Showing results by publisher "HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books" in Entertainment & Performing Arts

Car Talk, winner of a Peabody Award, is broadcast each week to NPR stations nationwide. The world's wackiest call-in show, it mixes automotive advice with wisecracks, roadside philosophy, and guffaws. No problem is too ridiculous, no solution too absurd, and before you know it, "you've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk". Or, in this case, four.

Presented together for the first time, here are the very first, and very best, definitive listener favorites that came to be known as Driveway Moments: the classic, spellbinding stories that keep getting better with repeated listening, selected from the National Public Radio archives. These tales were first heard on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and other NPR programs.

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! is NPR's weekly hour-long quiz program. Each week on the radio listeners test their knowledge against a panel of the best and brightest in the news and entertainment world: Adam Felber; Roy Blount, Jr.; Paula Poundstone; Mo Rocca; Roxanne Roberts; Charlie Pierce; and others. This set features highlights from the popular "Not My Job" segment of the show, during which celebrity guest contestants answer questions on topics unrelated to their particular area of expertise.

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation.

Car Talk: Why You Should Never Listen to Your Father When It Comes to Cars is a hilarious collection of the Tappet brothers' favorite calls over the years about fathers, fatherly advice, and fatherly negotiations around the use of cars and car care. Fathers may be wrong most of the time, but Tom and Ray show us why we love them anyway.

Each week, two million listeners tune into Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! to test their knowledge of the week’s dumbest news against some of the best and brightest - panelists including author and humorist Roy Blount Jr., author and radio anomaly Tom Bodett, syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson ( Ask Amy), Atlantic Monthly journalist P.J. O’Rourke, Washington Post columnist Roxanne Roberts, and other know-it-alls.

This new release completes Brenner's recording of I Think There's a Terrorist in My Soup, his brilliant, healing post-9/11 comedy collection. Featuring audience-tested highlights from his stand-up shows, Another Terrorist confirms Brenner's conviction that "laughter is the best medicine, and if one can laugh, one can live."

This collection features Shortz and NPR host Liane Hansen in stimulating conversation, guiding listeners through puzzles filled with creative wordplay. Programs include the one before Shortz’s appearance on The Simpsons (with prizes announced by Mr. Burns and Smithers, voiced by Harry Shearer), Hansen’s birthday show (her children read the list of prizes), and two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks as a mystery guest who sticks around to help the delighted contestant.

What's a "driveway moment"? It's when you're so captivated by a story on NPR that you stay in your car to hear it to the end - even if you're sitting in your own driveway. For years, listeners have written to NPR to describe such moments. Some are serious, some are touching, and some, like the stories included here, are very, very funny.

A radio road trip across America features some of the nuttiest callers ever to phone the show. Each week millions of radio listeners tune in to National Public Radio's Car Talk. A high point of every show is the call-in segment, when listeners phone in for advice and regale hosts Click and Clack with tales of their own automotive misadventures.

Born into the steam and starch of a Chinese laundry, Anna May Wong (1905-1961) emerged from turn-of-the-century Los Angeles to become Old Hollywood's most famous Chinese American actress, a screen siren who captivated global audiences and signed her publicity photos—with a touch of defiance—"Orientally yours." Now, more than a century after her birth, Yunte Huang narrates Wong's tragic life story, retracing her journey from Chinatown to silent-era Hollywood, and from Weimar Berlin to decadent, prewar Shanghai, and capturing American television in its infancy.

Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—the New York Times called him "the Shakespeare of dancing." His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine's tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances.

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots - the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others. Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative.

StoryCorps OutLoud sets out across the country to record and preserve the stories of LGBT individuals along with their families and friends. OutLoud is a project undertaken in the memory of Isay's father, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Isay. Professionally credited for helping to persuade the mental-health community that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, Dr. Isay was himself a closeted gay man for many years.

Vincent Paterson began his professional dancing career late in life. It would take an exceptional turn when he became one of the lead dancers in Michael Jackson's Beat It music video. Through hard work, he rises to the rank of choreographer and director for the world's greatest singers, but also for cinema and musical comedy. He tells with humility the fascinating universe of film sets, the rehearsal sessions where he had to orchestrate and synchronize dozens of dancers, and life backstage, where it is sometimes necessary to manage a few whims of the stars.

What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.

On December 26, 1973, The Exorcist was released. Within days it had become legend. Moviegoers braved hours-long lines in winter weather to see it. Some audience members famously fainted or vomited. Half a century later, the movie that both inspired and transcends the modern horror genre has lost none of its power to terrify and unsettle. The Exorcist Legacy reveals the complete story of this cultural phenomenon, from the real-life exorcism in 1949 Maryland that inspired William Peter Blatty's bestselling novel on which the movie is based, to its many sequels, prequels, TV series, and homages.

We are naturally drawn to smooth, harmonious movement. Both social and physical graces have been taught since the dawn of civilization. Yet grace seems forgotten in our pushy, hectic modern world. Sarah L. Kaufman argues that we bring it back. She celebrates grace in the way bodies move, exploring how to stand, walk, and dress well. She deplores the rarity of grace among public figures and glories in it where found (Beyoncé at a fashion show).

The second volume of the Lost & Found Sound collection explores how recorded sound has shaped and captured the history of the last 100 years. Drawing from the archives and attics of the nation, this historic and intimate collection of radio documentaries presents a compelling array of sonic pioneers and legends, eccentric collectors, and original American voices.

Moms have served honorably in the minivan wars, negotiated conflicting advice between husbands and fathers, and even extracted sticky sippy cups from under countless seats. Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, answer calls about - and from - mothers, answering questions and giving advice on cars, families, and cutting the apron strings.