A collection of monologues for young adults from their teens to their twenties, organized by age group and gender, and including both comic and dramatic pieces. Monologues from this very popular collection have been included in three other anthologies.
This second edition includes revised versions of two monologues as well as three additional monologues.
Jim Chevallier is both a performer and a researcher, having worked as a radio announcer (WCAS, WBUR and WBZ-FM), acted (on NBC's "Passions", and numerous smaller projects) and published an essay on breakfast in 18th century France (in Wagner and Hassan's "Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century") in addition to researching and translating several historical works of his own. As a bread historian, he is a contributor to the "Dictionnaire Universel du Pain" (Laffont), having written, among others, the articles on the baguette and the croissant.
It was as an actor that he began to write monologues for use by others, resulting in his first collection, "The Monologue Bin". This has been followed by several others over the years, including "Suicide Monologues for Actors and Others", portraying the impact of suicide on a variety of characters' lives.
Work on an historical novel led him to the subject of historical food, starting with the essay mentioned above and "How to Cook a Peacock", a new translation of Taillevent's "Le Viandier". Two collections based around 18th century menus and recipes followed (in the series "Apres Moi, le Dessert"). The discovery that Marie-Antoinette did NOT bring the croissant to France ultimately led him to the person who did: August Zang, also Austrian and a fascinating figure in himself. (The second edition of "August Zang and the French Croissant", revised and much expanded, is now available.) Research for this book led to further inquiries into the baguette and other French breads and ultimately to his work with Jean-Philippe de Tonnac on the "Dictionnaire Universel du Pain".
His interest in the eighteenth century has also led to research on police and criminal matters of the period, some of which is available in "The Old Regime Police Blotter I: Bloodshed, Sex and Violence in Pre-Revolutionary France" and "The Old Regime Police Blotter II: Sodomites, Tribads and Crimes Against Nature" and in an annotated reissue of an eighteenth century account of the Bastille (Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet's "Memoirs of the Bastille").
Books by Jim Chevallier have been acquired by a number of libraries across the United States and abroad and several of his monologues have been included in anthologies
