(Banjo). The best-selling banjo method in the world! Earl Scruggs's legendary method has helped thousands of banjo players get their start. The "Revised and Enhanced Edition" features more songs, updated lessons, and many other improvements. It includes everything you need to know to start playing banjo, including: a history of the 5-string banjo, getting acquainted with the banjo, Scruggs tuners, how to read music, chords, how to read tablature, right-hand rolls and left-hand techniques, banjo tunings, exercises in picking, over 40 songs, how to build a banjo, autobiographical notes, and much more! Includes audio of Earl Scruggs playing and explaining over 60 examples!
From renowned artist Gregory Manchess comes a lavishly painted novel about the son of a famed polar explorer searching for his stranded father, and a lost city buried under snow in an alternate future. When it started to snow, it didn’t stop for 1,500 years. The Pole Shift that ancient climatologists talked about finally came, the topography was ripped apart and the weather of the world was changed—forever. Now the Earth is covered in snow, and to unknown depths in some places. In this world, Wes Singleton leaves the academy in search of his father, the famed explorer Galen Singleton, who was searching for a lost city until Galen’s expedition was cut short after being sabotaged. But Wes believes his father is still alive somewhere above the timberline. Fully illustrated with over 120 pieces of full-page artwork throughout, Above the Timberline is a stunning and cinematic combination of art and novel.
“Masterful . . . an epic tale of backbiting, shady deal-making, and greed [that] reads like a John Grisham novel.”—The Wall Street Journal A real-life legal thriller as timeless as a Greek tragedy, tracing the downfall of one of America’s most famous lawyers and exposing the dark side of Southern politics—from the author of When Evil Lived in Laurel Dickie Scruggs was arguably the most successful plaintiff’s lawyer in America. A brother-in-law of former U.S. Senate majority leader Trent Lott, Scruggs made a fortune taking on mass tort lawsuits against Big Tobacco and the asbestos industries. He was hailed by Newsweek as a latter-day Robin Hood and was portrayed in the movie The Insider as a dapper aviator-lawyer. Scruggs’s legal triumphs rewarded him lavishly, and his success emboldened both his career maneuvering and his influence in Southern politics—but at a terrible cost, culminating in his spectacular fall, when he was convicted for conspiring to bribe a Mississippi state judge. Based on extensive interviews, transcripts, and FBI recordings never made public, The Fall of the House of Zeus uncovers the Washington legal games and power politics: the swirl of fixed cases, blocked investigations, judicial tampering, and a zealous prosecution that would eventually ensnare not only Scruggs but his own son, Zach, in the midst of their struggle with insurance companies over Hurricane Katrina damages. Featuring Trent Lott and Jim Biden, brother of then-Senator Joe Biden, in supporting roles, with cameos by John McCain, Al Gore, and other Washington insiders, Curtis Wilkie’s account of this uniquely American tragedy reveals the seedy underbelly of institutional power.
Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of American music. Earl Scruggs's instrumental essentially transformed the folk culture that came before it while helping to energize bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. The song has become a gateway to bluegrass for musicians and fans alike as well as a happily inescapable track in film and television. Thomas Goldsmith explores the origins and influence of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" against the backdrop of Scruggs's legendary career. Interviews with Scruggs, his wife Louise, disciple Bela Fleck, and sidemen like Curly Seckler, Mac Wiseman, and Jerry Douglas shed light on topics like Scruggs's musical evolution and his working relationship with Bill Monroe. As Goldsmith shows, the captivating sound of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" helped bring back the banjo from obscurity and distinguished the low-key Scruggs as a principal figure in American acoustic music.Passionate and long overdue, Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown takes readers on an ear-opening journey into two minutes and forty-three seconds of heaven.
Process: An Improviser's Journey is an invaluable resource for mastering improv. Author, teacher, and improviser Michael Gellman was given a mission by famed improv coach Del Close: “[T]o create improvised one-act plays of literary quality from scratch.” Already steeped in the world of improvisation, he took it upon himself to do this, in the form of a class for other improvisers in which they would build the skills necessary to execute such a seemingly tall order. Scruggs and Gellman’s book, modeled after Stanislavski’s timeless An Actor Prepares, follows a fictional young actor taking Gellman’s real-life class. Scruggs and Gellman introduce readers to Geoff, who has just moved to Chicago to pursue acting. He undergoes the standard trials of audition and rejection before he takes the advice of a fellow actor and turns to improv classes at Second City. At first, Geoff thinks improvisation is about laughs and loosening up, but he soon learns that it is a powerful tool as well as an end in itself. Through Geoff’s eyes, the book introduces readers to key tenets of improvisation: concentration, visualization, focus, object work, being in the moment, and the crucial “yes, and.” His experiences with the basics of improvisation do serve to get him a few roles, but his real breakthrough comes when he signs up for an improvised one-act class with Michael Gellman. He and his classmates arrive unprepared for the challenge, but with Gellman’s prompts and advice, they slowly move through process to performance over the course of three seasons in Chicago. The class culminates with their final project: a completely improvised one-act play performed in front of a live audience.
In the third book in this laugh-out-loud series, Sylvie Scruggs proves she can turn any situation into trouble -- including the school spelling bee! Cherry Hill Elementary has always had two baseball fields, one for Sylvie Scruggs's fourth-grade-and-under friends, and one for Jamie Redmond's fifth-grade crew. When Jamie's field is demolished for a kindergarten playground, the fifth graders want to take over the fourth-grade space. Finally, Sylvie and Jamie make a bet: Whoever wins the school spelling bee wins the baseball diamond too. Sylvie knows her friend Miranda will be the champion, no question, and the field will be safe for her team.But then Josh Stetson beats Miranda in the class bee, which means he'll compete against the fifth-graders for the school title. As Sylvie tries to help Josh prepare for the big event, friendships get strained, secret deals get made, and matters spin WAY out of control. How far will Sylvie go to win the field for her friends?
"Funny and human and clever and wise. I really, really like this sparkling, racing, hilarious little gem." -- Hilary McKay, author of Saffy's Angel and Binny In Secret Sylvie Scruggs doesn't like Georgie Diaz. He always calls her Scruggs. He always beats her in baseball. He didn't invite her to his party. Plus, he's a boy.Now Georgie is trying to steal Sylvie's best friend, Miranda Tan. He's giving Miranda a super-special birthday present, so Sylvie will too -- only her present will be ten times better. With the help of her twin brothers, a ferret, a castle, and some glitter glue, Sylvie sets out to make Miranda remember who her REAL best friend is, and forget about Georgie forever."Two words: Sylvie Scruggs. Two more words: LOVE HER! Eyre nails it with this new kid on the block. (And here's a challenge: I dare you not to laugh out loud)." -- Barbara O'Connor, author of How To Steal A Dog and The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester
Death is always the issue-in life, and in the Western. Joel and Ethan Coen's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a movie of six Western stories. In each, our common destination is approached by a different road. Through each, diverse characters hurry for their final appointment: Oregon Trail-travelers, a gold prospector, a motley crew of stagecoach passengers, a high-plains drifting bank robber, even a singing cowboy. These six stories escort them with a care that either respects, or mocks, the dignity of all.The film stars Tom Waits, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tim Bake Nelson and Zoe Kazan and is shot with the harsh grandeur of the classic John Ford westerns.
A touching story of a woman's search for her family roots in the wake of the sudden death of her father. Claiming Kin is a powerful and compelling story about a woman's quest to search out her roots upon the death of the father she barely knew. A former journalist hungry for the truth, her search into the past leads her from her hometown in Nashville, Tennessee, back to the birthplace of the Scruggs in nearby Williamson County. There she traces the family back to 1847 and the Scruggs Farm where her ancestors were once slaves. Her journey soon becomes spiritual and emotional, forcing her not only to examine her own beliefs in the importance of family, but also her religious beliefs as she turns toward honoring her ancestors. This is a tale that will capture the heart and mind.
In 1982, John Naisbitt's Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives brought to our attention the harsh reality that a new and strange world was crashing down around us. One of the ways in which he suggested that the world would change was that we would move "from institutional help to self-help." By this, he meant that American society would move from being a culture dependent on institutions such as schools, hospitals, and the like, to being a people more centered on themselves individually. Thus, the emergence of "self-service" counters in the marketplace has become pervasive. In this light, Bible study has come to be a matter for the "self" as much as anything else. Pastors simply cannot expect to be the only ones who "know the Bible." They cannot assume that members of the church will concede to biblical illiteracy. Lay people want to know the Bible, just as the clergy and pastor know it. There is an insistence on the part of the average church member to become intimately familiar with the Word of God. Julius Richard Scruggs's How to Study & Teach the Bible is an ideal manual that introduces students of the Bible to its intricacies--from the youngest neophyte to the most skilled veteran church member--both clergy and laity alike. He insists that Bible study should become an integral part of the life of every church. He then plunges into a cursory, yet careful, exploration of what the Bible is and how one can become a more effective teacher, preacher, and evangelist. This book is indeed a wise and worthy investment for everyone who desires to have a working knowledge of the Bible and takes the time to work through these pages.
