Greg Mitchell

The shocking and significant story of how the White House and Pentagon scuttled an epic Hollywood production. "Greg Mitchell is the best kind of historian, a true storyteller." --Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called "the most important story" he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon. Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film version. His screenwriter: the novelist Ayn Rand, who saw in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer the model for a character she was sketching for Atlas Shrugged. Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military--for reasons of propaganda, politics, and petty human vanity (this was Hollywood). Mitchell has found his way into the lofty rooms, from Washington to California, where it happened, unearthing hundreds of letters and dozens of scripts that show how wise intentions were compromised in favor of defending the use of the bomb and the imperatives of postwar politics. As in his acclaimed Cold War true-life thriller The Tunnels, he exposes how our implacable American myth-making mechanisms distort our history.

How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The Beginning Or the End

The networks funded two separate tunnels in return for exclusive rights to film the escapes. In response, President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, wary of anything that might raise tensions and force a military confrontation with the Soviets, maneuvered to quash both documentaries. Unfolding week by week, sometimes hour by hour, Greg Mitchell's riveting narrative deftly cuts back and forth from one extraordinary character to another. There's the tunneler who had already served four years in the East German gulag; the Stasi informer who betrays the 'CBS tunnel'; the young East Berliner who escapes with her baby, then marries one of the tunnelers; and broadcast legend Daniel Schorr, who battled unsuccessfully to save his film from White House interference and remained bitter about it to the end of his life. Looming over all is John F. Kennedy, who was ambivalent about--even hostile toward--the escape operations.

Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill

The Tunnels

Discusses the campaign of socialist candidate Upton Sinclair in the 1934 California gubernatorial race and its impact on the evolution of the modern political campaign

Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics

The Campaign of the Century

Kerry Candaele

"A passionate, deeply felt and altogether personal account of coming to Beethoven in middle age, after a lifetime's immersion in other musical forms. They understand Beethoven's eternal wildness: As well as we may think we know this composer, he constantly surprises and reinvigorates us." -- Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on classical music, Professor of Music and Journalism at the University of Southern California Finally, a Beethoven for our time. In "Journeys With Beethoven," Kerry Candaele and Greg Mitchell offer a unique and dynamic exploration of the composer's musical, cultural and political influence, around the world and in America, today. It's a new kind of adventure story--and expanded in this new 2013 edition. The two longtime rock 'n rollers-Candaele is a writer, musician and filmmaker, Mitchell a journalist and author of twelve previous books-discovered a shared passion for Beethoven later in life, and in this book they probe this deep obsession. Candaele illuminates trips for his new "Following the Ninth" documentary set in Chile, China, Germany, Japan and London (with Billy Bragg), while Mitchell, who is co-producer of the film, travels to famous U.S. venues, screens dozens of films related to Beethoven. He also interviews a leading pianist, Jeremy Denk, and trombonist Joseph Alessi, and others. Five years ago, Candaele set out on a world journey to film the global impact-in freedom struggles, and in inspiring people in their daily lives-of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He ended up traveling to twelve countries and four continents. His film has drawn raves from The New York Times, Bill Moyers and "All Things Considered," among others. In China he discovered why a student leader played the Ninth over a loudspeaker as the troops moved in to Tiananmen Square. In England, the folk/punk singer, Billy Bragg, talked about writing a new libretto for the Ninth in English. Candaele was there when his version was performed before the Queen. In Japan, the Ninth is performed hundreds of times each December, sometimes with 5000 or 10,000 singers in the chorus, intent on transmitting a message of solidarity between all people. And in a new chapter for this edition, he tells the story of how a young East German woman--and famed conductor Leonard Bernstein--marked the falling of the Berlin Wall, aided by Beethoven. As "Journeys With Beethoven" reveals, the Ninth turns worlds inside out and upside down. In Part II of the book, Greg Mitchell-who as senior editor at the legendary Crawdaddy magazine helped create the first major article about Bruce Springsteen-describes his own journey to Beethoven and his pursuit of all things Ludwig during the past several years via CDs, films, books, lectures, and what he calls the "new LvB delivery systems": music downloads, YouTube videos, blogs, Web forums, Twitter feeds. He also takes us to some of the dozens of recent concerts he's attended throughout the northeast United States and in London. He poses questions to experts such as Beethoven biographer Edmund Morris and author Tim Page, besides his very revealing interviews with Denk and Alessi. We learn how Beethoven changed the lives of famous writers and musicians, from William F. Buckley to Leonard Bernstein. Mitchell (who writes the popular new blog, Roll Over, Beethoven) even provides a guide to Beethoven films, from the silent era to "A Clockwork Orange" and "Immortal Beloved."

Following the Ninth, and Beyond

Journeys with Beethoven

Robert Jay Lifton

Hiroshima in America

Twenty-two and unemployed, Dras Weldon is content to hide in the shadow of adolescence with his horror movies and comic books. But when a demonic stranger begins threatening his friends, Dras must choose to act or lose his best friend forever.

The Strange Man

A sinister threat is growing in the void between realities, and Michael Morrison has been recruited to stop it. Ripped from his own violent life, he is sent rift jumping to other worlds, seeking out the agents of the Dark and putting them to an end by any means necessary. After rescuing restless daydreamer Sara Theresea, Michael brings her along as he battles Civil War spaceships, sea serpents, superpowered humans, and even his own duplicate from a parallel timeline. But the darkness Michael fights is growing within him too, calling him to some dark destiny. If he is to change his fate, he must learn to love and let the Man in the Stetson guide him to become the warrior of the Light he was always meant to be.

Revised and Expanded Edition

Rift Jump

Peter Knobler

From the liveliest bastion of counterculture expression--Crawdaddy magazine--comes a journey through the '70s with writers and celebrities whose names, opinions, and contributions resonant today, including John Lennon, P.J. O'Rourke, Gilda Radner, Abbie Hoffman, George Lucas, and William Burroughs.

VERY 70'S

Cats, Chocolate, Clowns, and Other Amusing, Interesting, and Useful Subjects Covered by Newsletters

In a riveting page-turner, NBA referee Bob Delaney reveals the clandestine life he led before becoming one of professional basketball's most respected referees. In 1975, whilst working as a New Jersey State Trooper, Delaney was approached with a tantalising yet dangerous undercover assignment: to infiltrate the Mob. He accepted. At the height of The Godfather era, Delaney wore a wire and lived among wise-guys who modelled themselves on their on-screen counterparts, quoting lines from "The Movie" and boasting of how often they'd seen it. Delaney knew that all the while a single slip could get him killed, but he ultimately gathered enough evidence to convict 30 members of the Bruno and Genovese crime families. He struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and traces of Stockholm syndrome after getting too close to those he investigated, which therapy helped him overcome and once a college basketball star, Delaney began officiating high school games as a way to rebuild his life - eventually working his way up to the NBA, where he has been a referee for more than two decades. This is his amazing true story, with a foreword by NBA commentator Bill Walton.

How the Press, the Pundits-- and the President-- Failed on Iraq

So Wrong for So Long

Photocopy masters using simple lists of 10 words on 40 themes with activities including word building, sentences, illustrations, word meanings, cloze, puzzles and sleuths, rhymes, sorting and writing.

Spell It Right 3

In his new book, which has gained national attention, award-winning author Greg Mitchell probes a turning point in U.S. history: the suppression of film footage, for decades, shot by a U.S. Army unit in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- with staggering consequences even today. This is a detective story, and one of the last untold stories of World War II, and it has far-reaching impact. The shocking cover-up even extended to Hollywood -- with President Truman censoring an MGM film. Mitchell, co-author of the classic "Hiroshima in America" and eleven other books, now reveals the full story, based on new research, from the Truman Library to Nagasaki. Along the way the book tells the story of our "nuclear entrapment" -- from Hiroshima to Fukushima. David Friend of Vanity Fair calls it "a new work of revelatory scholarship and insight by Greg Mitchell that will speak to all of those concerned about the lessons of the nuclear age." "Atomic Cover-up" is also now available in an e-book edition here at Amazon. How did this cover-up happen? Why? And what did the two military officers, Daniel McGovern and Herbert Sussan, try to do about it, for decades? There was no WikiLeaks then to air the film. "Atomic Cover-up" answers all of these questions in a quick-paced but often surprising narrative. You can watch a trailer for the book, including some of the suppressed footage, here: http://bit.ly/r0AlZL Mitchell's classic Random House book "The Campaign of the Century" won the Goldsmith Book Prize and has just been published for the first time as an e-book. Robert Jay Lifton, author of "Death in Life" (winner of the National Book Award) and numerous other acclaimed books, writes: "Greg Mitchell has been a leading chronicler for many years of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and American behavior toward them. Now he has written the first book devoted to the suppression of historic film footage shot by Japanese and Americans in the atomic cities in 1945 and 1946. He makes use of key interviews and documents to record an extremely important part of atomic bomb history that deserves far more attention today."

Greg Mitchell

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