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Capturing The Light: The Birth Of Photography, A True Story Of Genius And Rivalry
By Helen Rappaport, Roger Watson. 2013
An intimate look at the journeys of two men―a gentleman scientist and a visionary artist―as they struggled to capture the…
world around them, and in the process invented modern photography During the 1830s, in an atmosphere of intense scientific enquiry fostered by the industrial revolution, two quite different men―one in France, one in England―developed their own dramatically different photographic processes in total ignorance of each other's work. These two lone geniuses―Henry Fox Talbot in the seclusion of his English country estate at Lacock Abbey and Louis Daguerre in the heart of post-revolutionary Paris―through diligence, disappointment and sheer hard work overcame extraordinary odds to achieve the one thing man had for centuries been trying to do―to solve the ancient puzzle of how to capture the light and in so doing make nature 'paint its own portrait'. With the creation of their two radically different processes―the Daguerreotype and the Talbotype―these two giants of early photography changed the world and how we see it. Drawing on a wide range of original, contemporary sources and featuring plates in colour, sepia and black and white, many of them rare or previously unseen, Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport charts an extraordinary tale of genius, rivalry and human resourcefulness in the quest to produce the world's first photograph.
Billion Dollar Painter: The Triumph and Tragedy of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light
By Bettina Gilois, G. Eric Kuskey. 2014
The unbelievable true story of artist Thomas Kinkade, self-described Painter of Light,” and the dramatic rise and fallof his billion-dollar…
gallery and licensing business. He was just one man, but Thomas Kinkade ultimately made more money from his art than every other artist in the history of the world combined. His sentimental paintings of babbling brooks, rural churches surrounded by brilliant fall foliage, and idyllic countryside cottages were so popular in the 1990s that one out of every twenty homes in America owned one of his prints. With the help of two partnersa former vacuum-cleaner salesman and an ambitious junior accountant who fancied himself a businessmanKinkade turned his art into a billion-dollar gallery and licensing business that traded on the NYSE before it collapsed in 2006 amid fraud accusations. One part a fascinating business story about the rise, and demise, of a financial empire born out of divine inspiration, one part a dramatic biography, Billion Dollar Painter is the account of three nobodies who made it big. One of them was a man who, despite being a devout Christian who believed his artwork was a spiritual force that could cure the sick and comfort the poor in spirit, could not save his art empire, or himself. Eric Kuskey, former colleague of Thomas Kinkade's and close friend until the artist’s death in 2012, tells Kinkade’s story for the first timefrom his art’s humble beginnings on a sidewalk in Carmel, California, to his five-house compound in Monte Sereno. It’s a tale of addiction and grief, of losing control, and ultimately, of the price of our dreams.
Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography by Dave Gibbons
By Dave Gibbons. 2023
This comprehensive, in-depth, and personal journey through the eyes of one of the world&’s most famous comics creators, Dave Gibbons,…
spans his earliest years copying Superman and Batman comics as a kid, to co-creating the bestselling graphic novel of all-time, Watchmen, and beyond.Presented alphabetically, with informally written anecdotes that can be read from cover-to-cover or simply dipped into, Gibbons reveals unseen comics&’ pitches, life as the first Comics Laureate, and going from being a fanzine artist to infiltrating DC Comics in the 1970s. The book covers everything from working on Doctor Who and meeting Tom Baker to being inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame. Gibbons also discusses, for the first time anywhere, the reasons why he and fellow Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore no longer speak. Packed with over 300 iconic, rarely seen, and unpublished art pieces and photographs, Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography not only entertains, but peels back the layers of a fascinating career in comics.
D'aquí no marxaré mai
By Guillem Albà. 2023
L'emoció i els records marquen aquest viatge d'anada i tornada que farà Guillem Albà per descobrir qui era el seu…
avi, un nen a qui la guerra va convertir en un home. Aquesta és la història de l'avi del Guillem, però sobretot és la història d'amor a un ésser estimat i a una manera d'entendre la vida. «L'avi sempre m'havia explicat la seva història. D'històries com la del meu avi n'hi ha moltíssimes. Els avis d'aquesta generació van viure una guerra, una postguerra i una dictadura. Van viure coses que jo només he vist en documentals i he llegit en llibres. Per més que intenti imaginar-m'ho, no sabré mai realment el que és viure-les en carn pròpia. Crec que és bonic i necessari que no s'oblidin les coses que van passar. Que recordem els que han viscut abans que nosaltres i que, per una successió de circumstàncies de l'atzar i el destí, han fet que ara estiguem aquí».
Vincent's Arles: As It Is and as It Was
By Linda Seidel. 2023
A vivid tour of the town of Arles, guided by one of its most famous visitors: Vincent van Gogh. …
Once admired as “a little Rome” on the banks of the Rhône, the town of Arles in the south of France had been a place of significance long before the painter Vincent van Gogh arrived in February of 1888. Aware of Arles’s history as a haven for poets, van Gogh spent an intense fifteen months there, scouring the city’s streets and surroundings in search of subjects to paint when he wasn’t thinking about other places or lamenting his woeful circumstances. In Vincent’s Arles, Linda Seidel serves as a guide to the mysterious and culturally rich town of Arles, taking us to the places immortalized by van Gogh and cherished by innumerable visitors and pilgrims. Drawing on her extensive expertise on the region and the medieval world, Seidel presents Arles then and now as seen by a walker, visiting sites old and new. Roman, Romanesque, and contemporary structures come alive with the help of the letters the artist wrote while in Arles. The result is the perfect blend of history, art, and travel, a chance to visit a lost past and its lingering, often beautiful, traces in the present.
Vincent's Arles: As It Is and as It Was
By Linda Seidel. 2023
A vivid tour of the town of Arles, guided by one of its most famous visitors: Vincent van Gogh. …
Once admired as “a little Rome” on the banks of the Rhône, the town of Arles in the south of France had been a place of significance long before the painter Vincent van Gogh arrived in February of 1888. Aware of Arles’s history as a haven for poets, van Gogh spent an intense fifteen months there, scouring the city’s streets and surroundings in search of subjects to paint when he wasn’t thinking about other places or lamenting his woeful circumstances. In Vincent’s Arles, Linda Seidel serves as a guide to the mysterious and culturally rich town of Arles, taking us to the places immortalized by van Gogh and cherished by innumerable visitors and pilgrims. Drawing on her extensive expertise on the region and the medieval world, Seidel presents Arles then and now as seen by a walker, visiting sites old and new. Roman, Romanesque, and contemporary structures come alive with the help of the letters the artist wrote while in Arles. The result is the perfect blend of history, art, and travel, a chance to visit a lost past and its lingering, often beautiful, traces in the present.
Ted Lambert: The Man Behind the Paintings
By Ted Lambert. 2012
Ted Lambert is regarded as one of the premier Alaska artists, a true pioneer. Born in 1905, and raised in…
the Chicago area, Lambert moved to Alaska in 1925 and went to work as a miner near McCarthy. He held several jobs, predominantly working at a copper mine and mushing dogs—first for adventure, and then as a mail carrier. Lambert left Alaska in 1931 to study art for a year at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, then moved to Seattle, where he began a mentorship under Eustace Ziegler, with whom he traveled throughout Alaska and painted. Eventually Lambert settled down in Fairbanks, where he stayed for twenty years and solidified his reputation as a painter and an artist. But in 1960 he disappeared from the remote cabin he was living in at Bristol Bay. No trace of his body was ever found, but among the effects rescued from his last home was a memoir of his early days in Alaska. Presented here and never before published, these memoirs reveal Lambert to be a keen and intelligent observer and relay the adventure story of a young man who would become one of Alaska’s most important artists.
The Legend of Pirosmani
By Valerian Markarov. 2023
Sometimes amazing people live next to us, whose existence, even before the end of their earthly days, becomes a legend. Such is a lot…
of the chosen. They, feeding the lofty ideas of humanity, hear, see and feel what is inaccessible to ordinary mortals, and we do not notice them, do not cherish them. Such a creator, whose name is surrounded by a halo of immortality, was Niko Pirosmani. The stories that are told about him, no one can confirm or deny. But they are his biography. He created it himself with his amazing life. A life that turned into a Legend about the Master. And we have no right not to believe her…
Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art
By David J. Getsy. 2022
The first book to chart Scott Burton’s performance art and sculpture of the 1970s. Scott Burton (1939–89) created performance art…
and sculpture that drew on queer experience and the sexual cultures that flourished in New York City in the 1970s. David J. Getsy argues that Burton looked to body language and queer behavior in public space—most importantly, street cruising—as foundations for rethinking the audiences and possibilities of art. This first book on the artist examines Burton’s underacknowledged contributions to performance art and how he made queer life central in them. Extending his performances about cruising, sexual signaling, and power dynamics throughout the decade, Burton also came to create functional sculptures that covertly signaled queerness by hiding in plain sight as furniture waiting to be used. With research drawing from multiple archives and numerous interviews, Getsy charts Burton’s deep engagements with postminimalism, performance, feminism, behavioral psychology, design history, and queer culture. A restless and expansive artist, Burton transformed his commitment to gay liberation into a unique practice of performance, sculpture, and public art that aspired to be antielitist, embracing of differences, and open to all. Filled with stories of Burton’s life in New York’s art communities, Queer Behavior makes a case for Burton as one of the most significant out queer artists to emerge in the wake of the Stonewall uprising and offers rich accounts of queer art and performance art in the 1970s.
El amante uruguayo: Una historia real
By Santiago Roncagliolo. 2012
Laleyenda del amante uruguayo de Lorca narrada por Santiago Roncagliolo, Premio Alfaguara 2006En 1953, el escritor uruguayo Enrique Amorim erigió…
un misterioso monumento en la frontera entre Uruguay y Argentina. El memorial tenía la forma de una lápida, y en su interior Amorim enterró un osario. El discurso inaugural y la correspondencia posterior sugieren que ahí yacían los restos de Federico García Lorca.Este libro comienza con el enigma de este monumento y luego pasa al enigma del propio Amorim. Millonario pero comunista, escritor pero hacendado, homosexual pero casado, uruguayo pero argentino, Amorim fue cambiando de identidad para estar cerca de los artistas que amaba: un Neruda maltratador y egoísta, un Picasso heroico en el París de posguerra, un Borges en pleno descubrimiento de su universo literario, un Chaplin juguetón perseguido por el anticomunismo.¿Qué es verdad en esta historia? ¿Qué creía Amorim que era verdad? O ¿qué quería hacernos creer que lo era? Toca al lector decidirlo. Aunque rigurosamente documentado, este libro cuenta la historia de un camaleón, y, a través de sus ojos, la crónica más inesperada del arte y la literatura del siglo xx.
Los últimos días de Roger Federer: y otros finales
By Geoff Dyer. 2022
Unapoderosa reflexión sobre hallar propósito en el ocaso de nuestras vidas.«Dyer, que se ha propuesto escribir un libro sobre los…
finales, se siente atraído por la infinitud, por la forma en que una cosa lleva a la otra [...]. Hay pasajes realmente magníficos, algunos fragmentos de crítica maravillosos, algunas apasionantes descripciones de psicodélicos».The New York Times¿Qué ocurre con la carrera de grandes artistas y atletas cuando llegan a la vejez? ¿Alcanzan una serenidad renovada o sucumben al tormento? A medida que nuestro cuerpo y nuestra mente se deterioran, ¿cómo seguir adelante?Geoff Dyer reflexiona sobre las secuelas del paso del tiempo y se fija en los últimos días de grandes escritores, pintores, futbolistas, músicos y estrellas del tenis (sí, también Roger Federer). Con un tono mordaz y una lucidez inigualables, Dyer nos acerca a momentos críticos de genios que cedieron física o mentalmente cuando sus carreras alcanzaron la cúspide o que se reinventaron desafiando las convenciones. Entre su exquisita selección, Dyer nos confía el deterioro mental de Nietzsche, los nuevos sonidos que Dylan encontró tras una crisis creativa, las últimas pinturas con cierto aire abstracto de Turner, la brillante pluma de Jean Rhys en su madurez y los mágicos cuartetos finales de Beethoven.Los últimos días de Roger Federer es una ingeniosa y festiva reflexión sobre la finitud y sobre el arte como modo de perdurar en el tiempo. Una obra conmovedora, ágil y lúcida que nos devuelve la esperanza de hallar sentido a los últimos años de la vida. La crítica ha dicho:«Un tesoro nacional».Zadie Smith«Dulcemente transcendental. [...] Un libro que, a pesar de tratar un tema sombrío, rebosa energía y su voz resuena alegremente».The Sunday Times«Qué sensibilidad tiene charlando con el lector de una manera cálidamenteamigable,con su prosa salpicada de humor autocrítico y notas al pie, su erudición para nada pomposa o trivial».The Daily Telegraph«La madurez le ha llegado, pero la juventud no se ha ido. Son los soportes para las rodillas en ambas piernas los que ahora lo mantienen en la cancha de tenis, pero, al igual que Federer, lo que lo mantiene en el juego es una mezcla de estilo, toque, sincronización y buen ojo».The Guardian
Warhol: La vida como arte
By Blake Gopnik. 2020
«Una biografía épica. Un libro para disfrutar, ameno y plagado de detalles. Fascinante».Kirkus Reviews Basada en años de investigación y…
entrevistas con decenas de amigos, amantes y detractores de Warhol, esta biografía traza el recorrido del artista desde sus orígenes como hijo de inmigrantes de Europa del Este en Pittsburgh hasta su revolucionario papel en el mundo del arte. Además, es un fascinante retrato de la sociedad y del mundo en los años setenta y ochenta y de las grandes transformaciones ocurridas en el comercio y la cultura. Tras el resplandor de su famosa Factory, por donde pasaron las figuras más glamurosas de su tiempo (Susan Sontag, Mick Jagger o los barones de Rothschild, entre otros), había un hombre tímido que vivió gran parte de su vida con su madre y protegió con celo su privacidad. Repleto de ideas nuevas sobre el trabajo y la personalidad del artista, este libro capta a la perfección las contradicciones y el radical ingenio que llevaron a Warhol a revolucionar el panorama cultural. ¿Era una broma o un auténtico genio? ¿Era un radical o un arribista? Como el propio Warhol habría respondido: sí. La crítica ha dicho:«Ojalá hubiese podido conocer mejor a Warhol. Esta fantástica biografía me hace sentir que así fue. Revela tanto al hombre como al genio que se encuentran bajo esa peluca plateada».ELTON JOHN «Hay tantos momentos warholianos en este magnífico libro que no sabría por dónde empezar. Cautivador, tiene tanto de historia del arte y filosofía como de biografía».The Guardian «Warhol vivió una de las más grandiosas vidas del siglo XX y ahora cuenta con una biografía a la altura de esa vida. No le sobra ni una página».Los Angeles Times «Absorbente».The Wall Street Journal «Impresionante, arrebatador».Washington Post «Fantástica y minuciosa. El autor indaga en la vida de uno de los mayores mitos de nuestros tiempos, con peluca plateada incluida».The Evening Standard «Una épica biografía del rey del pop art. Un libro para disfrutar, que aporta todo lujo de detalles con una escritura ágil. Fascinante».Kirkus Reviews «La más biografía más completa y lúcida de Warhol. El autor navega a través de la amplia documentación sin empantanarse, y defiende a Warhol como un genio hecho a sí mismo».Apollo Magazine «Una excelente mirada a la vida, la personalidad y el genio de Andy».Diane Von Furstenberg
Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America
By Hugh Eakin. 2022
A riveting story of how dueling ambitions and the power of prodigy made America the cultural center of the world—and…
Picasso the most famous artist alive—in the shadow of World War II&“Fascinating, eloquent, wonderfully lucid, Picasso&’s War will change whatever we thought we knew about modern art and its complicated reception on this side of the Atlantic.&”—Francine Prose, author of The VixenIn January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. How did the controversial leader of the Paris avant-garde break through to the heart of American culture?The answer begins a generation earlier, when a renegade Irish American lawyer named John Quinn set out to build the greatest collection of Picassos in existence. His dream of a museum to house them died with him, until it was rediscovered by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a cultural visionary who, at the age of twenty-seven, became the director of New York&’s new Museum of Modern Art.Barr and Quinn&’s shared goal would be thwarted in the years to come—by popular hostility, by the Depression, by Parisian intrigues, and by Picasso himself. It would take Hitler&’s campaign against Jews and modern art, and Barr&’s fraught alliance with Paul Rosenberg, Picasso&’s persecuted dealer, to get Picasso&’s most important paintings out of Europe. Mounted in the shadow of war, the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art would launch Picasso in America, define MoMA as we know it, and shift the focus of the art world from Paris to New York.Picasso&’s War is the never-before-told story about how a single exhibition, a decade in the making, irrevocably changed American taste, and in doing so saved dozens of the twentieth century&’s most enduring artworks from the Nazis. Through a deft combination of new scholarship and vivid storytelling, Hugh Eakin shows how two men and their obsession with Picasso changed the art world forever.
Tom Thomson was Canada's Vincent van Gogh. He painted for a period of five years before meeting his untimely death…
in a remote wilderness lake in July 1917. He was buried in an unofficial grave close to the lake where his body was found. About eight hours after he was buried, the coroner arrived but never examined the body and ruled his death accidental due to drowning. A day and a half later, Thomson's family hired an undertaker to exhume the body and move it to the family plot about 100 miles away. This undertaker refused all help, and only worked at night. In 1956, John Little's father and three other men, influenced by the story of an old park ranger who never believed Thomson's body was moved by the undertaker, dug up what was supposed to be the original, empty grave. To their surprise, the grave still contained a body, and the skull revealed a head wound that matched the same location noted by the men who pulled his corpse from the water in 1917. The finding sent shockwaves across the nation and began a mystery that continues to this day. In Who Killed Tom Thomson? John Little continues the sixty-year relationship his family has had with Tom Thomson and his fate by teaming up with two high-ranking Ontario provincial police homicide detectives. For the first time, they provide a forensic scientific opinion as to how Thomson met his death, and where his body is buried. Little draws upon his father's research, plus recently released archival material, as well as his own thirty-year investigation. He and his colleagues prove that Thomson was murdered, and set forth two persons of interest who may have killed Tom Thomson.
Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World
By Fred E. Basten. 2011
Nice women never wore makeup. Even the word was taboo in polite society--until Max Factor entered the scene. Born in…
Poland in 1877, Factor worked as a beautician for the Russian royal family, the Romanovs. In 1904, he fled to America, where he opened a cosmetics store in Los Angeles. Creating makeup originally for silent films, then the talkies, and, ultimately, color motion pictures, Factor designed looks for Katharine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis, and countless other beauties of the day. Soon women everywhere wanted to look like their favorite glamorous stars, and Factor was there to help, bringing his innovative cosmetics to the general public. He revolutionized the world of beauty by producing many firsts: false eyelashes, lip gloss, foundation, eye shadow, the eyebrow pencil, concealer, wand-applicator mascara, and water-resistant makeup. A true innovator, he also introduced the concept of color harmony and the celebrity-endorsed cosmetics advertising that forms the glamorous backbone of the modern industry. Max Factor was the father of modern makeup. This is his extraordinary story.
Frank and Charli: Woodstock, True Love, and the Sixties
By Frank Yandolino. 2016
Stories of Remarkable People and Enduring Love in the Time of Woodstock In the 1960s and '70s, Frank Yandolino rode…
the hippie counterculture movement alongside visionaries like Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang, and he helped put together the Woodstock Festival of 1969, the era’s emblem of love and peace. From then on (and even before that), Yandolino, a beguiling fast-talker, charmer, and gifted storyteller, took charge of his life according to those ideals, grabbing and embracing all opportunities that were thrown his way. This memoir is an account of his life as a hippie, art director, entrepreneur, manager, and screenwriter (as well as various other hats he wore in the creative industry)—representing musicians like Joe Cocker and Paul Butterfield, art directing at Penthouse magazine, designing "erotic sheets,” writing a screenplay about Marilyn Monroe and her seamstress Lena Pepitone, among other things. With his gung-ho attitude and fortuitous connections, Yandolino befriended Salvador Dali, hung out with Jimi Hendrix, ran with Abbie Hoffman, was kidnapped by a festival security detail in Paris, mixed with models and Penthouse pets, and watched secret Hells Angels initiation ceremonies. Throughout it all, Yandolino’s key message is his "free bird” philosophy of grabbing every chance you can and staying true to one’s artistic individuality. And, in the end, despite his fast life, he was always grounded by his love for his wife, Charli.
Nights in Tents: On the Front Lines of the Occupy Movement
By Laura Love. 2016
From an acclaimed musician comes an inside look at one of the most controversial and influential civil rights movements of…
our time.Nights in Tents is a memoir of the profoundly moving, and often hysterical, circumstances a fifty-one-year-old middle-class musician encountered when she abandoned a pleasantly predictable life on her pastoral, off-grid home nestled in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State to run off with the Occupy Movement.Internationally recognized singer/songwriter, Laura Love, put her music career on hold for a year to live in the chaotic tent encampments from Wall Street to Oakland. Traveling through the United States, Laura was immersed in the electrifying political culture of Occupy. She pitched her tent on city center concrete plazas; she helped shut down the Port of Oakland; she took over a Bank of America in San Francisco and was teargassed, arrested, and jailed for her trouble. All the while, she formed close bonds with the disparate characters who make up the 99 percent.Love's insight into the importance of this moment in history, as well as her surprising predictions about the next phase, promise to inspire and enlighten. This lively, engaging account takes the reader on a journey that will captivate fans of political humor, women's interests, African American perspectives, LGBT stories, as well as fans of narrative nonfiction and the memoir in general.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial
By James Reston Jr.. 2017
A Distinguished and Bestselling Historian and Army Veteran Revisits the Culture War that Raged around the Selection of Maya Lin's…
Design for the Vietnam Memorial A Rift in the Earth tells the remarkable story of the ferocious “art war” that raged between 1979 and 1984 over what kind of memorial should be built to honor the men and women who died in the Vietnam War. The story intertwines art, politics, historical memory, patriotism, racism, and a fascinating set of characters, from those who fought in the conflict and those who resisted it to politicians at the highest level. At its center are two enduring figures: Maya Lin, a young, Asian-American architecture student at Yale whose abstract design won the international competition but triggered a fierce backlash among powerful figures; and Frederick Hart, an innovative sculptor of humble origins on the cusp of stardom. James Reston, Jr., a veteran who lost a close friend in the war and has written incisively about the conflict's bitter aftermath, explores how the debate reignited passions around Vietnam long after the war’s end and raised questions about how best to honor those who fought and sacrificed in an ill-advised war. Richly illustrated with photographs from the era and design entries from the memorial competition, A Rift in the Earth is timed to appear alongside Ken Burns's eagerly anticipated PBS documentary, The Vietnam War. “The memorial appears as a rift in the earth, a long polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth."—Maya Lin "I see the wall as a kind of ocean, a sea of sacrifice. . . . I place these figures upon the shore of that sea." —Frederick Hart
Maharishi & Me: Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles' Guru
By Susan Shumsky. 2018
Susan Shumsky is a successful author in the human potential field. But in the 1970s, in India, the Swiss Alps,…
and elsewhere, she served on the personal staff of the most famous guru of the 20th century—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maharishi died in 2008 at age ninety, but his influence endures through the spiritual movement he founded: TM (Transcendental Meditation). Other books have been written about him, but this spellbinding page-turner offers a rare insider's view of life with the guru, including the time the Beatles studied at his feet in Rishikesh, India, and wrote dozens of songs under his influence. Both inspirational and disturbing, Maharishi and Me illuminates Susan's two decades living in Maharishi's ashrams, where she grew from a painfully shy teenage seeker into a spiritually aware teacher and author. It features behind-the-scenes, myth-busting stories, and over 100 photos of Maharishi and his celebrity disciples (the Beatles, Deepak Chopra, Mia Farrow, Beach Boys, and many more). Susan's candid, honest portrayal draws back the curtain on her shattering, extreme emotional seesaws of heaven and hell at her guru's hands. This compelling, haunting memoir will continue to challenge readers long after they turn its last page. It dismantles all previous beliefs about the spiritual path and how spiritual masters are supposed to behave. Susan shares: “Merely by being in his presence, we disciples entered an utterly timeless place and rapturous feeling, and, at the same time, realized the utter futility and insanity of the mundane world.” Susan's heartfelt masterwork blends her experiences, exacting research, artistically descriptive and humorous writing, emotional intelligence, and intensely personal inner exploration into a feast for thought and contemplation. Neither starry-eyed nor antagonistic, it captures, from a balanced viewpoint, the essence of life in an ashram.
Michelangelo’s developing genius is revealed as never before by the man who became Michelangelo’s last apprentice— an American artist and…
art historian whose family helped carve Mount Rushmore. Many believe Michelangelo's talent was miraculous and untrained, the product of “divine” genius—a myth that Michelangelo himself promoted by way of cementing his legacy. But the young Michelangelo studied his craft like any Renaissance apprentice, learning from a master, copying, and experimenting with materials and styles. In this extraordinary book, Alan Pascuzzi recounts the young Michelangelo’s journey from student to master, using the artist’s drawings to chart his progress and offering unique insight into the true nature of his mastery. Pascuzzi himself is today a practicing artist in Florence, Michelangelo’s city. When he was a grad student in art history, he won a Fulbright to “apprentice” himself to Michelangelo: to study his extant drawings and copy them to discern his progression in technique, composition, and mastery of anatomy. Pascuzzi also relied on the Renaissance treatise that “Il Divino” himself would have been familiar with, Cennino Cennini's The Craftsman’s Handbook (1399), which was available to apprentices as a kind of textbook of the period. Pascuzzi’s narrative traces Michelangelo’s development as an artist during the period from roughly 1485, the start of his apprenticeship, to his completion of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1512. Analyzing Michelangelo’s burgeoning abilities through copies he himself executed in museums and galleries in Florence and elsewhere, Pascuzzi unlocks the transformation that made him great. At the same time, he narrates his own transformation from student to artist as Michelangelo’s last apprentice.