Title search results
Showing 1821 - 1840 of 4235 items
Vertigo
By Michael Hulse, W. G. Sebald. 2001
The beguiling first novel by W. G. Sebald, one of the most enormously acclaimed European writers of our time. Vertigo,…
W. G. Sebald's first novel, never before translated into English, is perhaps his most amazing and certainly his most alarming. Sebald--the acknowledged master of memory's uncanniness--takes the painful pleasures of unknowability to new intensities in Vertigo. Here in their first flowering are the signature elements of Sebald's hugely acclaimed novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is again our guide on a hair-raising journey through the past and across Europe, amid restless literary ghosts--Kafka, Stendhal, Casanova. In four dizzying sections, the narrator plunges the reader into vertigo, into that "swimming of the head," as Webster's defines it: in other words, into that state so unsettling, so fascinating, and so "stunning and strange," as The New York Times Book Review declared about The Emigrants, that it is "like a dream you want to last forever."An American Cakewalk: Ten Syncopators of the Modern World
By Zeese Papanikolas. 2015
The profound economic and social changes in the post-Civil War United States created new challenges to a nation founded on…
Enlightenment and transcendental values, religious certainties, and rural traditions. Newly-freed African Americans, emboldened women, intellectuals and artists,and a polyglot tide of immigrants found themselves in a restless new world of railroads, factories, and skyscrapers where old assumptions were being challengedand new values had yet to be created. InAn American Cakewalk: Ten Syncopators of the Modern World, Zeese Papanikolas tells the lively and entertaining story of a diverse group of figures in the arts and sciences who inhabited this new America. Just as ragtime composers subverted musical expectations by combining European march timing with African syncopations, so this book's protagonists--who range from Emily Dickinson toThorstein Veblen and from Henry and William James to Charles Mingus--interrogated the modern American world through their own "syncopations" of cultural givens. The old antebellum slave dance, the cakewalk, with its parody of the manners and pretensions of the white folks in the Big House, provides a template of how the tricksters, shamans, poets, philosophers, ragtime pianists, and jazz musicians who inhabit this book used the arts of parody, satire, and disguise to subvert American cultural norms and to create new works of astonishing beauty and intellectual vigor.Leonardo's Holy Child: A Connoiseur's Search for Lost Art in America
By Fred R. Kline. 2016
A single sketch becomes an all-consuming quest to understand and identify a work by Leonardo da Vinci himself--the first new…
drawing by the great master to have surfaced in over a century. Fred Kline is a well-known art historian, dealer, connoisseur, and explorer who has made a career of scouring antique stores, estate sales, and auctions looking for unusual--and often misidentified--works of art. Many of the gems he has found are now in major museum collections like the Frick, the Getty, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But this book is about the discovery of one piece in particular: About ten years ago, when Kline was routinely combing through a Christie's catalog, a beautiful little drawing caught his eye. Attributed to Carracci, it came with a very low estimate, but Kline's every instinct told him that the attribution was wrong. He placed a bid and the low asking price and bought the drawing outright. And that was the beginning of how Kline discovered Leonardo da Vinci's model drawing for the Infant Jesus and the Infant St. John. It is the first work by da Vinci to have surfaced in over a century. Leonardo's Holy Child chronicles not only the story of this amazing discovery, from Kline's research all over the world to how exactly attributions work with regards to the old masters (most of their works are unsigned). Kline also sheds light on the idea of "connoisseurship," an often-overlooked facet of art history that's almost Holmesian in its intricacy and specificity.Wagstaff: A Biography
By Philip Gefter. 2015
Biography on a grand cultural level, here is the long-awaited story of Sam Wagstaff and his indelible influence on the…
world of late-twentieth-century art. Sam Wagstaff, the legendary curator, collector, and patron of the arts, emerges as a cultural visionary in this groundbreaking biography. Even today remembered primarily as the mentor and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe, the once infamous photographer, Wagstaff, in fact, had an incalculable--and largely overlooked--influence on the world of contemporary art and photography, and on the evolution of gay identity in the latter part of the twentieth century. Born in New York City in 1921 into a notable family, Wagstaff followed an arc that was typical of a young man of his class. He attended both Hotchkiss and Yale, served in the navy, and would follow in step with his Ivy League classmates to the "gentleman's profession," as an ad executive on Madison Avenue. With his unmistakably good looks, he projected an aura of glamour and was cited by newspapers as one of the most eligible bachelors of the late 1940s. Such accounts proved deceiving, for Wagstaff was forced to live in the closet, his homosexuality only revealed to a small circle of friends. Increasingly uncomfortable with his career and this double life, he abandoned advertising, turned to the formal study of art history, and embarked on a radical personal transformation that was in perfect harmony with the tumultuous social, cultural, and sexual upheavals of the 1960s. Accordingly, Wagstaff became a curator, in 1961, at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum, where he mounted both "Black, White, and Gray"--the first museum show of minimal art--and the sculptor Tony Smith's first museum show, while lending his early support to artists Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson, and Richard Tuttle, among many others. Later, as a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, he brought the avant-garde to a regional museum, offending its more staid trustees in the process. After returning to New York City in 1972, the fifty-year-old Wagstaff met the twenty-five-year-old Queens-born Robert Mapplethorpe, then living with Patti Smith. What at first appeared to be a sexual dalliance became their now historic lifelong romance, in which Mapplethorpe would foster Wagstaff's own burgeoning interest in contemporary photography and Wagstaff would help secure Mapplethorpe's reputation in the art world. In spite of their profound class differences, the artistic union between the philanthropically inclined Wagstaff and the prodigiously talented Mapplethorpe would rival that of Stieglitz and O'Keefe, or Rivera and Kahlo, in their ability to help reshape contemporary art history. Positioning Wagstaff's personal life against the rise of photography as a major art form and the simultaneous formation of the gay rights movement, Philip Gefter's absorbing biography provides a searing portrait of New York just before and during the age of AIDS. The result is a definitive and memorable portrait of a man and an era.The Olive Farm
By Carol Drinkwater. 2001
"All my life, I have dreamed of acquiring a crumbling, shabby-chic house overlooking the sea. In my mind's eye, I…
have pictured a corner of paradise where friends can gather to swim, relax, debate, eat fresh fruits picked directly from the garden and great steaming plates of food served from an al fresco kitchen and dished up on to a candlelit table the length of a railway sleeper. . . " When Carol Drinkwater and her partner Michel have the opportunity to buy 10 acres of disused olive farm in Provence, the idea seems absurd. After all, they don't have a lot of money, and they've only been together a little while. THE OLIVE FARM is the story of the highs and lows of purchasing the farm and life in Provence: the local customs and cuisine; the threats of fire and adoption of a menagerie of animals; the potential financial ruin and the thrill of harvesting their own olives - especially when they are discovered to produce the finest extra-virgin olive oil. . .Fanny Kemble
By Deirdre David. 2007
A ForeWord magazine Book of the Year for 2007Charismatic, highly intelligent, and splendidly talented, Fanny Kemble (1809-93) was a Victorian…
celebrity, known on both sides of the Atlantic as an actress and member of the famous Kemble theatrical dynasty, as a fierce opponent of slavery despite her marriage to a wealthy slave owner, as a brilliantly successful solo performer of Shakespeare, and as the author of journals about her career and life on her husband's Georgia plantations. She was, in her own words, irresistible as a "woman who has sat at dinner alongside Byron . . . and who calls Tennyson, Alfred."Touring in America with her father in the early 1830s, Kemble impulsively wed the wealthy and charming Philadelphia bachelor Pierce Butler, beginning a tumultuous marriage that ended in a sensational divorce and custody battle fourteen years later. At the time of their marriage, Kemble had not yet visited the vast Georgia rice and cotton plantations to which Butler was heir. In the winter of 1838, they visited Butler's southern holdings, and a horrified Kemble wrote what would later be published on both sides of the Atlantic as Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation. An important text for abolitionists, it revealed the inner workings of a plantation and the appalling conditions in which slaves lived. Returning to England after her divorce, she fashioned a new career as a solo performer of Shakespeare's plays and as the author of memoirs, several travel narratives and collections of poems, a short novel, and miscellaneous essays on the theater. For the rest of her life, she would divide her time between the two countries.In the various roles she performed in her life, on stage and off--abolitionist, author, estranged wife--Kemble remained highly theatrical, appropriating and subverting nineteenth-century prescriptions for women's lives, ever rewriting the roles to which she was assigned by society and inheritance. Hers was truly a performed life, and in the first Kemble biography in twenty-five years to examine that life in its entirety, Deirdre David presents it in all its richness and complexity.The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter
By Honor Moore. 2009
"A striking portrait of a woman artist's struggle for life." --Arthur Miller Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art…
in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo
By Tim Parks. 2013
"So inviting you might find yourself tempted to give the experience a whirl and ride the Italian trains yourself, book…
in hand."--Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review Tim Parks's books on Italy have been hailed as "so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy. Parks begins as any traveler might: "A train is a train is a train, isn't it?" But soon he turns his novelist's eye to the details, and as he journeys through majestic Milano Centrale station or on the newest high-speed rail line, he delivers a uniquely insightful portrait of Italy. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians--conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants--Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive: an obsession with speed but an acceptance of slower, older ways; a blind eye toward brutal architecture amid grand monuments; and an undying love of a good argument and the perfect cappuccino. Italian Ways also explores how trains helped build Italy and how their development reflects Italians' sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond. Most of all, Italian Ways is an entertaining attempt to capture the essence of modern Italy. As Parks writes, "To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?"Leonardo Da Vinci: Young Artist, Writer, and Inventor
By George E. Stanley. 2005
This book is a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, best known as the Renaissance painter who created the "Mona Lisa"…
and "The Last Supper" and also made great contributions as a sculptor, architect, engineer and scientist.Between Lives: An Artist and Her World
By Dorothea Tanning. 2001
The life and times of one of our most enchanting artists; a twentieth-century fairy tale, lovingly remembered and luminously told.…
Fourteen years ago, the artist Dorothea Tanning published Birthday, a collection of reminiscences. Now she has expanded it into a memoir of her journey through the last century as confidant, collaborator, and muse to some of its most inspired minds and personalities: a diverse assemblage that ranges from the fathers of dada and surrealism to Virgil Thompson, George Balanchine, Alberto Giacometti, Dylan Thomas, Truman Capote, Joan Miró, James Merrill, and many more. At its center is the relationship, tenderly rendered, between Tanning and her famed husband, the enigmatic surrealist Max Ernst. Whether recalling the poignant presence of her friend Joseph Cornell or simply marveling at the facades along a Venice canal, "their filmy reflections fluttering in the dirty canal like fragile altar cloths hung out to dry," Tanning's writing is beguiling, wry, and shot through with the same eye for pregnant detail and immanent magic that marks her art.A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide
By Stephanie Saldaña. 2017
"Behind every dark moment, there is another hidden world. The trick is to hold out long enough to make it…
there."When American writer Stephanie Saldaña finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus Road, the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, she is a new wife trying to navigate a fragile terrain, both within her marriage and throughout the country in which she has chosen to live.Pregnant with her first child, Stephanie struggles to protect her family, their faith, and herself from the cracks of Middle Eastern conflict that threaten to shatter the world around her. But as her due date approaches, she must reconcile herself with her choice to bring a child into a dangerous world. Determined to piece together life from the brokenness, she sets out to uncover small instances of beauty to balance the delicate coexistence between love, motherhood, and a country so often at war.In an urban valley in Jerusalem, A Country Between captures the fragile ecosystem of the Middle East and the difficult first years of motherhood in the midst of a conflict-torn city. What unfolds is a celebration of faith, language, family, and love that fills the space between what was shattered, leaving us whole once more.Islands Apart: A Year on the Edge of Civilization
By Ken Mcalpine. 2009
Author Ken McAlpine stands in his front yard one night in Ventura, California, trying to see the stars. His view…
is diminished by light pollution, making it hard to see much of anything in the sky. Our fast-paced, technologically advanced society, he concludes, is not conducive to stargazing or soul-searching. Taking a page from Thoreau's Walden, he decides to get away from the clamor of everyday life, journeying alone through California's Channel Islands National Park. There, he imagines, he might be able to "breathe slowly and think clearly, to examine how we live and what we live for."In between his week-long solo trips through these pristine islands, McAlpine reaches out to try to better understand his fellow man: he eats lunch with the homeless in Beverly Hills, sits in the desert with a 98-year-old Benedictine monk, and befriends a sidewalk celebrity impersonator in Hollywood. What he discovers about himself and the world we live in will inspire anyone who wishes they had the time to slow down and notice the wonders of nature and humanity.To learn more about the author, visit his website at www.kenmcalpine.com.Mango Elephants in the Sun: How Life in an African Village Let Me Be in My Skin
By Susana Herrera. 1999
When the Peace Corps sends Susana Herrera to teach English in northern Cameroon, she yearns to embrace her adopted village…
and its people, to drink deep from the spirit of Mother Africa--and to forget a bitter childhood and painful past. To the villagers, however, she's a rich American tourist, a nasara (white person) who has never known pain or want. They stare at her in silence. The children giggle and run away. At first her only confidant is a miraculously communicative lizard. Susana fights back with every ounce of heart and humor she possesses, and slowly begins to make a difference. She ventures out to the village well and learns to carry water on her head. In a classroom crowded to suffocation she finds a way to discipline her students without resorting to the beatings they are used to. She makes ice cream in the scorching heat, and learns how to plant millet and kill chickens. She laughs with the villagers, cries with them, works and prays with them, heals and is helped by them. Village life is hard but magical. Poverty is rampant--yet people sing and share what little they have. The termites that chew up her bed like morning cereal are fried and eaten in their turn ("bite-sized and crunchy like Doritos"). Nobody knows what tomorrow may bring, but even the morning greetings impart a purer sense of being in the moment. Gradually, Susana and the village become part of each other. They will never be the same again.Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Raymond Aaron, Janet Matthews. 2012
Wearing poppies on your lapel during the month of November. Enjoying local fiddlers playing music on Cape Breton Island. Cheering…
your favorite team on during Hockey Night. Swatting mosquitoes in Muskoka on the first long weekend in May. Driving the Trans-Canada Highway. Questioning why the ABC song ends in "z" and not "zed." All these things are distinctly Canadian and now there's another one more: Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul. Written by fellow Canadians from Cape Breton Island to Prince Edward Island, from Montreal to Vancouver, this book reveals the people, the history and the special moments that give Canada such a distinctive charm and character. With chapters including: On Being Canadian, Living Your Dream, Overcoming Obstacles, On Love, On Kindness, and Making a Difference, these stories weave a rich tapestry of life from the people who call Canada home. Notable stories include: hockey player Paul Henderson's "Goal of the Century," Chief Dan George's recounting of his great land, Marilyn Bell DiLascio's historic 1954 Lake Ontario swim, cartoonist Lynn Johnston's delightful story of an encounter with Wayne Gretzky, and journalist Sally Armstrong's details of Princess Diana's first trip to Canada. Like hearing a heartfelt version of "O, Canada!" this book will instill renewed pride and patriotism in a well-deserving country and its people.Herndon Davis
By Thomas J. Noel, Craig Leavitt. 2016
"Herndon Davis, an artist and journalist, dedicated his life to depicting the major landmarks and personalities of Colorado in watercolor,…
oil, pen, and pencil. Best known for the Face on the Barroom Floor, the portrait of an alluring woman on the floor of the Teller House Hotel barroom in Central City, Colorado, Davis was a prolific artist whose murals, sketches, and portraits can be found all over the state, from the Sage Room of the Oxford Hotel on Seventeenth Street to the Denver Press Club poker room. Despite his numerous contributions, his work was never showcased or exhibited in the traditional manner.In this biography and first-ever collection featuring most of his life's work, authors Craig Leavitt and Thomas J. Noel provide a detailed look into Davis's life and career and include a catalog of almost 200 photographs of his work from Colorado and around the country. They also put his work into the broader context of the time through comparison with such contemporary Colorado artists as Muriel Sibell Wolle, Allen Tupper True, Charles Waldo Love, and Juan Menchaca.Published to coincide with the Denver Public Library's 2016 exhibition--the only public display of Davis's work to date--and bringing deserved attention to this overlooked figure, Herndon Davis: Painting Colorado History, 1901-1962 is an important contribution to Colorado's cultural history.This book and the accompanying exhibit are sponsored by the Western History/Genealogy Department at the Denver Public Library. Publication originated and supported in part by Diane B. Wunnike."A Notorious Woman: Anne Royall in Jacksonian America
By Elizabeth J. Clapp. 2016
During her long career as a public figure in Jacksonian America, Anne Royall was called everything from an "enemy of…
religion" to a "Jackson man" to a "common scold. " In her search for the source of such strong reactions, Elizabeth Clapp has uncovered the story of a widely read woman of letters who asserted her right to a political voice without regard to her gender. Widowed and in need of a livelihood following a disastrous lawsuit over her husband’s will, Royall decided to earn her living through writing--first as a travel writer, journeying through America to research and sell her books, and later as a journalist and editor. Her language and forcefully expressed opinions provoked people at least as much as did her inflammatory behavior and aggressive marketing tactics. An ardent defender of American liberties, she attacked the agents of evangelical revivals, the Bank of the United States, and corruption in government. Her positions were frequently extreme, directly challenging the would-be shapers of the early republic’s religious and political culture. She made many enemies, but because she also attracted many supporters, she was not easily silenced. The definitive account of a passionate voice when America was inventing itself, A Notorious Woman re-creates a fascinating stage on which women’s roles, evangelical hegemony, and political involvement were all contested.The Guidebook Experiment
By David Bockino. 2015
Our information-obsessed world has fundamentally altered much of what we do on a day-to-day basis. The way we shop. The…
way we communicate. The way we learn.More tools tell us how to spend our free time than ever before, telling us not only where to go but how to get there, what it will look like, and why we should go in the first place. This proliferation of guidebook material, this "guidebook evolution," has clearly changed the way we travel. But how?By tracing the evolution of the guidebook, from pilgrim manuals and Baedeker's to Yelp reviews and Google Maps, and by identifying the three pillars of the guidebook structure, The Guidebook Experiment explores the effects this growth has had on the state of the genre.Then, by using some of the world's greatest explorers as inspiration, the author sets out guidebook-less, launching an experiment that determines how the guidebook has fundamentally altered the nature of travel and explaining why all travelers should consider conducting their own guidebook experiments.The Guidebook Experiment, a call-to-action disguised as a nonfiction narrative, capitalizes on the recent trend to "disconnect" and encourages readers to discover the joy of travel on their own.Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City
By Mark Adams. 2015
"Adventurous, inquisitive and mirthful, Mark Adams gamely sifts through the eons of rumor, science, and lore to find a place…
that, in the end, seems startlingly real indeed." -Hampton Sides "Infused with humor and pop culture references, Adams makes what could have been a tedious recitation of theories into an exciting adventure." -Chicago Tribune "Writing with the same jaunty style as Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Adams merrily entertains the lost-cities audience." -Booklist A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Far from alien conspiracy theories and other pop culture myths, everything we know about the legendary lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Stranger still: Adams learned there is an entire global sub-culture of amateur explorers who are still actively and obsessively searching for this sunken city, based entirely on Plato's detailed clues. What Adams didn't realize was that Atlantis is kind of like a virus--and he'd been exposed. In Meet Me in Atlantis, Adams racks up frequent-flier miles tracking down these Atlantis obsessives, trying to determine why they believe it's possible to find the world's most famous lost city--and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. The result is a classic quest that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep, often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world.From the Hardcover edition.26 Songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest
By Greg Vandy, Daniel Person. 2016
In 1941, Woody Guthrie wrote 26 songs in 30 days--including classics like "Roll On Columbia" and "Pastures of Plenty"--when he…
was hired by the Bonneville Power Administration to promote the benefits of cheap hydroelectric power, irrigation, and the Grand Coulee Dam. Timed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of this project, KEXP DJ Greg Vandy takes readers inside the unusual partnership between one of America's great folk artists and the federal government, and shows how the American folk revival was a response to hard times.26 Songs In 30 Days plunges deeply into the historical context of the time and the progressive politics that embraced Social Democracy during an era in which the United States had been severely suffering from The Great Depression. And though this is a musical history of a vibrant American musical icon and a specific part of the country, it couldn't be a better reminder of how timeless and expansive such topics are in today's political discourse.From the Hardcover edition.Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry
By Akiane Kramarik. 2006
Ten-year-old prodigy Akiane Kramarik shares her artwork, poetry, and the fascinating story surrounding her talent.Growing up in a home with…
an atheistic mother and a non-participating Catholic father did not stop four-year-old Akiane Kramarik from finding God. This girl's dreams began a conversation in the home that has eventually brought them all to Christianity and the world's attention. Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry is a collection of the best of Akiane's full-color paintings and poetry created from ages 4 to 10, along with details of her family and the amazing stories that surround each unique artwork. Already a media professional, Akiane has been interviewed on programs such as Oprah, World News Tonight, Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN, and Schuller's Hour of Power. Akiane will be one of twenty visual artists participating in the October "Listen" event raising money for the world's needy children. Today Akiane's art is available online at www.artakiane.com.