Speak loudly in the swinging cafés, pepper your repartee with words from this book and save the $50,000 it would have cost to attend that stuffy film school. Grammar’s purpose is to present narrative techniques for film in a practical way, instruction on the proper organization of images for their presentation onscreen. This includes motion, dialogue, punctuation, camera movement and editing editing editing. While it is the only resource of its kind and is infinitely useful to the budding auteur, the author stresses that only when the celluloid is “running through your fingers” will you be near the completion of your education in film. SK

Publisher: Silman-James
Paperback: 624 pages
Illustrated

Book 2 scars a little deeper than the first collection: seriously dense, seriously grave reading for the final reckoning; Carlos Castaneda, H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Kern, Jorg Buttgereit, animal mutilations, in addition to illuminations of Lobsang Rampa, mescaline, and possibly the most fevered terror-tirade travelogue committed to print. SK

Publisher: Creation
Paperback: 256 pages
Illustrated

Melancholy can fuel creation. Intellectual looks at Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, and Brit phenomenon the K Foundation; plus the aesthetics of pornography, an interview with William Gibson, the Process Church, America, and A Clockwork Orange as societal metaphor. SK

Publisher: Creation
Paperback: 256 pages
Illustrated

A compact and efficient volume containing survival tips for deserts, tropical or polar regions and at sea culled from the U.S. Special Forces, the Canadian Air Force, the Italian Alpine Troops, the Navy Seals, the Russian Spetsnaz, the French Foreign Legion and other elite forces. Discusses such topics as improvising shelter, tools and clothing; tracking water, vegetable and mammalian food sources; expediting rescue; and avoiding dangerous situations. Crammed with all kinds of interesting tips, from building signal fires and boot care to avalanche etiquette and the proper procedures for emergency amputation, it is recommended for any traveler, worldly or otherwise. SK

Publisher: Stackpole
Paperback: 256 pages
Illustrated

Complete and unedited reprint of the second and third sections of the Commission Studies presented to President Ford in 1976 detailing “The State of the Art of Electronic Surveillance” and “The Authentication of Magnetic Tapes.” The paranoia that was created by the surveillance and miniaturization technology in the mid-‘50s served as the catalyst which led to these studies, which became an excellent (if unintentional) how-to on electronic eavesdropping, wiretapping, and all manner of microphonal espionage. SK

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 112 pages
Illustrated