An enormous burst of creative production has recently emerged from American "independent" filmmakers. From Stranger than Paradise (1984) and Slacker (1991) to Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), indie cinema has become part of mainstream American culture. But what makes these films independent? Me and You and Memento and Fargo argues...

Mechanical Design for the Stage is written for the technicians that build the machines used for scenic effects in theatre. Different machines are needed for different productions and they are needed quickly, making the design process short. The book follows standard engineering design and construction practices, and develops machines that are functional...

In the years following World War II, images of comradeship, particularly of men being physically close, largely disappeared from the public record. But, as the stunning photographs from the original "At Ease" attest, ordinary American men in the extraordinary circumstances of World War II were affectionate, winsome and playful - disarmingly innocent in a time of cataclysmic peril.

Miniature books, most of which are less than three inches (76.2mm) tall and some almost too small to see, have delighted readers for centuries. Popular because they were easily carried or concealed, these historic books range from tiny thumb bibles to illustrated nursery rhymes. They can be traced back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before the invention of printing...

The Mediterranean is an invented cultural space, on the frontier between North and South, West and East. "Modern Art and the Idea of the Mediterranean" examines the representation of this region in the visual arts since the late eighteenth century, placing the 'idea of the Mediterranean' - a cultural construct rather than a physical reality - at the...