Reading

We’re often asked which books we turn to for inspiration, research, and amusement. We have compiled our current favorites on this page. Many of these titles are difficult to find on the shelves of your local bookstores and libraries. However, you can click on the titles below topurchase them from Amazon.com. By doing so, you help support our web site.

Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror
by Richard Hand and Michael Wilson

This book reconsiders the importance and influence of the Grand-Guignol within its social, cultural and historical contexts, and is the first attempt at a major evaluation of the genre as performance. It gives full consideration to practical applications and to the challenges presented to the actor and director. The book also includes new translations of ten Grand-Guignol plays, none of which have been previously available in English.

Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin
by Barbara Ulrich

This lively collage of excerpts from German periodicals shows a culture at its decadent peak before the Nazi suppression. As an homage to the sexually liberated women of pre-Nazi Germany, color and black-and-white full-page graphics, photographs, and advertisements are featured.

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin’s Priestess of Depravity
by Mel Gordon

In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber’s celebrations of “Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy” were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin’s hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine. The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber chronicles a remarkable career, including over 150 photographs and drawings that recreate Anita’s enduring “Repertoire of the Damned.”

The Bone House
by Joel-Peter Witkin

Joel-Peter Witkin is (and he admits this readily in his introduction to this collection) thoroughly obsessed with death, mutilation, violence, the erotic, and how they all intertwine. His photographs, which he calls portraits, do not capture the portrait per se but what Witkin sees as the true soul, the symbol of the person or people involved. These photographs are disturbing, repulsive, and above all beautiful.