Mary Zimmerman’s The Secret in the Wings adapts a group of lesser-known fairy tales to create a theatrical work that sets their dark mystery against her signature wit and humor. The framing story concerns a child and the frightening babysitter with whom her parents leave her. As the babysitter reads from a book, the characters in each of the tales materialize, with each tale breaking off just at its bleakest moment before giving way to the next one.

The central tale is told without interruption, after which each previous tale is successively resumed, with each looming disaster averted. As in Zimmerman’s other productions, here she uses costumes, props, sets, and lighting to brilliant effect, creating images and feelings that render the fairy tales in all their elemental and enduring power.

There is a common but often unspoken arrogance on the part of outside observers that folk science and traditional knowledge—the type developed by Native communities and tribal groups—is inferior to the “formal science” practiced by Westerners. In this lucidly written and humanistic account of the O’odham tribes of Arizona and Northwest Mexico, ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea exposes the limitations of this assumption by exploring the rich ornithology that these tribes have generated about the birds that are native to their region. He shows how these peoples’ observational knowledge provides insights into the behaviors, mating habits, migratory patterns, and distribution of local bird species, and he uncovers the various ways that this knowledge is incorporated into the communities’ traditions and esoteric belief systems. Drawing on more than four decades of field and textual research along with hundreds of interviews with tribe members, Rea identifies how birds are incorporated, both symbolically and practically, into Piman legends, songs, art, religion, and ceremonies. Through highly detailed descriptions and accounts loaded with Native voice, this book is the definitive study of folk ornithology. It also provides valuable data for scholars of linguistics and North American Native studies, and it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans make sense of their world. It will be of interest to historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars of indigenous cultures and folk taxonomy.

Wings of Gold makes a unique contribution to the history of naval aviation. The book sets out the day-to-day experiences and reactions of a cadet who went through the aviation training program at its peak during World War II. An emphasis on training is missing in almost all books dealing with that conflict; in this book, it is the focus. In contrast with official histories, this is an account of how training did occur, rather than how it was intended to occur. It chronicles failures as well as successes, frustrations and achievements. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction to the history of naval aviation training, the authors recount the personal experiences of an individual cadet preparing for war, based on wartime letters written by cadet Rea to his family. The letters are open and candid, and they provide an insider’s look at the conditions and nature of the Naval Aviation Training Program in the 1940s.
 
Millions of Americans underwent military training during World War II, and contemporary historians and readers have begun to recognize the significance and value of primary sources related not only to combat but also to training and preparedness.

Theatre has long been an art form of subterfuge and concealment. Working in the Wings: New Perspectives on Theatre History and Labor, edited by Elizabeth A. Osborne and Christine Woodworth, brings attention to what goes on behind the scenes, challenging, and revising our understanding of work, theatre, and history.

Essays consider a range of historic moments and geographic locations—from African Americans’ performance of the cakewalk in Florida’s resort hotels during the Gilded Age to the UAW Union Theatre and striking automobile workers in post–World War II Detroit, to the struggle in the latter part of the twentieth century to finish an adaptation of Moby Dick for the stage before the memory of creator Rinde Eckert failed. Contributors incorporate methodologies and theories from fields as diverse as theatre history, work studies, legal studies, economics, and literature and draw on traditional archival materials, including performance texts and architectural structures, as well as less tangible material traces of stagecraft.

Working in the Wings looks at the ways in which workers' identities are shaped, influenced, and dictated by what they do; the traces left behind by workers whose contributions have been overwritten; the intersections between the sometimes repetitive and sometimes destructive process of creation and the end result—the play or performance; and the ways in which theatre affects the popular imagination. This collected volume draws attention to the significance of work in the theatre, encouraging a fresh examination of this important subject in the history of the theatre and beyond.