In 1936 newspapers were ablaze with a scandalous child custody trial taking place in Hollywood and starring the actress Mary Astor; the story pushed Hitler and Franco off the front pages. George S. Kaufman, then the most successful playwright on Broadway and a married man to boot, had been Astor's lover. The scandal revolved around Mary's diary, which her ex-husband, Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, had found when they were still together. Mary, he claimed, had...

Philo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder of a prominent and much-hated collector whose broken Chinese vase provides an important clue.

The Smith family is crushed to learn of father's transfer to New York. The five children don't want to leave their friends, or, most of all, miss the St. Louis World Fair.

Here is the story, told firsthand through electric, deeply engaged writing, of America’s living theater, high and low, mainstream and experimental. Drawing on history, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and parody, editor Laurence Senelick presents writers with the special knack “to distill both the immediate experience and the recollected impression, to draw the reader into the charmed circle and conjure up what has already vanished.” Through...