Edward Jablonski

During his lifetime, Alan Jay Lerner received every imaginable award in American musical theater, and rightly so: As the lyricist of such astonishing Broadway successes as Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot, he was one of its architects. He was also one of its last greats, never quite able to regain his footing once the face of Broadway changed for good in the 1960s. Here, noted scholar of musical theater Edward Jablonski tells the story of Lerner's career and of his personal life, filling in the cracks purposely left open in Lerner's own autobiography. A well-off child of the Depression, Lerner was born in New York City, the son of the founder and president of Lerner Stores. Following an education in England and at Harvard, he ended up in New York, where he wrote advertising copy, radio scripts, and spring gambols for the Lambs Club. While lunching at the Lambs one day, he was approached by composer Frederick Loewe, who asked Lerner if he would like to work with him - and thus began a celebrated collaboration. Lerner also worked with a roll call of Broadway's and Hollywood's best, with varying degrees of success: Fred Astaire and Jane Powell (Royal Wedding), Kurt Weill (Love Life), Burton Lane (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), Leonard Bernstein (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), and, of course, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews (My Fair Lady). He experienced the vertiginous highs of being at Broadway's pinnacle: My Fair Lady ran for 2,717 performances in New York, establishing Lerner's reputation as a master of urbane, highly literate songwriting. But when his money ran out - as did the Broadway for which he had been born - his life soured, and, by all accounts, it was something he himself failed to realize. Compelled to keep working by a nervous drive and a stubborn perfectionism, Lerner in later years wrote lyrics for some famously troubled productions. His personal life became just as tangled: All eight of his marriages ended in acrimonious and well-publicized dissolutions, and he was an anxiety-ridden spendthrift to the end.

Gershwin is one of the few composers whose music has been appropriated by popular and 'serious' music lovers alike. Best known for his 'hit' musicals Lady, Be Good, Oh, Kay! and Girl Crazy, he could write with equal conviction for the concert hall and the opera house. Ed Jablonski, a Gershwin aficionado, compiles a revealing portrait of this legendary yet elusive composer, charting his progress from Tin Pan Alley to the starry heights of Hollywood, with contemporary critical reactions to such classics as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess. Gershwin is remembered by, amongst others, Osbert Sitwell, Oscar Levant, Richard Rodgers, Serge Koussevitzky, Schoenberg, Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin, Kay Swift, Jerome Kern, his sister Frances, and his brother Ira Gershwin, his best-loved collaborator.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Army Air Forces had only 1,100 combat-ready planes. No one could have imagined then that within the next four years the AAF would become the mighty weapon commemorated in the paintings reproduced on the following pages, or that it would have to scope to engage in what its commander, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, described as a "global mission." Nevertheless, by 1944 the AAF had grown into 16 separate air forces stationed around the world, and its 1,100 planes had grown to nearly 80,000.

An Account of the strategies and significance of the two-pronged attack by American bombers on munitions factories deep inside Germany in August, 1943.

This work is an account of the race to cross the Atlantic, and the larger-than-life personalities of the aviators who captured the world's attention In 1919, a prize of $25,000 was offered to the first aviator to cross the Atlantic in either direction between France and America. Although it was one of the most coveted prizes in the world, it sat unclaimed (not without efforts) for eight long years, until the spring of 1927. It was then, during five incredibly tense weeks, that one of those magical windows in history opened, when there occurred a nexus of technology, innovation, character, and spirit that led so many contenders (from different parts of the world) to all suddenly be on the cusp of the exact same achievement at the exact same time. This book is about the race; it is a milestone in American history whose story has never been fully told. Richard Byrd, Noel Davis, Stanton Wooster, Clarence Chamberlin, Charles Levine, Rene Fonck, Charles Nungesser, and François Coli, all had equal weight in the race with Charles Lindbergh. Although the story starts in September 1926 with the crash of the first competitor, or even further back with the 1919 establishment of the prize, its heart is found in a short period, those five weeks from April 14 to May 21, 1927, when the world held its breath and the aviators met their separate fates in the air.

Mr. Jablonski presents a well documented account of America's war in the air. Covering all aspects of the war in all theaters of operation, this is a treatise that packs an amazing amount of information about a vast subject into a concise space. Major players on both sides of the conflict are covered, as well as views from the front lines by people who participated at the battles themselves.

Traces the place of women in the history of aviation from the first ladies to go up in balloons in the eighteenth century to the well-known twentieth-century pioneers such as Jacqueline Cochran and Amelia Earhart.

Profusely illustrated with 400 photographs.

A biography of a successful song writer, from the early influence of his boyhood friend, a violin prodigy, to his untimely death at age thirty-nine.