history and criticism

Traces the history of heavy metal music, focusing on the popular performers of the 1980s, discussing its meaning to fans, musicians, historians, critics, and academics; and examines the intersection of heavy metal and classical music, issues of gender, and the significance of violence and mysticism.

Includes an introduction, the text, critical commentaries, and a stage history of the play.

Twenty interviews with comic book cartoonists discussing their work, each with a representative piece of art work that they helped create.

Offers the author's theory about the origins of the American literary tradition of humor, based upon her identification of three insistent figures--the shrewd, laconic Yankee peddler; the loud, earthy backwoodsman; and the Negro minstrel.

An introduction to the reading and study of the writings of American poet Walt Whitman, discussing how critical attitudes toward Whitman's works changed in the decades between the 1940s and 1960s, and summarizing and commenting upon attempts to interpret his poems in the contexts of Vedanticism, existentialism, and psychoanalysis.

Analyzes the work of eight playwrights, including Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Pirandello, O'Neill, and Genet, tracing the current of revolt that runs through their plays, and considering their role in the development of modern dramatic literature.

Contains ten essays in which various scientists and science writers discuss the intersections of science and reality in the fiction of Michael Crichton, author of "The Terminal Man," and other novels.