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Showing 61 - 80 of 169 items
By Adam Nicolson. 2014
Author of God's Secretaries (DB 56486) examines the historical impact and modern-day relevance of Homer's epic poems The Iliad (DB…
66356) and The Odyssey (DB 72052). Discusses the cultural traditions which influenced the stories, differing interpretations over the years, and ways to read Homer in the twenty-first century. 2014By Joseph Horowitz. 2013
Music critic for the New York Times examines the development of the seminal American opera Porgy and Bess. Traces the…
ways director Rouben Mamoulian transformed DuBose Heyward's novella Porgy and George Gershwin's music to create a stage hit. 2013By Wendy Lesser. 2014
Literary editor and writer examines the myriad reasons for her personal love of literature. Explores aspects of the written word…
that bring her pleasure in chapters devoted to "Character and Plot," "The Space Between," "Novelty," "Authority," and others. Also considers the sensuous delights of the physical book. 2014By Amos Oz. 2012
Oz and his daughter, both secular Israeli Jews, explain why they believe the strength of Jewish culture is in its…
texts, not its faith or its bloodlines. They discuss the significance of Jewish family structure, women of the Bible, and the transcendence of time. 2012By Gary Younge. 2013
Award-winning columnist analyzes Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" address delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs…
and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Discusses the political climate of the country during the struggle for racial equality and the worldwide effect of the speech. 2013By Flannery O'Connor, W. A. Sessions. 2013
Journal of the author of A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (DB 33325), kept between January…
1946 and September 1947 while she was attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Reflects on her relationship with God and the world around her. 1947By Jonathan Cott. 2013
Rolling Stone magazine editor details his dinner with music virtuoso Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) in November 1989--the last long interview the…
composer gave before his death the following October. Recounts Bernstein's discussions on the state of music performance and contemporary popular personalities such as John Lennon and the Beatles. 2013By Andrew Shaffer. 2013
Profiles of twenty-five writers featuring their more salacious exploits. Includes Ernest Hemingway's and Dorothy Parker's alcohol abuse, William S. Burroughs's…
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's drug addictions, and Sylvia Plath's and Anne Sexton's mental illnesses. Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. 2013By Lee Sandlin. 2013
Examines the origins of meteorology and the study of tornadoes in the United States. Profiles early investigators of tornado activity,…
including Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and James Espy (1785-1860). Chronicles the creation and growth of national weather bureaus. 2013By Abba May Alcott. 2012
LaPlante compiles the letters and diaries of Abigail May Alcott (1800-1877), the mother of Louisa, the inspiration for Marmee in…
Little Women (BR 11778), and LaPlante's great aunt. Abigail's writings, organized by topic and chronology, detail her thoughts on everything from marriage and motherhood to slavery and suffrage. 2012By David Rosenfelt. 2013
Mystery writer Rosenfelt explains the reasons why he and his wife began saving dogs and describes the ordeal of moving…
their twenty-five rescued dogs from California to Maine in 2011--with the much-needed help of volunteering friends and readers. Some strong language. 2013By Jorge Luis Borges, Katherine Silver, Martín Hadis. 2013
Compilation of lectures on English literature given by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires.…
Topics covered include Beowulf, origins of poetry in England, the Romantic movement, and the Victorian era. Translated from the 2000 Spanish edition. 2013By Terry Eagleton. 2013
English professor offers instruction on critically assessing literary works. Describes ways to analyze openings, character, narrative, interpretation, and value. Uses…
examples from novels, poetry, plays, and nursery rhymes to illustrate points. 2013By Edna O'Brien. 2013
Author of Byron in Love (BR 18514) and The Light of Evening (BR 17137) reminisces about growing up in Ireland.…
Describes her childhood in County Clare, apprenticeship at a pharmacist's shop in Dublin, and literary high life in London and New York in the 1960s. Bestseller. 2012By Jody Rosen. 2002
When Irving Berlin first conceived the song "White Christmas," he envisioned it as a "throwaway" -- a satirical novelty number…
for a vaudeville-style stage revue. By the time Bing Crosby introduced the tune in the winter of 1942, it had evolved into something far grander: the stately yuletide ballad that would become the world's all-time top-selling and most widely recorded song. In this vividly written narrative, Jody Rosen provides both the fascinating story behind the making of America's favorite Christmas carol and a cultural history of the nation that embraced it. Berlin, the Russian-Jewish immigrant who became his adopted country's greatest pop troubadour, had written his magnum opus -- what one commentator has called a "holiday Moby-Dick" -- a timeless song that resonates with some of the deepest themes in American culture: yearning for a mythic New England past, belief in the magic of the "merry and bright" Christmas season, longing for the havens of home and hearth. Today, the song endures not just as an icon of the national Christmas celebration but as the artistic and commercial peak of the golden age of popular song, a symbol of the values and strivings of the World War II generation, and of the saga of Jewish-American assimilation. With insight and wit, Rosen probes the song's musical roots, uncovering its surprising connections to the radition of blackface minstrelsy and exploring its unique place in popular culture through six decades of recordings by everyone from Bing Crosby to Elvis Presley to *NSYNC. White Christmas chronicles the song's legacy from jaunty ragtime-era Tin Pan Alley to the elegant world of midcentury Broadway and Hollywood, from the hardscrabble streets where Irving Berlin was reared to the battlefields of World War II where American GIs made "White Christmas" their wartime anthem, and from the Victorian American past that the song evokes to the twenty-first-century present where Berlin's masterpiece lives on as a kind of secular hymnBy Kati Marton. 2012
Former news correspondent recounts relocating to her favorite city, Paris, after the 2010 death of her diplomat husband Richard Holbrooke.…
Describes arriving in the French capital in 1957 as a Hungarian refugee, meeting second husband Peter Jennings there in the 1970s, and finding happiness with Holbrooke in the 1990s. 2012By Meredith Maran. 2013
Twenty essays by popular authors on the reasons behind their pursuit of writing. Sue Grafton, author of A is for…
Alibi (DB 35069), ruminates on the source of "writer's block" and David Baldacci discusses his compulsion for writing. Also includes Isabel Allende, Jodi Picoult, and others. 2013Literature professor investigates the world of Mary Shelley as she wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (DB 25835). Profiles literary…
influences, including Lord Byron and Shelley's husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Discusses eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medical practices such as stealing corpses for dissection and anatomical study. Young adult appeal. 2013By Howard Frank Mosher. 2011
Author recounts the cross-country road trip and book tour he took in 2007 in his twenty-year-old Loser Cruiser to celebrate…
his sixty-fifth birthday and the end of his prostate-cancer treatments. Contemplates decisions he has made, relationships he has developed, and the ways they have affected his life. 2012By Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee. 2013
Collection of letters exchanged between J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner for literature, and Paul Auster, author of Winter Journal (DB…
75501), begun in July 2008, shortly after they met. Coetzee and Auster discuss the nature of friendship, cultural taboos, and books they have read, among other topics. 2013