Biography: general Books

Book SynopsisEssays exploring the relationship between museums and biographies, with worldwide examples and from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Museums and biographies both tell the stories of lives. This innovative collection examines for the first time biography - of individuals, objects and institutions - in relationship to the museum, casting new light on the many facets of museum history and theory, from the lives of prominent curators, to the context of museums of biography and autobiography. Separate sections cover individual biography and museum history, problematising individual biographies, institutional biographies, object biographies, and museums as biographies/autobiographies. These articles offer new ways of thinking about museums and museum history, exploring how biography in and of the museum enrichesmuseum stories by stressing the inter-related nature of lives of people, objects and institutions as part of a dense web of relationships. Through their widely ranging research, the contributors demonstrate the value of thinkingabout the stories told in and by museums, and the relationships which make up museums; and suggest new ways of undertaking and understanding museum biographies. Dr Kate Hill is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Lincoln. Contributors: Jeffrey Abt, Felicity Bodenstein, Alison Booth, Stuart Burch, Lucie Carreau, Elizabeth Crooke, Steffi de Jong, Mark Elliott, Sophie Forgan, Mariana Françozo, Laura Gray, Kate Hill, Suzanne MacLeod, Wallis Miller, Belinda Nemec, Donald Preziosi, Helen Rees Leahy, Linda Sandino, Julie Sheldon, Alexandra Stara, Louise Tythacott, Chris Whitehead, Anne WhitelawTrade Review[D]eeply engaging and accessible, providing unique and varied snapshots into the lives and histories of museums and of those associated with them, while at the same time asking deep questions of agency, knowledge, affect, narrative, object, and self. * H-NET *For the academic historian new to the debate on what makes history in museums, the variety of content, particularly in the latter half of this edited volume gives some sense of the complexity of the subject. There is much of interest that can also be garnered from the first part, not least in considering how museums and their collections came into being. * REVIEWS IN HISTORY *Informed, informative, and a highly recommended addition to academic library reference collections. * MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Museums and Biographies - telling stories about people, things and relationships - Kate Hill A Show of Generosity: Donations and the intimacy of display in the 'Cabinet des médailles et antiques' in Paris from 1830 to 1930 - Felicity Bodenstein Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden's Museum of Modern Art - Stuart Burch Sydney Pavière and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston - Laura Gray 'His Best Successor': Lady Eastlake and the National Gallery - Julie Sheldon Women, Museums and the Problem of Biography - Anne Whitelaw A Curatocracy: Who and What is a V&A Curator? - Linda Sandino Significant Lives: telling stories of museum architecture - Suzanne MacLeod Schinkel's Museums: Collecting and displaying architecture in Berlin, 1844-1933 - Wallis Miller Personifying the Museum: Incorporation and Biography in American Museum History - Jeffrey Abt Making an Exhibition of Ourselves - Helen Rees Leahy Institutional autobiography and the architecture of the art museum: restoration and remembering at the National Gallery in the 1980s - Chris Whitehead Classifying China: shifting interpretations of Buddhist bronzes in Liverpool Museum, 1867-1997 - Louise Tythacott 'Dressed like an Amazon': the transatlantic trajectory of a red feather coat - Mariana Francozo Individual, collective and institutional biographies: The Beasley collection of Pacific artefacts - Lucie Carreau Sculptural biographies in an anthropological collection: Mrs Milward's Indian 'types' - Mark Elliott Houses and Things: Literary House Museums as Collective Biography - Alison Booth 'Keepers of the Flame': biography, science and personality in the museum - Sophie Forgan National History as Biography: Alexandre Lenoir's Museum of French Monuments - Alexandra Stara Autobiographical museums - Belinda Nemec Who is History? The use of autobiographical accounts in history museums - Steffi De Jong Community biographies: character, rationale and significance - Elizabeth Crooke Endpiece: The Homunculus and the Pantograph, or, Narcissus at the Met - Donald Preziosi

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Book SynopsisIn "The Riddle of the Sands", a gripping spy story set amongst the shoals and mists of the North Sea coast in the years before the First World War, Erskine Childers fathered the modern genre of spy adventures, as well as writing a great yachting classic. Unlike John Buchan or John le Carre, however, Childers himself led a life involving spying, gun-running and conspiracy, and a constant search for adventure and danger, which led in the end to his execution by firing squad in Ireland in 1923. "The Tragedy of Erskine Childers" tells the extraordinary story of a brilliant and highly talented eccentric. A pioneering yachtsman in the early days of small yacht sailing, Childers became such a fervent supporter of Irish nationalism that he ran guns to Ireland on his boat. In the Irish Civil War, his extremism and wish to take part in active service rather than write propaganda, led to his betrayal, trial and execution.Trade Review"'Piper brings fresh insight to this fascinating, often contradictory life. His narrative twists and turns like a sequel to Childers' own novel'. New Statesman 'It is an immensely human narrative that puts a construct of flesh and bone around a sometimes denied figure.' Irish Times 'An exciting and readable account of an extremely strange life and a worthy companion to The Riddle of the Sands.' Sunday Times"Table of ContentsIllustrations; Introduction; 1. Young Erskine; 2. Sea Fever; 3. Soldier; 4. Author; 5. Marriage; 6. New Interests; 7. Gun-Runner; 8. The Cuxhaven Raid; 9. The Dardanelles; 10. Sea and Sky; 11. Sinn Fein; 12. Civil War; 13. The Tragedy of Erskine Childers; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisOn March 15, 1939, Helen Waldstein’s father snatched his stampedexit visa from a distracted clerk to escape from Prague with his wifeand child. As the Nazis closed in on a war-torn Czechoslovakia, onlyletters from their extended family could reach Canada through thebarriers of conflict. The Waldstein family received these letters asthey made their lives on a southern Ontario farm, where they learned tobe Canadian and forget their Jewish roots. Helen Waldstein read these letters as an adult – this changedeverything. As her past refused to keep silent, Helen followed thetrail of the letters back to Europe, where she discovered livingwitnesses who could attest to the letters’ contents. She has hereinterwoven their stories and her own into a compelling narrative ofsuffering, survivor guilt, and overcoming intergenerational obstacleswhen exploring a traumatic past.Table of ContentsForeword Preface Acknowledgements Map Family Tree Opening the Box Leaving Home Letters to Antwerp Starting Over Letters to Canada Searching In Europe: 1997–1998 My Aunts and Uncles My Grandparents War Breaks Out The Family Copes The Letters Stop Imagining After the War Finding Home Searching for Family Again Searching for Family One Last Time Epilogue Endnotes Selected Bibliography

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Book SynopsisDo what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Nearly seventy years after his death Aleister Crowley, the notorious Beast 666, is only just beginning to attract serious academic attention. Even so we would not expect to find him on any mainstream university courses; he is still too much associated with occultism. So, this is not your standard beginner''s guide. Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known. Readers may be surprised at the richness and complexity of his thought, as well as the extent of his influence. He needs background to be understood. Giving this opens fresh perspectives on much recent intellectual history. The guide presents his main ideas in a straightforward and accessible format, with drawings and diagrams to place them in their historical context. It relates him to contemporary movements in art and scholarship. It describes his relationship to modernism and postmodernism, and his role in the counterculture of the sixties, as well as his continuing influence today. Interspersed are entertaining stories of his life and reputation. Brilliantly illustrated by John Higgins, this is a highly accessible guide to this fascinating, complex and controversial figure. It neither promotes nor condemns him, presenting hostile as well as favourable views of his character and achievement.

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Book SynopsisThe astonishing, gripping and long-awaited inside story of an ordinary man who became an extraordinary spy.After years of living in semi-isolation, David Rupert speaks for the first time about how a trucker from New York ended up being recruited to the FBI and MI5 at one of the most crucial moments in British political history.Including shock revelations about Rupert's discoveries working within the Real IRA - such as sending plastic explosives and detonators, hidden inside toys, to a primary school in Donegal. Author Sean O'Driscoll tells the incredible story of David, 'The Big Yank', a 6ft7 American tourist who found himself at the centre of a chilling campaign of terror that targeted civilians, the forces and Prime Minister Tony Blair.Countless lives have been saved by David Rupert's decision to risk his neck working for years within one of the most brutal and ruthless terrorist organisations in the world - an organisation whose language of violence left women and children amongst the dead in the Omagh atrocity.An unprecedented bombing campaign was planned to destroy any hopes of a peace agreement. In a trial that rested entirely on the evidence of the 'Big Yank', those plans for ongoing bloodshed and an end to the Good Friday Agreement were brought to a halt.

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Book SynopsisA biography of the celebrated Chinese writer of the 20th century, Lu Xun. It seeks to set aside all the propaganda that has accrued over the decades since his death, and present him as a credible human being, neither aggrandized nor belittled. Brief sketches of Lu Xun's work are appended.

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Book SynopsisUna Marson's work embodied anti-colonialism, anti-racism, feminism, class politics and pan-Africanism in the first half of the twentieth century. Her poetry and dramatic work symbolically ushered in a new era in Jamaica's literary landscape and her efforts in championing early Jamaican literature, as well as her avid support for Caribbean writers in Britain and the region, made her a key proponent of the development of a national and West Indian literary canon. She challenged racial inequality, affirmed standards of black beauty and black identity, and explored the complexities of gender, religious discrimination and class/economic exploitation. She did not frame her work around a single cause but, instead, she was mindful of the multiple intersections of oppression. Britain's hold on Jamaica's cultural imagination would finally be challenged by artists like Marson who were eager to free their nation of colonial authority and cultural dominance. In the end, through her advocacy and pioneering work, Marson achieved a voice for the oppressed.

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