cover image Broadway Song & Story: Playwrights/Lyricists/Composers Discuss Their Hits

Broadway Song & Story: Playwrights/Lyricists/Composers Discuss Their Hits

. Dodd Mead, $22.95 (447pp) ISBN 978-0-396-08753-3

Largely culled from the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, here are reflections about Broadway by many of its most successful professionals. The entries, most in the form of dialogues or panel discussions, are in three sections: analyses of specific shows (Death of a Salesman, Gypsy, Torch Song Trilogy, etc.) by those who created and performed in them; conversations with individual dramatists about their own careers; and group discussions of more general theater topics, such as criticism, librettos and author/director relationships. With the focus clearly on Broadway, the contributors offer observations on the pitfalls and agonies of writing for the commercial theater. With comments from Edward Albee, Hal Prince, Marsha Norman, Stephen Sondheim, Lanford Wilson, Elia Kazan and many others, this is compelling reading for those interested in the commercial theater. U.K. rights: Laurence Pollinger; translation rights: Dodd, Mead. JanuarySTRETCHING THE LIMITS Lee Torrey. Dodd, Mead, $17.95 Science writer Torrey, whose work has appeared in Science Digest and the New York Times, has produced a com prehensive, up-to-date and readable survey of measures being taken by phy sicians, physiologists, psychologists, nutritionists and others to improve sports performances. Their aim is to in duce adaptive body changes gradually. Some athletes and their coaches, how ever, are impatient, according to Tor rey, and abuse the discoveries and in novations of sports science, as with blood doping and overdoses of hor mones. The major portion of the book is an analysis of the changes brought about by sports science in every sport, from football to golf and soccer. Young athletes will find this material most in structive. Illustrations not seen by PW. Foreign rights: Nat Sobel. January