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Showing 41 - 60 of 455 items
The Blues Brothers hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but…
Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honour the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists - Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles - made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since it has been acknowledged a classic: inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a 'Catholic classic' by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the 20th century.The saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colourful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.The Blues Brothers hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but…
Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honour the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists - Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles - made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since it has been acknowledged a classic: inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a 'Catholic classic' by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the 20th century.The saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colourful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.By Andy Summers. 2006
From his first guitar at age 13 and his early days on the Bournemouth music scene, to his relationships and…
encounters in London and the US with Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Belushi and Eric Burdon, among others, Andy Summers proves himself a master of telling detail and dramatic anecdote. But, of course, the early work is only part of the story, and Andy's account of his role as guitarist for The Police - a gig he almost didn't get, despite the wishes of bassist/singer Sting, until a chance encounter with drummer Stewart Copeland on a London train - is the first full inside story of the band ever published. The heights of fame that The Police achieved have rarely been duplicated, and they were rivaled only by the personal chaos that such success brought about, an insight never lost on Summers in the telling. With never-before-published photos from Summers' personal collection, One Train Later is a constantly surprising and poignant memoir, and the work of a first-class writer.By Laurence Leamer. 2019
Where Trump Learned to RuleTo know Donald J. Trump it is best to start in his natural habitat: Palm Beach,…
Florida. It is here he learned the techniques that took him all the way to the White House. Painstakingly, over decades, he has created a world in this exclusive tropical enclave and favorite haunt of billionaires where he is not just president but a king. The vehicle for his triumph is Mar-A-Lago, one of the greatest mansions ever built in the United States. The inside story of how he became King of Palm Beach—and how Palm Beach continues to be his spiritual home even as president—is rollicking, troubling, and told with unrivaled access and understanding by Laurence Leamer.In Mar-A-Lago, the reader will learn:* How Donald Trump bought a property now valued by some at as much as $500,000,000 for less than three thousand dollars of his own money.* Why Trump was blackballed by the WASP grandees of the island and how he got his revenge.* How Trump joined forces with the National Enquirer, which was headquartered nearby, and engineered his own divorce.* How by turning Mar-A-Lago into a private club, Trump was the unlikely man to integrate Palm Beach’s restricted country club scene, and what his real motives were.* What transpires behind the gates of today’s Mar-A-Lago during “the season,” when President Trump and assorted D.C. power players fly down each weekend.In addition to copious interviews and reporting from inside Mar-A-Lago, Laurence Leamer brings an acute and unparalleled understanding of the society of Palm Beach, where he has lived for twenty-five years. He has written an essential book for understanding Donald Trump’s inner character.By John Bayley. 1999
"I was living in a fairy story--the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending--in which a young…
man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing."So John Bayley describes his life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest contemporary writers in the English-speaking world, revered for her works of philosophy and beloved for her incandescent novels.In Elegy for Iris, Bayley attempts to uncover the real Iris, whose mysterious world took on darker shades as she descended into Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a luminous memoir about the beauty of youth and aging, and a celebration of a brilliant life and an undying love.By Laurence Leamer. 2005
The life of Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the most remarkable success stories in the U.S. Here is a young…
man from an Austrian village who became the greatest bodybuilder in history, a behemoth who even today in retirement is the dominating figure in the sport. Here is an immigrant with a heavy accent and a four syllable last name, who marries a Kennedy princess and becomes the number one movie star in the world, an icon known and celebrated everywhere. Here is a political novice with no administrative experience who becomes governor of California in one of the most unusual and controversial elections in American history, and confounds his critics by proving an effective, popular leader. In Fantastic, Leamer shows how and why this man of willful ambition and limitless drive achieved his unprecedented accomplishments. As the author of a celebrated trilogy on the Kennedy family, Leamer has access to a unique array of sources. Leamer traveled with candidate Schwarzenegger during the gubernatorial campaign. He has interviewed Governor Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver, and their closest friends and associates, most of whom had never talked to an author before. The result is a startlingly intimate book, the pages studded with news making revelations. This book of passionate intensity captures a Schwarzenegger unlike any other public figure of our time, a unique political/cultural figure, his time in Sacramento only a way station on a journey where no one has traveled before. The book captures the personal Schwarzenegger, too, and the story of his single days, marriage, and family life. No one who reads this book will ever see Schwarzenegger in the same way again.By Eldridge Cleaver. 1954
Former Black Panther information minister Eldridge Cleaver was a complex man who inspired profound adulation, love, rage, and, among many,…
fear. Target Zero brings Cleaver's controversial story into focus through his own words. This books charts Cleaver's life through his writings: his quiet childhood, his youth spent in prison, his startling emergence as a Black Panther leader who became a "fugitive from justice" by the end of 1968, his seven-year exile, and his religious and political conversion following his return to the U.S. Target Zero, which brings together previously unpublished essays, short stories, letters, interviews, and poems, is the most significant collection of Eldridge Cleaver's writing since his bestselling book Soul on Ice (1968).By Janwillem van de Wetering. 1973
Seen by many as a contemporary classic, Janwillem van de Wetering's small and admirable memoir records the experiences of a…
young Dutch student—later a widely celebrated mystery writer—who spent a year and a half as a novice monk in a Japanese Zen Buddhist monastery. As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, author of Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, has written, The Empty Mirror "should be very encouraging for other Western seekers."It is the first book in a trilogy that continues with A Glimpse of Nothingness and Afterzen.By Anne Edwards. 1999
"Diana's many fans are sure to be delighted by Edwards's intimate prose and detailed descriptions." -Publishers Weekly. Perfect for fans…
of Netflix's The Crown."This is the stuff of fairy tales," said the Archbishop of Canterbury on July 23, 1981, after the 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer arrived in a glass coach for her wedding to Prince Charles. But everyone knows how that fairy tale ended. Drawing upon intensive research and interviews, acclaimed biographer Anne Edwards, well-known for her revelatory and incisive books on members of Britain's royal family, here uncovers new details of Diana's life and her search for love; of her family background; and of a betrayal, historic in its outcome. What the public did not know at the time of her storybook wedding was the true story of Diana's troubled childhood-of the cold, autocratic grandfather who disdained her father, who was himself an abusive husband obsessed with having a son to inherit the Spencer wealth and title.When Diana married Prince Charles, she joined the equally troubled House of Windsor, and was caught up in a plot Shakespearean in its deception and eventual tragic ending. Anne Edwards paints a vivid portrait of a woman desperate in her marriage, fearful of her life, who became devious-and often brilliant-in the moves she played in a treacherous royal chess game.As in her superb biographies of other royal and celebrated women, Anne Edwards's Ever After transcends the one-sided views of Diana in a work that must be called definitive. At long last, and with all of the insight and narrative drama that have marked her previous bestsellers, Edwards brings us the first full-scale, authoritative portrait of a more intelligent, more resourceful, and sometimes more ruthless woman than we have seen before.By Chandler Burr. 2008
From the New York Times perfume critic, a stylish, fascinating, unprecedented insider's view of the global perfume industry, told through…
two creators working on two very different scents.No journalist has ever been allowed into the ultrasecretive, highly pressured process of originating a perfume. But Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes observing the creation of two major fragrances. Now, writing with wit and elegance, he juxtaposes the stories of the perfumes -- one created by a Frenchman in Paris for an exclusive luxury-goods house, the other made in New York by actress Sarah Jessica Parker and Coty, Inc., a giant international corporation. We follow Coty's mating of star power to the marketing of perfume, watching Sex and the City's Parker heading a hugely expensive campaign to launch a scent into the overcrowded celebrity market. Will she match the success of Jennifer Lopez? Does she have the international fan base to drive worldwide sales?In Paris at the elegant Hermès, we see Jean Claude Ellena, his company's new head perfumer, given a challenge: he must create a scent to resuscitate Hermès's perfume business and challenge le monstre of the industry, bestselling Chanel No. 5. Will his pilgrimage to a garden on the Nile supply the inspiration he needs? The Perfect Scent is the story of two daring creators, two very different scents, and a billion-dollar industry that runs on the invisible magic of perfume.By Quang Van Nguyen, Marjorie Pivar. 2004
Set during the French and American wars, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is a true story about an orphan, Quang…
Van Nguyen, who is adopted by a sixty-four year old monk, Thau, who carries great responsibility for his people as a barefoot doctor. Thau manages, against all odds to raise his son to follow in his footsteps and in doing so, saves his son, as well as a part of Vietnam's esoteric knowledge from the Vietnam holocaust. Thau is wanted by the French regime, and occasionally must flee into the jungle, where he is perfectly at home living among the animals. Thau is not the average monk; he practices an ancient lineage of Chinese medicine and uses magic to protect animals and help people.As wise and resourceful as Thau is, he meets his match in his mischievous son. Quang is more interested in learning Cambodian sorcery and martial arts than in developing his skills and wisdom according to his father's plan.Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is an odyssey of a single-father folk hero and his foundling son in a land ravaged by the atrocities of war. It is a classic story, complete with humor, tragedy, and insight from a country where ghosts and magic are real.By Eileen Simpson. 1963
In 1942, Eileen Simpson—then Eileen Mulligan—married John Berryman. Both were in their twenties; Eileen had just graduated from Hunter College…
and John had but one slim volume of poetry to his name. They moved frequently—from New York to Boston, then Princeton—chasing jobs, living simply, relying on the hospitality of more successful friends like Robert Lowell and Jean Stafford, or R. P. Blackmur and his wife, Helen. Rounding out their circle of intimates were other struggling poets like Randall Jarrell and Delmore Schwartz. Berryman alternately wrote and despaired of writing. Everyone stayed up late arguing about poetry.Poets in Their Youth is a portrait of their marriage, yes, but it is also a portrait of a group of spectacularly intelligent friends at a particular time, in a particular place, all aflame with literature. Simpson's recollections are so tender, her narrative so generous, it is almost possible to imagine the story has a different ending—even as Schwartz's marriage crumbles, as Lowell succumbs to a manic episode, as her own relationship with Berryman buckles under the strain of his drinking, his infidelity, his depression. Filled with winning anecdotes and moments of startling poignancy, Simpson's now classic memoir shows some of the most brilliant literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century at their brightest and most achingly human.By Justin Spring. 2017
A biography of six writers on food and wine whose lives and careers intersected in mid-twentieth-century France During les trente…
glorieuses—a thirty-year boom period in France between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisis—Paris was not only the world’s most delicious, stylish, and exciting tourist destination; it was also the world capital of gastronomic genius and innovation. The Gourmands’ Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of “the glorious thirty,” paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and, ultimately, to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American readers. In doing so, this group biography also tells the story of an era when America adored all things French. The group is comprised of the war correspondent A. J. Liebling; Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s life partner, who reinvented herself at seventy as a cookbook author; M.F.K. Fisher, a sensualist and fabulist storyteller; Julia Child, a television celebrity and cookbook author; Alexis Lichine, an ambitious wine merchant; and Richard Olney, a reclusive artist who reluctantly evolved into a brilliant writer on French food and wine.Together, these writer-adventurers initiated an American cultural dialogue on food that has continued to this day. Justin Spring’s The Gourmands’ Way is the first book ever to look at them as a group and to specifically chronicle their Paris experiences.In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate, Shayna Weiss, make a cross-country bike trip. They pitch…
a tent in the desert of central Oregon. As they are sleeping, a man in a pickup truck deliberately runs over the tent. He then attacks them with an ax. The horrific crime is reported in newspapers across the country. No one is ever arrested. Both women survive, but Shayna suffers from amnesia, while Terri is left alone with memories of the attack. Their friendship is shattered.Fifteen years later, Terri returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered, on the first of many visits she will make "to solve the crime that would solve me." And she makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Slowly, her extensive interviews with the townspeople yield a terrifying revelation: many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst. Terri then sets out to discover the truth about the crime and its aftermath, and to come to terms with the wounds that broke her life into a before and an after. Ultimately she finds herself face-to-face with the alleged axman.Powerful, eloquent, and paced like the most riveting of thrillers, Strange Piece of Paradise is the electrifying account of Terri's investigation into the mystery of her near murder. A startling profile of a psychopath, a sweeping reflection on violence and the myth of American individualism, and a moving record of a brave inner journey from violence to hope, this searing, unforgettable work is certain to be one of the most talked about books of the year.By Sujatha Gidla. 2017
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017A Shelf Awareness Best Book…
of 2017"Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer." —The EconomistThe stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionaryLike one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.By Hilton Als. 1996
A New York Times Notable BookDaring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a…
sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other blacks or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.By Richard Parker. 2005
The life and times of America's celebrated economist, assessing his lessons-and warnings-for us today.John Kenneth Galbraith's books—among them The Affluent…
Society and American Capitalism—are famous for good reason. Written by a scholar renowned for energetic political engagement and irrepressible wit, they are models of provocative good sense that warn prophetically of the dangers of deregulated markets, war in Asia, corporate greed, and stock-market bubbles. Galbraith's work has also deeply-and controversially-influenced his own profession, and in Richard Parker's hands his biography becomes a vital reinterpretation of American economics and public policy.Born and raised on a small Canadian farm, Galbraith began teaching at Harvard during the Depression. He was FDR's "price czar" during the war and then a senior editor of Fortune before returning to Harvard and to fame as a bestselling writer. Parker shows how, from his early championing of Keynes to his acerbic analysis of America's "private wealth and public squalor," Galbraith regularly challenged prevailing theories and policies. And his account of Galbraith's remarkable friendship with John F. Kennedy, whom he served as a close advisor while ambassador to India, is especially relevant for its analysis of the intense, dynamic debates that economists and politicians can have over how America should manage its wealth and power. This masterful chronicle gives color, depth, and meaning to the record of an extraordinary life.By Andrew X. Pham. 1999
Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book PrizeA New York Times Notable Book of the YearWinner of the Whiting Writers'…
AwardA Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the YearCatfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland. Intertwined with an often humorous travelogue spanning a year of discovery is a memoir of war, escape, and ultimately, family secrets.Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert; on a thousand-mile loop from Narita in South Korea to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.By Peter Brown. 2023
A beautifully written personal account of the discovery of late antiquity by one of the world’s most influential and distinguished…
historiansThe end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.Documenting both his own intellectual development and the emergence of a new and influential field of study, Brown describes his childhood and education in Ireland, his university and academic training in England, and his extensive travels, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. He discusses fruitful interactions with the work of scholars and colleagues that include the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the French theorist Michel Foucault, and offers fascinating snapshots of such far-flung places as colonial Sudan, midcentury Oxford, and prerevolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the “grand endeavor” to reimagine a decisive historical moment.By Isaiah Berlin. 2014
Isaiah Berlin's intellectual biography of Karl Marx has long been recognized as one of the best concise accounts of the…
life and thought of the man who had, in Berlin's words, a more "direct, deliberate, and powerful" influence on mankind than any other nineteenth-century thinker. A brilliantly lucid work of synthesis and exposition, the book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context, explains why they were revolutionary in political and intellectual terms, and paints a memorable portrait of Marx's dramatic life and outsized personality. Berlin takes readers through Marx's years of adolescent rebellion and post-university communist agitation, the personal high point of the 1848 revolutions, and his later years of exile, political frustration, and intellectual effort. Critical yet sympathetic, Berlin's account illuminates a life without reproducing a legend. New features of this thoroughly revised edition include references for Berlin's quotations and allusions, Terrell Carver's assessment of the distinctiveness of Berlin's book, and a revised guide to further reading.