{"title":"Books by Tom Johnson","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781496838391","title":"C'mon, Get Happy","description":"In their third and final screen teaming, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly starred together in the MGM musical \u003ci\u003eSummer Stock\u003c\/i\u003e. Despite its riveting production history, charismatic lead actors, and classic musical moments, the movie has not received the same attention as other musicals from MGM’s storied dream factory. In \u003ci\u003eC’mon, Get Happy: The Making of \"Summer Stock,\"\u003c\/i\u003e authors David Fantle and Tom Johnson present a comprehensive study of this 1950 motion picture, from start to finish and after its release.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe production coincided at a critical point in the careers of Kelly and an emotionally spent Garland. Kelly, who starred in \u003ci\u003eAn American in Paris \u003c\/i\u003ejust one year later, was at the peak of his abilities. On the other hand, \u003ci\u003eSummer Stock \u003c\/i\u003ewas Garland’s final film at MGM, and she gamely completed it despite her own personal struggles. \u003ci\u003eSummer Stock\u003c\/i\u003e includes Kelly’s favorite solo dance routine and Garland’s signature number \"Get Happy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe authors discuss in rich detail the contributions of the cast (which included Gloria DeHaven, Eddie Bracken, Phil Silvers, and Marjorie Main); the director (Charles Walters); the producer (Joe Pasternak); the script writers (George Wells and Sy Gomberg); the songwriters (which included Harry Warren and Mack Gordon); and top MGM executives (Louis B. Mayer and Dore Schary). The volume features extensive interviews, conducted by the authors, with Kelly, Walters, Warren, and others, who shared their recollections of making the movie. Deeply researched, \u003ci\u003eC’mon, Get Happy \u003c\/i\u003ereveals the studio system at work during Hollywood’s Golden Era.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAdditionally, the authors have written a special section called \"Taking Stock\" that buttonholes numerous contemporary dancers, singers, choreographers, musicians, and even Garland impersonators for their take on \u003ci\u003eSummer Stock\u003c\/i\u003e, its stars, and any enduring legacy they think the film might have. Artists from Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ben Vereen, and Tommy Tune to Garland’s and Kelly’s daughters, Lorna Luft and Kerry Kelly Novick, respectively, offer their unique perspective on the film and its stars.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301383352693,"sku":"9781496838391","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781496838391_b73d42f5-6a17-487e-95ba-ff66b418cb4c.jpg?v=1786034220"},{"product_id":"9780198926832","title":"Law in Common","description":"There were tens of thousands of different local law-courts in late-medieval England, providing the most common forums for the working out of disputes and the making of decisions about local governance. While historians have long studied these institutions, there have been very few attempts to understand this complex institutional form of 'legal pluralism'. Law in Common provides a way of understanding this complexity by drawing out broader patterns of legal engagement. Tom Johnson first explores four 'local legal cultures'\u0026amp;#8212in the countryside, in forests, in towns and cities, and in the maritime world\u0026amp;#8212that grew up around legal institutions, landscapes, and forms of socio-economic practice in these places, and produced distinctive senses of law. Johnson then turns to examine 'common legalities', widespread forms of social practice that emerge across these different localities, through which people aimed to invoke the power of law. Through studies of the physical landscape, the production of legitimate knowledge, the emergence of English as a legal vernacular, and the proliferation of legal documents, the volume offers a new way to understand how common people engaged with law in the course of their everyday lives.Drawing on a huge body of archival research from the plenitude of different local institutions, Law in Common offers a new social history of law that aims to explain how common people negotiated the transformational changes of the long fifteenth century with, and through, legality.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311615914357,"sku":"9780198926832","price":31.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780198926832_0e27aea5-9afd-4d88-ad0b-4b86594bf1bb.jpg?v=1786013001"},{"product_id":"9780820374536","title":"Driven – A Life in Public Service and Journalism from LBJ to CNN","description":"Driven brings a seasoned perspective to today’s conversations about government, media, and the future of truth in the form of a deeply personal and long-awaited autobiography by Tom Johnson, an award-winning journalist who helped shape the twenty-four-hour news media as we know it. Johnson’s storied career in public service and journalism that began as a reporter at the Macon Telegraph in Georgia spans the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, where he was an eyewitness to painful negotiations on Vietnam and notified the president that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, through the executive leadership of the LA Times and, finally, Ted Turner’s upstart CNN in Atlanta.   From his perspective “inside the room,” Johnson provides eyewitness accounts of LBJ’s triumphs and failings as well as an on-the-ground view of the magnificent achievements and significant shortfalls of late twentieth-century American journalism. Johnson is also candid about his lifelong struggle with depression and has actively worked in retirement as a leader in mental health, cancer research, Alzheimer’s, and addiction treatment and recovery. With more than eight decades behind him, Driven is not just Johnson’s look at the past but a chance for his story to offer guidance about finding balance in an uncertain future.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56419622257013,"sku":"9780820374536","price":36.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780820374536.jpg?v=1790607929"},{"product_id":"walberswick","title":"Walberswick","description":"In 1407, the sea rages. Storms, floods and erosion are wrecking towns, harbours and livelihoods all along the Suffolk coast. Yet at this moment of upheaval, the villagers of Walberswick band together to build a monumental flint church, a vessel for a thousand souls that would take a century to complete and stand intact for just a century more.   Drawing on exceptionally rich and unexplored sources, Walberswick plunges readers into this strange, vanished world. It takes us along streets streaked silver with gutted herring, down wharves echoing with the shouts of Dutch sailors, and into the homes of the men and women who lived in the village during its brief, precarious heyday. It reconjures their desires and beliefs, friendships and squabbles, the objects and obligations that bound them together across generations. Through the history of one community, we glimpse what it meant to live and work, even to build something new, in the face of ruin – and the history that can be salvaged from it.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499211170165,"sku":"9780241740651","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-tom-johnson.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}