppenheimer Award for best New York debut by an American playwright, The Flu Season is a reluctant love story, in spite of itself. Set in a hospital and a theater, it is a play that revels in ambivalence and derives a flailing energy from its doubts whether a love story is ever really a love story. Will Eno has been called "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation" (The New York Times)--he is a playwright with an extraordinary voice and a singular theatrical vision. Also included in this volume are Tragedy: A Tragedy and Intermission.
Flyer
by Kate AspengrenDrama / 4 m., 5 f. (to play 21 roles). / Unit set. / While the Project Mercury astronauts carried America's hopes and dreams into space, NASA was busy training another elite corps of pilots, some with more flight experience than John Glenn and company. None of this group soared into space; they were women and here is their story. Flyer focuses on the hopes and dreams of one young pilot in particular. Fran Douglas rises above family scorn and her fiancee's condescension to join the women's corps. Action scenes involving NASA, Congress and Fran's family are intertwined with dream sequences about an intrepid black barnstormer, Bessie Coleman, who died in the 1920s performing an aerial feat. Bessie warns Fran about the many obstacles she will have to overcome to achieve her dream, a dream left unfulfilled when NASA pulled the plug on training women for space flight. / "This story needed to be told and Ms. Aspengren tells it brilliantly." The Westsider.
Foam Patterning and Construction Techniques: Turning 2D Designs into 3D Shapes
by Mary McClungFoam Patterning and Construction Techniques: Turning 2D Designs into 3D Shapes explains how to create your theatrical prop, puppet, or costume design using the unique and tricky medium of foam. Step-by-step instructions, photographs, and explanations illustrate how to translate your design from paper to reality by creating custom "skin" patterns, followed by creation of a foam mockup. The book details how to bring your project to life with varied finishing techniques, including using fur and fabric coverings and dying and painting foam. Numerous supplies, tools, and safety procedures and protocols are also covered.
Focus on Macbeth
by John Russell BrownFirst published in 1982. Macbeth exercises a strange influence over readers and theatre audiences: the words of the text offer no easy clue to meaning or significance and in dramatic structure the play is very different from other Shakespearean tragedies. Many kinds of study are needed in order to understand the tragedy of Macbeth and this book provides a wide range of studies that respect the individuality of the text and examine it from different viewpoints. Contents include: Themes and Structure; Characterization and Narrative, Visual Effects, Performance in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; Historical and Political Background; Role of Witchcraft; Game Theory. Contributors include: John Russell Brown, Derek Russell Davis, Gareth Lloyd Evans, R A Foakes, Michael Goldman, Robin Grove, Peter Hall, Michael Hawkins, Brian Morris, D J Palmer, Marvin Rosenberg and Peter Stallybrass.
Folger Shakespeare Library: Coriolanus
by William Shakespeare Barbara A. Mowat Paul WerstineThe Enriched Classics series offers readers such features as: • A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information • A chronology of the author’s life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book’s historical context • An outline of key themes and plot points to help guide the reader’s own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader’s experience
Folk Theatres of North India: Contestation, Amalgamation and Transference
by Karan SinghThis book examines folk theatres of North India as a unique performative structure, a counter stream to the postulations of Sanskrit and Western realistic theatre. In focusing on their historical, social and cultural imprints, it explores how these theatres challenge the linearity of cultural history and subvert cultural hegemony. The book looks at diverse forms of theatre such as svangs, nautanki, tamasha, all with conventions like open performative space, free mingling of spectators and actors, flexibility in roles and genres, etc. It discusses the genesis, history and the independent trajectory of folk theatres; folk theatre and Sanskrit dramaturgy; cinematic legacy; and theatrical space as performance besides investigating causes, inter-relations within socio-cultural factors, and the performance principles underlying them. It shows how these theatres effectively contest delimitation of human creative impulses (as revealed in classical Sanskrit theatre) from structuring as also of normative impulses of religion and culture, while amalgamating influences from Western theatre, newly-rising religious reform movements of 19th century India, tantra and Bhakti. It further highlights their ability to adapt and reinvent themselves in accordance with spatial and temporal transformations to constitute an important anthropological layer of Indian society. Comprehensive and empirically rich, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of cultural studies, theatre, film and performance studies, sociology, political studies, popular culture, and South Asian studies.
Follies of God
by James GrissomAn extraordinary book; one that almost magically makes clear how Tennessee Williams wrote; how he came to his visions of Amanda Wingfield, his Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, Alma Winemiller, Lady Torrance, and the other characters of his plays that transformed the American theater of the mid-twentieth century; a book that does, from the inside, the almost impossible--revealing the heart and soul of artistic inspiration and the unwitting collaboration between playwright and actress, playwright and director.At a moment in the life of Tennessee Williams when he felt he had been relegated to a "lower artery of the theatrical heart," when critics were proclaiming that his work had been overrated, he summoned to New Orleans a hopeful twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written an unsolicited letter to the great playwright asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on the playwright's behalf to find out if he, Tennessee Williams, or his work, had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him, those who had led him to what he called the blank page, "the pale judgment." Among the more than seventy giants of American theater and film Grissom sought out, chief among them the women who came to Williams out of the fog: Lillian Gish, tiny and alabaster white, with enormous, lovely, empty eyes ("When I first imagined a woman at the center of my fantasia, I . . . saw the pure and buoyant face of Lillian Gish. . . . [She] was the escort who brought me to Blanche") . . . Maureen Stapleton, his Serafina of The Rose Tattoo, a shy, fat little girl from Troy, New York, who grew up with abandoned women and sad hopes and whose job it was to cheer everyone up, goad them into going to the movies, urge them to bake a cake and have a party. ("Tennessee and I truly loved each other," said Stapleton, "we were bound by our love of the theater and movies and movie stars and comedy. And we were bound to each other particularly by our mothers: the way they raised us; the things they could never say . . . The dreaming nature, most of all") . . . Jessica Tandy ("The moment I read [Portrait of a Madonna]," said Tandy, "my life began. I was, for the first time . . . unafraid to be ruthless in order to get something I wanted") . . . Kim Stanley . . . Bette Davis . . . Katharine Hepburn . . . Jo Van Fleet . . . Rosemary Harris . . . Eva Le Gallienne ("She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper") . . . Julie Harris . . . Geraldine Page ("A titanic talent") . . . And the men who mattered and helped with his creations, including Elia Kazan, José Quintero, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud . . . James Grissom's Follies of God is a revelation, a book that moves and inspires and uncannily catches that illusive "dreaming nature."From the Hardcover edition.
Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog
by James GrissomAn extraordinary book; one that almost magically makes clear how Tennessee Williams wrote; how he came to his visions of Amanda Wingfield, his Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, Alma Winemiller, Lady Torrance, and the other characters of his plays that transformed the American theater of the mid-twentieth century; a book that does, from the inside, the almost impossible--revealing the heart and soul of artistic inspiration and the unwitting collaboration between playwright and actress, playwright and director.At a moment in the life of Tennessee Williams when he felt he had been relegated to a "lower artery of the theatrical heart," when critics were proclaiming that his work had been overrated, he summoned to New Orleans a hopeful twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written an unsolicited letter to the great playwright asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on the playwright's behalf to find out if he, Tennessee Williams, or his work, had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him, those who had led him to what he called the blank page, "the pale judgment." Among the more than seventy giants of American theater and film Grissom sought out, chief among them the women who came to Williams out of the fog: Lillian Gish, tiny and alabaster white, with enormous, lovely, empty eyes ("When I first imagined a woman at the center of my fantasia, I . . . saw the pure and buoyant face of Lillian Gish. . . . [She] was the escort who brought me to Blanche") . . . Maureen Stapleton, his Serafina of The Rose Tattoo, a shy, fat little girl from Troy, New York, who grew up with abandoned women and sad hopes and whose job it was to cheer everyone up, goad them into going to the movies, urge them to bake a cake and have a party. ("Tennessee and I truly loved each other," said Stapleton, "we were bound by our love of the theater and movies and movie stars and comedy. And we were bound to each other particularly by our mothers: the way they raised us; the things they could never say . . . The dreaming nature, most of all") . . . Jessica Tandy ("The moment I read [Portrait of a Madonna]," said Tandy, "my life began. I was, for the first time . . . unafraid to be ruthless in order to get something I wanted") . . . Kim Stanley . . . Bette Davis . . . Katharine Hepburn . . . Jo Van Fleet . . . Rosemary Harris . . . Eva Le Gallienne ("She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper") . . . Julie Harris . . . Geraldine Page ("A titanic talent") . . . And the men who mattered and helped with his creations, including Elia Kazan, José Quintero, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud . . . James Grissom's Follies of God is a revelation, a book that moves and inspires and uncannily catches that illusive "dreaming nature."
Food and Theatre on the World Stage (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Dorothy Chansky Ann Folino WhitePutting food and theatre into direct conversation, this volume focuses on how food and theatre have operated for centuries as partners in the performative, symbolic, and literary making of meaning. Through case studies, literary analyses, and performance critiques, contributors examine theatrical work from China, Japan, India, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, England, the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Zimbabwe, addressing work from classical, popular, and contemporary theatre practices. The investigation of uses of food across media and artistic genres is a burgeoning area of scholarly investigation, yet regarding representation and symbolism, literature and film have received more attention than theatre, while performance studies scholars have taken the lead in examining the performative aspects of food events. This collection looks across dramatic genres, historical periods, and cultural contexts, and at food in all of its socio-political, material complexity to examine the particular problems and potentials of invoking and using food in live theatre. The volume considers food as a transhistorical, global phenomenon across theatre genres, addressing the explosion of food studies at the end of the twentieth century that has shown how food is a crucial aspect of cultural identity.
Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays (Literary And Scientific Cultures Of Early Modernity Ser.)
by Joan FitzpatrickA study of common and exotic food in Shakespeare's plays, this is the first book to explore early modern English dietary literature to understand better the significance of food in Shakespearean drama. Food in Shakespeare provides for modern readers and audiences an historically accurate account of the range of, and conflicts between, contemporary ideas that informed the representations of food in the plays. It also focuses on the social and moral implications of familiar and strange foodstuff in Shakespeare's works. This new approach provides substantial fresh readings of Hamlet, Macbeth, As you Like It, The Winter's Tale, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Pericles, Timon of Athens, and the co-authored Sir Thomas More. Among the dietaries explored are Andrew Boorde's A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Healthe (1547), William Bullein's The Gouernement of Healthe (1595), Thomas Elyot's The Castle of Helthe (1595) and Thomas Cogan's The Hauen of Health (1636). These dieteries were republished several times in the early modern period; together they typify the genre's condemnation of surfeit and the tendency to blame human disease on feeding practices. This study directs scholarly attention to the importance of early modern dietaries, analyzing their role in wider culture as well as their intersection with dramatic art. In the dietaries food and drink are indices of one's position in relation to complex ideas about rank, nationality, and spiritual well-being; careful consumption might correct moral as well as physical shortcomings. The dietaries are an eclectic genre: some contain recipes for the reader to try, others give tips on more general lifestyle choices, but all offer advice on how to maintain good health via diet. Although some are more stern and humourless than others, the overwhelming impression is that of food as an ally in the battle against disease and ill-health as well as a potential enemy.