Out On The Wire

A Library Journal Best Book of 2015 Go behind the scenes of seven of today’s most popular narrative radio shows and podcasts, including This American Life and RadioLab, in graphic narrative. Every week, millions of devoted fans tune in to or download This American Life, The Moth, Radiolab, Planet Money, Snap Judgment, Serial, Invisibilia and other narrative radio shows. Using personal stories to breathe life into complex ideas and issues, these beloved programs help us to understand ourselves and our world a little bit better. Each has a distinct style, but every one delivers stories that are brilliantly told and produced. Out on the Wire offers an unexpected window into this new kind of storytelling—one that literally illustrates the making of a purely auditory medium. With the help of This American Life's Ira Glass, Jessica Abel, a cartoonist and devotee of narrative radio, uncovers just how radio producers construct narrative, spilling some juicy insider details. Jad Abumrad of RadioLab talks about chasing moments of awe with scientists, while Planet Money’s Robert Smith lets us in on his slightly goofy strategy for putting interviewees at ease. And Abel reveals how mad—really mad—Ira Glass becomes when he receives edits from his colleagues. Informative and engaging, Out on the Wire demonstrates that narrative radio and podcasts are creating some of the most exciting and innovative storytelling available today.

"An oral history of HBO"s The Wire"--

'. . . All in the game.' West Baltimore Traditional THE WIRE has been widely hailed as the greatest television series of all time. It portrays the war of attrition between Baltimore's hardened police force and its drug dealers, and the blurring of good and evil, justice and injustice, right and wrong that happens every day as men and women struggle against the institutions they are bound up in. Over its five series it has built up a detailed, rich and layered portrait of Baltimore: from its corner boys touting dope and its dock workers facing extinction, through the strained education system and tainted halls of power, to the crumbling media establishment. Rafael Alvarez - a reporter, essayist and staff writer for the show - brings the reader inside this world, detailing many of the real-life incidents and personalities that have inspired the show's storylines and characters. Packed with photographs and featuring an introduction by series creator and executive producer David Simon, as well as essays by acclaimed authors George Pelecanos, Ed Burns, Richard Price, Laura Lippman and Denis Lehane, it covers all fives series in glorious detail.

"This book will be riveting reading for security professionals and students, as well as technophiles interested in learning about how computer security fits into the big picture and high-level hackers seeking to broaden their understanding of their craft."--BOOK JACKET.

Irene grew up traveling around Germany with her family’s circus, surrounded by her loved ones and thrilling the crowds with her performance on the high wire...until one day, the audience boos. The Lorch family is Jewish, and the increasing power of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis has put them all in grave danger. When the circus is forced to shut down and Irene’s father is taken away, Irene and her mother must go into hiding with another circus. Every day is a frightening new kind of balancing act, caught between the desire to perform and the need to hide—even in plain sight.

The production of a segment of This American Life is the vehicle for an overview of many aspects of radio programming and production.

Read & Burn is the first serious, in-depth appraisal of Wire, one of the most influential British bands to emerge during the punk era. If Wire were briefly a punk band, however, it was largely by historical accident. Despite the fact that they had complicated and transformed that category almost before they'd begun, they seem never to have quite escaped the label. Be it punk, post-punk, or art-punk, critics have clung onto the p-word in an attempt to capture the essence of Wire's innovative uniqueness. But their story - which honours punk's original yet quickly forgotten commitment to the new - is one of constant remaking and remodelling, one that stubbornly resists reduction to a single identity. As a result, the group's projects have always balanced uneasily between artistic endeavour and the need for commercial sustainability, played out against the backdrop of the musicians' perennially complex creative relationships. Tracing Wire's diverse output from 1977 up until the present, Read & Burn seeks to do justice to their highly influential and restlessly inventive body of work.

In this riveting, action-packed novel from award-winning author Will Hobbs, a teenage boy hoping to help his loved ones must fight for his life as he makes the dangerous journey across the Mexican border into the United States. When falling crop prices threaten his family with starvation, fifteen-year-old Victor Flores heads north in an attempt to "cross the wire" from Mexico into America so he can find work and help ease the finances at home. But with no coyote money to pay the smugglers who sneak illegal workers across the border, Victor struggles to survive as he jumps trains, stows away on trucks, and hikes grueling miles through the Arizona desert. Victor's passage is fraught with freezing cold, scorching heat, hunger, and dead ends. It's a gauntlet run by many attempting to cross the border, but few make it. Through Victor's desperate perseverance, Will Hobbs brings to life a story that is true for many, polarizing for some, but life-changing for all who read it. Acclaim for Crossing the Wire includes the following: New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, Junior Library Guild Selection, Americas Awards Commended Title, Heartland Award, Southwest Book Award, and Notable Books for Global Society.