Jerry Roberts

The breaking of the Enigma machine is one of the most heroic stories of the Second World War. But there was another German cipher machine, used by Hitler himself to convey messages to his top generals in the field. A machine more complex and secure than Enigma. A machine that could never be broken. For sixty years, no one knew about about Lorenz or ‘Tunny’, or the determined group of men who finally broke the code and thus changed the course of the war. Many of them went to their deaths without anyone knowing of their achievements. Here, for the first time, codebreaker. Captain Jerry Roberts tells the complete story of this extraordinary feat of intellect and of his struggle to get his wartime colleagues the recognition they deserve. The work they carried out at Bletchley Park was groundbreaking and is recognised as having kick-started the modern computer age.

Sportswriting has been often overlooked in histories of journalism, the same way it was paid little attention by newspaper managements in the early and middle 20th century. This book endeavors to remedy that oversight, presenting a concise general history of American sportswriting, as well as detailed profiles of hundreds of practitioners of the trade. Covering such subjects as journalistic ethics, women sportswriters and those of color, as well as the decline of objective sports journalism in the age of shuttered newspapers and multiplying internet outlets, this book highlights the great newspaper and magazine sports editors, columnists, and beat reporters from the 19th century into the present, from the big-city stars to the longer-lasting deans of the trade on smaller publications.

The Complete History of American Film Criticism is a chronicle of the lives and work of the most influential film critics of the past 100 years. From the first movie review in the New York Times in 1896 through the Silent Era, the pre- and postwar years, the Film Generation of the 1960s, the Golden Age of the 1970s, and into the 21st century, critics have educated generations of discriminating moviegoers on the differences between good films and bad. They call attention to great directors, cinematographers, production designers, screenwriters, and actors, and shed light on their artistic visions and storytelling sensibilities. People interested in what the great film critics had to say have usually been shortchanged as to their backgrounds, and just why they are qualified to sit in judgment. Using mini-biographies, placed within a chronological framework, The Complete History of American Film Criticism is the biography of a profession whose cultural impact has left an indelible mark on the 20th century’s most significant art form.

This is the dynamic account of one of the most destructive maritime actions to take place in Connecticut history: the 1814 British attack on the privateers of Pettipaug, known today as the British Raid on Essex. During the height of the War of 1812, 136 Royal marines and sailors made their way up the Connecticut River from warships anchored in Long Island Sound. Guided by a well-paid American traitor the British navigated the Saybrook shoals and advanced up the river under cover of darkness. By the time it was over, the British had burned twenty-seven American vessels, including six newly built privateers. It was the largest single maritime loss of the war. Yet this story has been virtually left out of the history books—the forgotten battle of the forgotten war. This new account from author and historian Jerry Roberts is the definitive overview of this event and includes a wealth of new information drawn from recent research and archaeological finds. Lavish illustrations and detailed maps bring the battle to life.

Big television contracts in the 1960s created the Super Bowl, as well as the 1970 merger of the National Football League with the pass-oriented American Football League. Since then, professional football has been America's most popular televised team sport, developing into a wide-open passing game by the 21st century. Handling the completion side of the aerial game, receivers are not often as celebrated as quarterbacks or coaches, even in the era of San Francisco 49er Jerry Rice's supremacy. This book provides a history of pro pass receiving and its influence on the game prior to the televised era. The author studies pro football's formative and mid-20th century years, highlighting the players who pulled pigskins from flight, like the legendary Don Hutson, Gibby Welch, Johnny Blood, Ray Flaherty, Crazy Legs Hirsch, Mac Speedie, Choo Choo Roberts and many others.

Santa Catalina Island is one of the West Coast's great nearby escapes, an hour's boat ride from Los Angeles and Long Beach for one million annual tourists. The island's seventy-six square miles contain two communities--Avalon and Two Harbors--and extremely rugged seashores and interior wild lands. Here, the history has been carved by pirates, smugglers, prospectors and squatters and set down by seafaring scribes and Hollywood fabricators. The facts have been massaged by the ebb and flow of time and scattered like sun-baked rocks from a beachcomber's kick. Co-authors Patricia Maxwell, Bob Rhein and Jerry Roberts have collected Catalina's basic facts and lore into a quick reference that's as easily accessible as the most charming of California's Channel Islands.

A semi-rural alternative to bustling Los Angeles early in the 20th century, Hawthorne grew through the World War I years, welcoming oil wells and eventually airplane factories. The city became home to the chart-topping Beach Boys, athlete Jim Thorpe, and the greatest glamour blondes of their times, Marilyn Monroe and Mattel's Barbie. Bisected by Hawthorne Boulevard, the main north-south thoroughfare through the South Bay region, Hawthorne's notable events ran the gamut, from the annual Kiwanis Parade--second in California prestige only to Pasadena's Tournament of Roses Parade--to a furious 1971 police gun-battle with the desperate Charles Manson gang. Today, the city is a support community to Los Angeles International Airport and the aerospace industry.

"Mitchum's tales include beatings, hanging producers by their shoelaces, killings in Mexican bars and slapping Teutonic helmer Otto Preminger. And there are classic observations, such as his quip to Variety that 'the best producer is an absent one.' Mitchum editor Jerry Roberts...conducted one of the interviews, and has done a terrific job piecing together vintage conversations with David Frost, Dick Lochte, Richard Schickel and Charles Champlin, as well as collecting a wonderful array of prize quotes by and about Mitchum." -Steven Gaydos, Variety

EThe Great American Playwrights on the ScreenE is a complete up-to-date record of movie and television productions of classic and contemporary works of the great playwrights. Rich in historical value and detail this reference book not only tracks Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winners but also unearths unheralded treasures and forgotten performances by great actors and the great directors they served. THTo show the ongoing influences and legacies of the great plays Roberts compares and contrasts the adapted versions and includes colorful reviews by prominent critics of tv and film (beginning with those of the silent era). The profound expansion of television into American homes in the 1950s brought a flood of adapted plays to the small screen and resulted in the rebirth of the careers of many significant playwrights. EThe Great American Playwrights on the ScreenE provides fans with a video and DVD guide to the adapted works of the playwrights and shows which versions are available for home viewing and in which media (VHS Beta Laser DVD Letterbox). Simultaneously this book is a unique one-stop source for academics students of the theatre arts actors directors and producers. THOrganized in an easy-to-use A-Z format the book features over 200 playwrights including Arthur Miller Marsha Norman Eugene O'Neill Aaron Sorkin Neil Simon Wendy Wasserstein and Tennessee Williams. In addition EThe Great American Playwrights on the ScreenE resurrects the memories of television productions of plays at a critical time when many of them a including Emmy Award winners and nominees a are deteriorating in vaults.

Robert Mitchum's bad boy reputation that colors his public profile has been both earned and undeserved. Jerry Roberts discusses the actor's career, his cult status, his under-appreciated talent, his forgotten films, and his nonchalance. This book catalogues previously published information on Mitchum, taking a full measure of the actor and describing the events that occasionally brought him more notoriety than his movies. The book's biographical essay and annotated filmography scrutinize his performing style. Many yarns about Mitchum have been repeated and modified into legend. But much of the Mitchum myth has been just that: myth. The final word here on various rumors and stories comes from the confirmations, clarifications and corrections made by Robert Mitchum during an interview with the author and in correspondence with several members of the Mitchum family. As with the other Bio-Bibliographies in the Performing Arts, this biographical essay is followed by a chronology, annotated filmography, television, stage, recording and writing credits, list of awards, annotated bibliography listing 1,300 entries and a comprehensive index.