Search results for ""Author Walt"

Tartans have a long and fascinating history, with patterns specific to a particular region dating back to the 16th century. The wearing of tartans became widespread in Scotland during the 18th century, when clan warriors would choose a particular pattern of colours to show allegiance to a particular leader. Some of the earliest records of whole Scots regiments wearing the same tartan date back to the Seven Years War in Canada (1756– 63). In the early 19th century, the novels of Sir Walter Scott captured the public imagination with romanticized accounts of dashing Highlanders, starting a trend for all things Scottish. This gave rise to attempts to catalogue the patterns, or setts, worn by each of the traditional clans, and to revive the wearing of these tartans. Many new designs proliferated during this period, with tartan becoming a true symbol of Scottishness, incorporated into clothing, biscuit tins and trinkets. Throughout the 20th century, tartans have continued to be devised for special occasions and regions far from the Celtic countries. Nowadays both the United States and Canada have a strong tartan tradition, and there are more than 2,700 known and registered setts in circulation, of which this book contains many of the best known. Featuring more than 250 setts, Tartans is a comprehensive guide to the ancient tartans of Scotland and Ireland, along with many other tartans adopted by organizations and regions around the world in more recent times. For anyone interested in tracing their Celtic roots and investigating the tartans of the Scottish clans, this is an accessible and attractive reference guide.

Read more less

As early as the ancient Greeks, goddesses served as Muses for artistic creation. In essence, a creatively charged energy inspired the artist, leaving a unique and recognizable mark on the artwork. Picassos relationships with the women in his life was deeply formative, and he often represented them as Muses. He was particularly unabashed in the declaration of his feelings to one of them, Marie-Therese Walter, his youthful mistress of 1927. But at that point Picasso was still married to Olga Khokhlova, thus forced to practice the utmost discretion. His marriage to Olga made him increasingly frustrated with her imposed bourgeois expectations. As a release from this marital burden, Marie-Therese was ever present in his work, often portrayed as Aphrodite with a wreath in her hair, a basket of flowers and fruits by her side. Marie-Therese was the Dream the Muse. This fertile period coincided with the strong influence of surrealism which helped liberate Picassos psyche from the straitjacket that Olgas lifestyle imposed on him. By 1935, however, the model and mistress became a mother to Maya, radically changing the role she previously had. The following year Picasso was introduced to a new woman, Dora Maar, an encounter that signalled the beginning of the end of Marie-Thereses exclusive claim on Picassos affections and the closing of an artistic period clearly marked by fertility. The Aphrodite Period (19241936) provides new insights and analysis of Picassos life as recently uncovered through the research of the Online Picasso Project. This time-span is one of the most illustrative periods of Picassos career in that it clearly demonstrates the close interdependence between sexuality and artistic creativity that characterize Picasso's entire output.

Read more less

Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 "There is no comparable book on this tunnel. Highly recommended."—Choice Reviews Every year, more than thirty-three million vehicles traverse the Holland Tunnel, making their way to and from Jersey City and Lower Manhattan. From tourists to commuters, many cross the tunnel's 1.6-mile corridor on a daily basis, and yet few know much about this amazing feat of early 20th-century engineering. How was it built, by whom, and at what cost? These and many other questions are answered in Highway Under the Hudson: A History of the Holland Tunnel, Robert W. Jackson's fascinating story about this seminal structure in the history of urban transportation. Jackson explains the economic forces which led to the need for the tunnel, and details the extraordinary political and social politicking that took place on both sides of the Hudson River to finally enable its construction. He also introduces us to important figures in the tunnel's history, such as New Jersey Governor Walter E. Edge, who, more than anyone else, made the dream of a tunnel a reality and George Washington Goethals (builder of the Panama Canal and namesake of the Goethals Bridge), the first chief engineer of the project. Fully illustrated with more than 50 beautiful archival photographs and drawings, Jackson's story of the Holland Tunnel is one of great human drama, with heroes and villains, that illustrates how great things are accomplished, and at what price. Highway Under the Hudson featured in the New York Times Listen to Robert Jackson talk about the book on WAMC Radio

Read more less

Among the dramatists who wrote for the professional playhouses of early modern London was a small group of writers who were neither members of the commercial theater industry writing to make a living nor aristocratic amateurs dipping their toes in theatrical waters for social or political prestige. Instead, they were largely working- and middle-class amateurs who had learned most of what they knew about drama from being members of the audience. Using a range of familiar and lesser-known print and manuscript plays, as well as literary accounts and documentary evidence, Playwriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater shows how these playgoers wrote and revised to address what they assumed to be the needs of actors, readers, and the Master of the Revels; how they understood playhouse materials and practices; and how they crafted poetry for theatrical effects. The book also situates them in the context of the period's concepts of, and attitudes toward, playgoers' participation in the activity of playmaking. Plays by playgoers such as the rogue East India Company clerk Walter Mountfort or the highwayman John Clavell invite us into the creative imaginations of spectators, revealing what certain audience members wanted to see and how they thought actors might stage it. By reading Shakespeare's theater through these playgoers' works, Matteo Pangallo contributes a new category of evidence to our understanding of the relationships between the early modern stage, its plays, and its audiences. More broadly, he shows how the rise of England's first commercialized culture industry also gave rise to the first generation of participatory consumers and their attempts to engage with mainstream culture by writing early modern "fan fiction."

Read more less

A celebration of Britain's diverse housing styles throughout the twentieth century and beyond. This illuminating book is a fascinating insight into Britain’s built heritage and the diverse housing styles of the twentieth century. Redesigned and updated in a brand-new edition, it showcases 100 houses, from throughout the 20th century and stretching into the 21st, that represent the range of architectural styles throughout the years and show how housing has adapted to suit urban life. Each house is accompanied by stunning photography and texts written by leading architectural critics and design historians, including Gavin Stamp, Elain Harwood, Barnabas Calder, Alan Powers and Gillian Darley. From specially commissioned architect-designed houses for private individuals to housing built for increased workforces, each of the 100 houses brings a different design style or historical story. There are houses built as part of garden cities, semi-detached suburban dwellings, housing estates, eco-houses, almshouses, converted factories and affordable post-war homes. Architectural styles encompass mock Tudor, modernist, Arts and Crafts and brutalism, and featured architects include Giles Gilbert Scott, Walter Gropius, Edwin Lutyens, Powell and Moya and David Chipperfield. The book also contains essays that explore the social and political aspects of housing design in Britain over the last 100 years, looking at the impact the world wars had on housing, exploring domestic technology and building materials and discovering how the modern house came about. This compelling book gives a glimpse into the wonderful housing Britain has to offer and is a must-have for all fans of design history and architecture.

Read more less

Kritische profielen belicht een aantal filosofen en schrijvers die zich op een kritische manier verhouden tot de sociale, politieke en culturele realiteit die hen omringt. Het eerste hoofdstuk, "Politieke filosofie", opent met een analyse van een van de protagonisten van de moderne, westers kritische traditie, namelijk de intellectueel, en zoomt vervolgens in op problematisch geworden of eerder klassiek ogende kritische projecten zoals de neomarxistische revolutietheorie van Gyorgy Lukacs of Jurgen Habermas' theorie omtrent de civil society en de publieke ruimte. Het tweede hoofdstuk, "Esthetiek", laat filosofen aan het woord die eveneens schrijven en denken in functie van een duidelijk politiek-filosofische agenda, maar voor wie kunst en literatuur een geprivilegieerde rol spelen in de formulering van een kritische theorie. Via een lectuur van Gyorgy Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida en Charles Taylor onderzoekt de auteur hoe de kunst kon/kan uitgroeien tot een kritisch paradigma en vooral wat de gevolgen zijn van die metamorfose voor de kunst zelf. De eerste twee hoofdstukken van Kritische profielen bestrijken het terrein van de maatschappij- en cultuurkritische theorie. De hoofdstukken drie en vier, daarentegen, staan veeleer stil bij de artistieke praktijk en vooral bij de literaire praktijk die niet zelden meer oog heeft voor sociale en culturele diversiteit en complexiteit dan de vele vormen van kritische theorie. In "Vorm en realiteit" komen figuren aan bod zoals Louis Aragon, Frans Masereel, Jules Romains, Jean-Paul Sartre en Didier Daeninckx voor wie de artistieke praktijk direct of indirect verbonden is met de idee van maatschappijkritisch engagement. Het zijn stuk voor stuk auteurs en kunstenaars die als het ware de 'binnengrenzen' van hun wereld aftasten en kritisch bevragen. "Grensliteratuur", het laatste hoofdstuk, handelt over auteurs die zich eerder op de 'buitengrens' van de westerse beschaving bewegen: Andre Gide, Michel Leiris en Michel Tournier worden met wisselend succes geconfronteerd met het fundamentele probleem van culturele identiteit en differentie.

Read more less

Robert Ponsonby has been at the centre of the music world both in Britain and elsewhere for some sixty years, and "Musical Heroes" is a distillation of his experiences, achievements and friendships in that world. With its deft touch and its empathy, it is both captivating and inspiring, and it is often full of humour. It paints portraits in many formats of the fifty or so figures he knew best, including conductors, composers, performers and administrators: Boult, Beecham, Giulini, Pritchard, Kubelik, Boulez, Walton, Tippett, Berio, Ligeti, Henze, Menuhin, Sena Jurinac, Rostropovich, Jacqueline du Pre, John Ogdon, William Glock, John Drummond, Thomas Armstrong and Robert Mayer are some of those featured. There has been a widespread renaissance in the appreciation of classical music in the past few years, above all among talented young musicians and composers and in schools, where music is now taught systematically. "Musical Heroes" will therefore have a wide appeal not only among established lovers of classical music but also among people who have discovered it for themselves more recently. There is probably more active music-making in Britain today than there has ever been, and concerts in all parts of the country are often packed out. Dame Janet Baker: 'One of the truly great privileges is to spend one's working life among charismatic, interesting and gifted people. It has clearly been the experience of Robert Ponsonby during his many years of artistic administration and he writes about it with obvious delight...How refreshing...to read [his] collection of portraits which steer such a well-judged course between the light and darker sides of the human condition and give us a balanced picture of his subjects. He has a delightful turn of phrase and describes aspects of character which I found immediately recognizable and true. It is all done with wit, perception, kindness, honesty, affection and humour, leaving this reader wanting more'.

Read more less

Herbert Bayer was one of the most extraordinary artists associated with the Bauhaus school. A true multimedia artist, he united graphic design, art, and architecture in a unique style that came to represent the bold aesthetic approach of the movement. A teacher with the school until 1928, Bayer went on to become a highly successful graphic designer in Germany, and later one of the most prominent figures in the 20th-century art scene of the United States. This broad biographical account, which presents previously unseen archival photographs and episodes from the life of Bayer and other influential Bauhaus artists such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, follows Bayer through the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and finally to his exile in the United States. Specifically, Patrick Rössler reveals for the first time Bayer’s unique experience of 1930s Germany, where, with his commercial and artistic life shattered by terror and censorship, he distracted himself with leading a hedonistic life. Shining a light on Bayer’s time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and his route out of the Nazi state, Rössler provides rich new insights into how Bauhaus artists navigated a protracted period of social upheaval and dictatorship, where commercial success was fraught with a deep hostility towards the regime and the temptations of emigration. Revealing the tensions of an avant-garde artist struggling to practice during a period of repression, Herbert Bayer, Graphic Designer speaks to both the memory of those who left Nazi Germany, but also the perseverance of artists and intellectuals throughout history who have worked under authoritarian regimes. Drawing on never before interpreted documents, letters and archival material, Rössler tells Bayer’s compelling story – documenting the life of a unique artist and offering a valuable contribution to research in émigré experiences.

Read more less

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER *WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER * Andy Borowitz, “one of the funniest people in America” (CBS Sunday Morning), brilliantly “chronicles our embrace of anti-intellectualism” (Walter Isaacson) in American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.Andy Borowitz has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal) and “one of the country’s finest satirists” (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column “The Borowitz Report.” Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he delivers “a wittily alarming polemic that tracks the evolution of American politics from grounds for gravitas to festival of idiocy” (The New York Times). Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades. Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.

Read more less

The captivating and heroic story of Hudson Stuck—an Episcopal priest—and his team's history-making summit of Denali.In 1913, four men made a months-long journey by dog sled to the base of the tallest mountain in North America. Several groups had already tried but failed to reach the top of a mountain whose size—occupying 120 square miles of the earth’s surface —and position as the Earth’s northernmost peak of more than 6,000 meters elevation make it one of the world’s deadliest mountains. Although its height from base to top is actually greater than Everest’s, it is Denali's weather, not altitude, that have caused the great majority of fatalities—over a hundred since 1903. Denali experiences weather more severe than the North Pole, with temperatures of forty below zero and winds that howl at 80 to 100 miles per hour for days at a stretch. But in 1913 none of this mattered to Hudson Stuck, a fifty-year old Episcopal priest, Harry Karstens, the hardened Alaskan wilderness guide, Walter Harper, part of the Koyukon people, and Robert Tatum, a divinity student, both just in their twenties. They were all determined to be the first to set foot on top of Denali. In A Window to Heaven, Patrick Dean brings to life this heart-pounding and spellbinding feat of this first ascent and paints a rich portrait of the frontier at the turn of the twentieth century. The story of Stuck and his team will lead us through the Texas frontier and Tennessee mountains to an encounter with Jack London at the peak of the Yukon Goldrush. We experience Stuck's awe at the rich Inuit and Athabascan indigenous traditions—and his efforts to help preserve these ways of life. Filled with daring exploration and rich history, A Window to Heaven is a brilliant and spellbinding narrative of success against the odds.

Read more less

The Battle of Kursk in July 1943 is known for being the largest tank battle in history. A Russian victory, it marked the decisive end of the German offensive capability on the Eastern Front and set the scene for the Soviet successes that followed. While many have focused on the tank engagements, especially the Battle of Prokhorovka, there was an intense air battle going on overhead that was bigger than the Battle of Britain. As part of the German offensive, the Luftwaffe's VIII Air Corps deployed around 1,100 aircraft in the south alone, while the opposing Soviet Second and Seventeenth air armies initially deployed over 1,600 aircraft. There was a similar effort surrounding the German attack in the north. The battle in the south began with a Soviet air strike on German airfields and a fight for control of the air that continued throughout the day across the front. On the first day of the battle, 5 July 1943, the Germans flew at least 2,387 sorties in the south while the two Soviet air armies flew 1,688 sorties. That first day of battle resulted in 19 to 27 German planes and 189 Soviet aircraft shot down. This was an aerial engagement like no other ever seen before. Involved on the German side were the 52nd and 3rd Fighter Wings. The 52nd Fighter Wing was the most accomplished fighter wing in history and many of its top aces were involved in the combats over the Kursk battlefield. These included Walter Krupinski (197 claimed kills in the war), Gunther Rall, the third highest scoring ace in history (275 claimed kills), and the highest scoring ace in history, Erich Hartmann (352 claimed kills). Opposing them were what were to become three of the top five Soviet aces: Kirill Yevstigneyev (53 claimed kills), Nikolai Gulayev (55 claimed kills) and the top scoring Allied ace of the war, Ivan Kozhedub (62 claimed kills). This was indeed the battle of the aces. But there was also the massive ground attack effort by both sides, including the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka fitted with 37mm anti-tank guns flown by the man who would become most decorated soldier of the Third Reich, Hans-Ulrich Rudel. The aerial battle involved hundreds of Soviet Sturmoviks, or IL-2s, Stalin's armoured ground attack plane. The battle featured the famous attack by Luftwaffe Hs-129s and Fw-190s on Soviet armour on 8 July 1943. Aces at Kursk is not just a war story, but a revealing investigation that analyses the entire air battle that turned the tide of the war on the Eastern Front.

Read more less

An illustrated tour of this historic mansion on the Mississippi River, now the official home of the president of the University of Minnesota—and the most-visited public residence in the state Built as a family home in 1922 by lumber baron Edward Brooks, Eastcliff, a twenty-room estate in St. Paul on the banks of the Mississippi River, has been the official residence for presidents of the University of Minnesota since 1961. If houses could write memoirs, Eastcliff's would likely be a sensation, and Eastcliff: History of a Home reveals the story of this building and those it housed and hosted over a century of momentous change, told by an insider.A resident of Eastcliff for eight years as spouse of the university’s sixteenth president, Karen Kaler is a knowing and companionable guide through the historic home—from the foyer, hung with photographs of presidents’ families; to the library and bedrooms, living and dining rooms where family dramas played out and Minnesota history unfolded; to the carriage house and catering kitchen, whose denizens keep the household running. Here are the Georgian colonial-style facade, the tennis court, and an early, do-it-yourself saltwater pool. Here are the garden room and the dollhouse, Eastcliff in miniature. Here is a hallway that was once used as a shooting range and an attic with a skeleton in it. Amid all the splendor, business, and mischief there are visits from Helen Keller, Katharine Hepburn, Eddie Vedder, the Dalai Lama, and Vice Presidents Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey, whose appearance results in children surprising the Secret Service—a reminder that Eastcliff is the setting for family life as well as the site of academic and political events.In her tour of Eastcliff's hundred-year history, Karen Kaler tells all of these stories and more, graciously opening the doors to this illustrious home.

Read more less

Wrestling with the Angel is a meditation on contemporary political, legal, and social theory from a psychoanalytic perspective. It argues for the enabling function of formal and symbolic constraints in sustaining desire as a source of creativity, innovation, and social change. The book begins by calling for a richer understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of the symbolic and the resources it might offer for an examination of the social link and the political sphere. The symbolic is a crucial dimension of social coexistence but cannot be reduced to the social norms, rules, and practices with which it is so often collapsed. As a dimension of human life that is introduced by language-and thus inescapably "other" with respect to the laws of nature-the symbolic is an undeniable fact of human existence. Yet the same cannot be said of the forms and practices that represent and sustain it. In designating these laws, structures, and practices as "fictions," Jacques Lacan makes clear that the symbolic is a dimension of social life that has to be created and maintained and that can also be displaced, eradicated, or rendered dysfunctional. The symbolic fictions that structure and support the social tie are therefore historicizable, emerging at specific times and in particular contexts and losing their efficacy when circumstances change. They are also fragile and ephemeral, needing to be renewed and reinvented if they are not to become outmoded or ridiculous. Therefore the aim of this study is not to call for a return to traditional symbolic laws but to reflect on the relationship between the symbolic in its most elementary or structural form and the function of constraints and limits. McNulty analyzes examples of "experimental" (as opposed to "normative") articulations of the symbolic and their creative use of formal limits and constraints not as mere prohibitions or rules but as "enabling constraints" that favor the exercise of freedom. The first part examines practices that conceive of subjective freedom as enabled by the struggle with constraints or limits, from the transference that structures the "minimal social link" of psychoanalysis to constrained relationships between two or more people in the context of political and social movements. Examples discussed range from the spiritual practices and social legacies of Moses, Jesus, and Teresa of Avila to the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Ranciere. The second part is devoted to legal and political debates surrounding the function of the written law. It isolates the law's function as a symbolic limit or constraint as distinct from its content and representational character. The analysis draws on Mosaic law traditions, the political theology of Paul, and twentieth-century treatments of written law in the work of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Legendre, and Alain Badiou. In conclusion, the study considers the relationship between will and constraint in Kant's aesthetic philosophy and in the experimental literary works of the collective Oulipo.

Read more less

Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art examines artistic production in Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Panama, where large immigrant populations and political, economic, and socio-cultural conditions enabled the development of rich art practices in the Chinese diasporic community. The volume touches on the dynamic interconnections between the Chinese diasporic art communities and intercontinental Caribbean art movements bringing into focus the intimate relationships between the artists and those around them, including those who influenced their work, from peers to mentors and family. Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art ultimately explores how global migrations and the legacies of cultural, political, and economic power have shaped Chinese Caribbean art practices in the Caribbean and its diaspora. This catalog accompanies the exhibition Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art, presented in two parts: History and Art of the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora at the California African American Museum and Contemporary Chinese Caribbean Art at the Chinese American Museum. The exhibition is part of the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Presenting a wealth of rarely seen artworks, archival materials, and scholarship, the exhibitions and catalog shift the frame of critical discourse on Chinese Caribbean art history and visual cultures. Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art offers a foundational introduction into Chinese Caribbean art and its global context.History and Art of the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora will be on display at the California African American Museum from September 15, 2017 through February 25, 2018. Contemporary Chinese Caribbean Art will be on display at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles from September 15, 2017 through March 11, 2018. Contributors. Alexandra Chang, Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Julia P. Hertzbert, Mar Hollingsworth, Walton Look Lai, Sean Metzger, Patrica Mohammed, Lok Siu, Steve Wong Published by the Chinese American Museum with the assistance of the Getty Foundation and distributed by Duke University Press

Read more less

Shortlisted, Best Atlantic Published Book Award and Canadian Regional Design AwardA major publication comprising 240 pages with 75 colour plates and 60 black-and-white photographs provides extensive documentation of the exhibition Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Along with a complete catalogue of artworks, it features an overview and history of the historic collection, along with curatorial commentary on each work of art by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery's Curator and Deputy Director, and curator of the exhibition, Terry Graff. Further, it includes important essays by five internationally respected art historians, scholars, and curators, Elliot King, James Hamilton, Richard Calvocoressi, Angus Stewart, and Katharine Eustace, that focus on several key works of art.In addition, Bernard Riordon, Director and CEO of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, provides a foreword and timely essay documenting the recently resolved legal battle with the Beaverbrook Foundation (UK) over ownership of several works. Elliot King, art historian and leading specialist on the work of Salvador Dalí and curator of the recent exhibition Dalí: The Late Work at the High Museum of Art, examines Dalí's monumental painting Santiago El Grande. James Hamilton, curator and art historian, who has written several books, lectured internationally, and curated several important exhibitions on JMW Turner, examines Turner's Fountain of Indolence. Richard Calvocoressi, Director of the Henry Moore Foundation and former Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, provides special insight into Lucien Freud's Hotel Bedroom. Angus Stewart, independent curator known for his many exhibitions at the Olympia London fine art and antiques fair, including the major 2003 project that marked the centenary of artist Graham Sutherland's birth, examines important Sutherland works, such as Helena Rubinstein, Studies for Churchill, and Portrait of Lord Beaverbrook. Katharine Eustace, art historian and curator, whose publications include Continuity and Change: Twentieth Century Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, provides a thoughtful essay on Walter Sickert in relation to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery's Sickert paintings, such as H.M. King Edward VIII.

Read more less

The first comprehensive biography of this undervalued writer, who was considered 'far and away the best living woman poet' in her day.Andrew Motion's Spectator Book of the Year.'One of the many achievements of This Rare Spirit is its rejection of that tired view of the poet as mouse that barely roared in favour of a true sense of a spikily modern woman, bound by various obligations but resilient, headstrong, and poetically inventive . . . Copus's diligent, scholarly, sensitive work should help Mew's pipe play on for years to come.' Declan Ryan, Los Angeles Review of Books'[A] supreme biography . . . It is hard to do justice to the breadth of research Copus has done here, or the compassionate, detailed conjuring of Mew and her milieu . . . An essential book, a classic work of literary biography.' Seán Hewitt, Irish Times'[K]eenly intelligent, fascinating and nuanced biography . . . Save Charlotte Mew! And read this book.' Joanna Kavenna, Literary Review'An exquisitely told account of the life of a half-forgotten London poet whose work was admired by Hardy, Sassoon and Virginia Woolf. Julia Copus does her justice at last.' Claire Tomalin'This Rare Spirit is a classic - the biography of Mew we have all been waiting for.' Fiona BensonThe British poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by fellow writers, including Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sasson, Walter de la Mare and Marianne Moore. She has since been neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again, all the more since her 150th anniversary in 2019. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave, and is written by fellow poet Julia Copus, who recently unveiled a blue plaque on Mew's childhood house in Doughty Street and was the editor of the Selected Poetry and Prose (2019).Mew was a curious mix of New Woman and stalwart Victorian. Her poems speak to us strongly today, in these strangely mixed times of exposure and seclusion: they reveal the private agony of an isolated being who was forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while being at the same time propelled by her work into the public arena. Her poetry transfigures that very private suffering into art that has a universal resonance.

Read more less

In this vivid first-hand account we gain unique access to the inner workings of Stalin's Central Women's Sniper School, near Podolsk in Western Russia. Luliia was a dedicated member of the Komsomol (the Soviet communist youth organisation) and her parents worked for the NKVD. She started at the sniper school and eventually became a valued member of her battalion during operations against Prussia. She persevered through eight months of training before leaving for the Front on 24th November 1944 just days after qualifying. Joining the third Belorussian Front her battalion endured rounds of German mortar as well as loudspeaker announcements beckoning them to come over to the German side. Luliia recounts how they would be in the field for days, regularly facing the enemy in terrifying one-on-one encounters. She sets down the euphoria of her first hit and starting her battle count but her reflection on how it was also the ending of a life. These feelings fade as she recounts the barbarous actions of Hitler's Nazi Germany. She recall how the women were once nearly overrun by Germans at their house when other Red Army formations had moved off and failed to tell them. She also details a nine-day stand-off they endured encircled by Germans in Landsberg. Regularly suffering ill-health she took a shrapnel injury to her knee and had to be operated on without an anaesthetic. She would eventually see the end of the war in K ngsberg. Like her famous counterpart Pavlichenko she gained recognition but struggled to come to terms with war service Haunted by flashbacks she burned the letters she sent home from the Front. She later discovered that of the 1885 graduates of her sniper school only 250 had died in war. In this powerful, first-hand account we come up close to the machinations of the NKVD (the secret police) as well as the gruelling toll of war and the breathtaking bravery of this female sniper. Additional material includes notes by John Walter and an introduction by Martin Pegler.

Read more less

'A tense, twisty, addictive read' JO SPAIN'Nail-bitingly tense...leaves you gasping for breath' SARAH PEARSEThe waves are to die for. It's a paradise they'd kill to keep.There's a darkness inside all of us and The Bay has a way of bringing it out. Everyone here has their secrets but we don't go looking for them. Because sometimes it's better not to know.Kenna arrives in Sydney to surprise her best friend, shocked to hear she's going to marry a guy she's only just met. But Mikki and her fiancé Jack are about to head away on a trip, so Kenna finds herself tagging along for the ride.Sorrow Bay is beautiful, wild and dangerous. A remote surfing spot with waves to die for, cut off from the rest of the world. Here Kenna meets the mysterious group of people who will do anything to keep their paradise a secret. Sky, Ryan, Clemente and Victor have come to ride the waves and disappear from life. How will they feel about Kenna turning up unannounced?As Kenna gets drawn into their world, she sees the extremes they are prepared to go to for the next thrill. And everyone seems to be hiding something. What has her best friend got involved in and how can she get her away? But one thing is rapidly becoming clear about The Bay: nobody ever leaves. 'A high octane, addictive summer read' LUCY CLARKE'Gave me the same sinister-yet-wish-you-were-there vibes of The Beach' AMY MCCULLOCH'A compulsive page-turner . . . had me until the very last page' SALLY THORNEReaders love Allie Reynolds:'A knife-sharp locked room mystery' HARRIET TYCE'An exciting, twisty page-turner that will keep you guessing all the way to the end' C. L. TAYLOR'Sensational ' PETER JAMES'A white-knuckle ride' ERIN KELLY'Full of atmospheric twists and turns' SARAH PEARSE'Thoroughly compelling and deliciously twisty... I flew through it' B. P. WALTER'Fresh, thrilling and original with complex, believable characters' KAREN HAMILTON

Read more less

In September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship’s owners to file an insurance claim for their lost “cargo.” Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the Zong atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the Zong tragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but to encounter a logic of violence key to the unfolding history of Atlantic modernity. Baucom contends that the massacre and the trials that followed it bring to light an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation based on speculative finance, an economic cycle that has not yet run its course. The extraordinarily abstract nature of today’s finance capital is the late-eighteenth-century system intensified. Yet, as Baucom highlights, since the late 1700s, this rapacious speculative culture has had detractors. He traces the emergence and development of a counter-discourse he calls melancholy realism through abolitionist and human-rights texts, British romantic poetry, Scottish moral philosophy, and the work of late-twentieth-century literary theorists. In revealing how the Zong tragedy resonates within contemporary financial systems and human-rights discourses, Baucom puts forth a deeply compelling, utterly original theory of history: one that insists that an eighteenth-century atrocity is not past but present within the future we now inhabit.

Read more less

A bullet train of a book, fast-paced, hilarious, rich with action. A harbinger of good things to come in mysterious ways. It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner’s for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies, embarking on a frolicking, rambunctious adventure that lasted over 40 years. Babbs calls the 70 stories of this book “burlesques” because, after 85 years of living, much of it in the wide friendly center of an evolving, at times psychedelic culture, memory no longer can, or even should include an exact retelling, but only a tasty sprinkling of the truth, mixed with an endless enigma, all topped with the best of humor and heart. The troupe of characters include the Kens Kesey and Babbs, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Pigpen, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mountain Girl, Sonny Barger, Larry McMurtry, Wavy Gravy, Hunter S. Thompson, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Jan Kerouac, Bill Walton, Wendell Berry, a pick-up bed-sized sturgeon, and always the many free-spirited, creative, friendly men and women who made up the Merry Band of Pranksters. Come along for the ride on the famous bus trip to Manhattan. Join the Hells Angels at their partying best. Drop in for the early Acid Tests. Experience the Berkeley Vietnam anti-war rally. Relish the stories of Kesey’s pot busts and “suicide.” Climb aboard—“Board!”—for six months on the lam in Mexico. Take the Further tours with the Grateful Dead. Make the ultimate move to Oregon, where Babbs and Kesey grew a magical friendship and collaboration until Kesey passed in 2001. Irreverent, unencumbered by social norms, literary and poetic, Cronies is a poignant view of the Sixties and beyond from someone who was there, and remembers it well. Kind of…

Read more less

A new edition of the essential chronicle of disco culture In 1973, Vince Aletti became the first person to write about the emerging disco scene. His engagement with disco nightlife continued throughout the decade as he wrote his weekly column for Record World magazine, which incorporated top ten playlists from DJs across the US (such as Larry Levan, Larry Sanders, Walter Gibbons, Tee Scott and Nicky Siano) alongside Aletti's own writings and interviews. As disco grew from an underground secret to a billion-dollar industry, Aletti was there to document it, and The Disco Files is his personal memoir of those days, containing everything he wrote on the subject (most of it between 1974 and1978) augmented with photography by Peter Hujar and Toby Old. This book is the definitive and essential chronicle of disco, true from-the-trenches reporting that details, week by week, the evolution of the clubs, the DJs, and above all, the music, through magazine articles, beautiful photographs, hundreds of club charts and thousands of record reviews. Photocopies of Aletti's Record World columns circulated for years among DJs and music lovers, until they were finally collected in 2009 into the first edition of The Disco Files, an instant classic that quickly sold out. This new edition of The Disco Files brings Aletti's compulsively readable disco writing back into print, adding an interview with Fran Lebowitz originally published in the Village Voice in 1990. Throughout his career, curator, writer and critic Vince Aletti (born 1945) has been at the forefront of music, culture and the arts. He wrote for Record World and Rolling Stone and covered the club scene in the late 1970s and 1980s for the Village Voice, where he would serve as art editor until 2005. In addition to curating numerous photography exhibitions, Aletti writes about photography for the New Yorker.

Read more less

A BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick and Sunday Times Historical Fiction Book of the Month, for fans of PANDORA, THE ESSEX SERPENT and THE NIGHT CIRCUS.Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 and the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2023.'I just fell in love with it within the first two sentences . . .' - Ruth Jones'One of the best books I've read this year . . . completely unforgettable' - Bonnie Garmus------Zachary Cloudesley is gifted in a remarkable way. But not all gifts are a blessing...Leadenhall Street, London, 1754.Raised amongst the cogs and springs of his father's workshop, Zachary Cloudesley has grown up surrounded by strange and enchanting clockwork automata. He is a happy child, beloved by his father Abel and the workmen who help bring his father's creations to life.He is also the bearer of an extraordinary gift; at the touch of a hand, Zachary can see into the hearts and minds of the people he meets.But then a near-fatal accident will take Zachary away from the workshop and his family. His father will have to make a journey that he will never return from. And, years later, only Zachary can find out what happened.A beautifully crafted historical mystery of love and hope, and the adventure of finding your place in the world.------'Packed with intrigue, vividly drawn characters and heartstopping emotion, this beautifully written, ingeniously crafted debut is absolutely enthralling' - Sunday Express'Really transports you to a different time and place' - Sara Cox, Radio Times'A dashing, magical debut . . . intricately plotted, and peopled with intriguing characters' - Daily MailWhat readers are saying:'an excellent historical, magical realist novel''beautifully written''full of love and humour''original and rich in historical detail''my best book of 2022''totally engrossing . . . unforgettable'

Read more less

George Mackay Brown has long been recognised as one of the most original and important Scottish writers of the twentieth century. This book is the first comprehensive account of Brown's work from a philosophical perspective and offers a radical new approach to the study of Scottish literature. The importance of local community in the work of Scottish novelists ranging from Walter Scott to Neil M. Gunn has often been noted, but few critics have addressed the relation of this concept to current philosophical and sociological models of community. Timothy C. Baker uses Brown's work as a primary case study to demonstrate that the relationship between the individual and the community is a dominant narrative question in Scottish fiction. Baker traces the development of Brown's writing in relation to contemporary developments in the study of community, drawing on both continental and Anglo-American traditions. Focusing on Brown's novels, Baker argues for Brown's importance not only within a Scottish literary tradition, but as a major thinker of community. The book also suggests the utility of community, as opposed to nation and region, for productive discourse on modern literature. Combining close readings with theoretical elaborations, and including a broad national and historical overview, Baker offers a new perspective both on Brown's work and contemporary national literatures. Key Features: *Offers the first philosophically-informed critique of George Mackay Brown *Shows how fiction can contribute to an understanding of the problems of community in modernity *Suggests new directions for the study of contemporary Scottish literature *Takes into account Brown's late and posthumous writings as well as unpublished material not covered before

Read more less

How have fairy tales from around the world changed over the centuries? What do they tell us about different cultures and societies? This volume explores the period when the European fairy tales conquered the world and shaped the global imagination in its own image. Examining how collectors, children’s writers, poets, and artists seized the form to challenge convention and normative ideas, this book explores the fantastic imagination that belies the nineteenth century’s materialist and pedestrian reputation. Looking at writers including E.T.A Hoffman, the Brothers Grim, S.T. Coleridge, Walter Scott, Oscar Wilde, Christina Rosetti, George MacDonald, and E. Nesbit, the volume shows how fairy tales touched every aspect of nineteenth century life and thought. It provides new insights into themes including: forms of the marvelous, adaptation, gender and sexuality, humans and non-humans, monsters and the monstrous, spaces, socialization, and power. With contributions from international scholars across disciplines, this volume is an essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of literature, history, and cultural studies. A Cultural History of Fairy Tales (6-volume set) A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity is also available as a part of a 6-volume set, A Cultural History of Fairy Tales, tracing fairy tales from antiquity to the present day, available in print, or within a fully-searchable digital library accessible through institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com). Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Read more less

Under modernity, time is regarded as linear and measurable by clocks and calendars. Despite the historicity of clock-time itself, the modern concept of time is considered universal and culturally neutral. What Walter Benjamin called “homogeneous, empty time” founds the modern notions of progress and a uniform global present in which the past and other forms of time consciousness are seen as superseded. In Translating Time, Bliss Cua Lim argues that fantastic cinema depicts the coexistence of other modes of being alongside and within the modern present, disclosing multiple “immiscible temporalities” that strain against the modern concept of homogeneous time. In this wide-ranging study—encompassing Asian American video (On Cannibalism), ghost films from the New Cinema movements of Hong Kong and the Philippines (Rouge, Itim, Haplos), Hollywood remakes of Asian horror films (Ju-on, The Grudge, A Tale of Two Sisters) and a Filipino horror film cycle on monstrous viscera suckers (Aswang)—Lim conceptualizes the fantastic as a form of temporal translation. The fantastic translates supernatural agency in secular terms while also exposing an untranslatable remainder, thereby undermining the fantasy of a singular national time and emphasizing shifting temporalities of transnational reception.Lim interweaves scholarship on visuality with postcolonial historiography. She draws on Henri Bergson’s understanding of cinema as both implicated in homogeneous time and central to its critique, as well as on postcolonial thought linking the ideology of progress to imperialist expansion. At stake in this project are more ethical forms of understanding time that refuse to domesticate difference as anachronism. While supernaturalism is often disparaged as a vestige of primitive or superstitious thought, Lim suggests an alternative interpretation of the fantastic as a mode of resistance to the ascendancy of homogeneous time and a starting-point for more ethical temporal imaginings.

Read more less

A new look at the interrelationship of architecture and sculpture during one of the richest periods of American modern designAlloys looks at a unique period of synergy and exchange in the postwar United States, when sculpture profoundly shaped architecture, and vice versa. Leading architects such as Gordon Bunshaft and Eero Saarinen turned to sculptors including Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder, Richard Lippold, and Isamu Noguchi to produce site-determined, large-scale sculptures tailored for their buildings’ highly visible and well-traversed threshold spaces. The parameters of these spaces—atriums, lobbies, plazas, and entryways—led to various designs like sculptural walls, ceilings, and screens that not only embraced new industrial materials and processes, but also demonstrated art’s ability to merge with lived architectural spaces.Marin Sullivan argues that these sculptural commissions represent an alternate history of midcentury American art. Rather than singular masterworks by lone geniuses, some of the era’s most notable spaces—Philip Johnson’s Four Seasons Restaurant in Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, Max Abramovitz’s Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius’s Pan Am Building—would be diminished without the collaborative efforts of architects and artists. At the same time, the artistic creations within these spaces could not exist anywhere else. Sullivan shows that the principle of synergy provides an ideal framework to assess this pronounced relationship between sculpture and architecture. She also explores the afterlives of these postwar commissions in the decades since their construction.A fresh consideration of sculpture’s relationship to architectural design and functionality following World War II, Alloys highlights the affinities between the two fields and the ways their connections remain with us today.

Read more less

The ultimate street atlas to navigate your way around London. A comprehensive paperback street atlas of London encompassing an area of 1,450 square miles with coloured street mapping, and including more than 90,000 streets and other addresses. The coverage extends beyond the Greater London and M25 area to: Hemel Hempstead, St. Albans, Potters Bar, Waltham Cross, Epping, Brentwood, Thurrock, Stanford-le-Hope, Gravesend, Wrotham, Sevenoaks, Westerham, Oxted, Redhill, Reigate, Leatherhead, Great Bookham, Woking, Egham, Windsor, Slough, Chalfont St. Peter, Chorleywood, Bovingdon There are eighteen pages of large scale (9" to 1 mile) street mapping of central London which gives additional clarity and detail, this mapping extends to: Regent's Park, St. Pancras International Station, Old Street, Tower Bridge, Bricklayer's Arms Junction, Vauxhall Bridge, South Kensington, Paddington Station and Lord's Cricket Ground. Postcode districts and one-way streets are included on the street mapping. Other features include:• The Congestion Charging Zone (CCZ) boundary which is shown on both scales of mapping and an overview map of the zone is also included.• The Greater London Low Emission Zone boundary is shown on the street mapping and an overview map of the zone is also included.• The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) boundary• There are eight pages of road mapping at 3 miles to 1 inch that cover much of the Home Counties area.• London Underground map.• London Rail Connections map.• West End Cinema and Theatre maps. The index section of the atlas includes streets, places & areas, hospitals, industrial estates, selected flats & walkways, service areas, stations and selected places of interest. Please note hospitals and rail stations are now listed in the main index and highlighted in different colour. They are not included as a separate list as in previous editions.

Read more less

'Highly Recommended' CHOICE A fascinating account of the experimental innovations and theoretical breakthroughs in nuclear physics in the period between the two world wars told through the lives and personalities of the physicists who made them. The two decades between the first and second world wars saw the emergence of nuclear physics as the dominant field of experimental and theoretical physics, owing to the work of an international cast of gifted physicists. Prominent among them were Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, the husband and wife team of Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, the brash Ernest Lawrence, the prodigious Enrico Fermi, and the incomparable Niels Bohr. Their experimental and theoretical work arose from a quest to understand nuclear phenomena; it was not motivated by a desire to find a practical application for nuclear energy. In this sense, these physicists lived in an 'Age of Innocence'. They did not, however, live in isolation. Their research reflected their idiosyncratic personalities; it was shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked. It was also buffeted by the political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the intellectual migration from Germany and later from Austria and Italy. Their pioneering experimental and theoretical achievements in the interwar period therefore are set within their personal, institutional, and political contexts. Both domains and their mutual influences are conveyed by quotations from autobiographies, biographies, recollections, interviews, correspondence, and other writings of physicists and historians.

Read more less

"The choice we have is not between reasonable proposals and an unreasonable utopianism. Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed, it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian dreaming."--Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect Utopianism suffers from an image problem: A recent exhibition on utopias in Paris and New York included photographs of Hitler's Mein Kampf and a Nazi concentration camp. Many observers judge utopians and their sympathizers as foolhardy dreamers at best and murderous totalitarians at worst. However, as noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby argues in this salient, polemical, and innovative work, not only has utopianism been unfairly characterized, a return to an iconoclastic utopian spirit is vital for today's society. Shaped by the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Gustav Landauer, and other predominantly Jewish thinkers, iconoclastic utopianism revives society's dormant political imagination and offers hope for a better future. Writing against the grain of history, Jacoby reexamines the anti-utopian mindset and identifies how utopian thought came to be regarded with such suspicion. He challenges standard readings of such anti-utopian classics as 1984 and Brave New World and offers stinging critiques of the influential liberal and anti-utopian theorists Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper. He argues that these thinkers mistakenly equate utopianism with totalitarianism. The reputation of utopian thought has also suffered from the failures of, what Jacoby terms, the blueprint utopian tradition and its oppressive emphasis on detailing all aspects of society and providing fantastic images of the future. In contrast, the iconoclastic utopians, like those who follow God's prohibition against graven images, resist both the blueprinters' obsession with detail and the modern seduction of images. Jacoby suggests that by learning from the hopeful spirit of iconoclastic utopians and their willingness to accept new possibilities for society, we open ourselves to new and more imaginative ideas of the future.

Read more less

1979 was a year of momentous events. In Britain, it began with the so-called Winter of Discontent, as rubbish piled high in the streets and the dead went unburied. Later, guerillas stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street, and Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose while on trial for stabbing his girlfriend to death. Elsewhere, murderous dictator Saddam Hussein rose to power in Iraq, America’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant went into meltdown, and there was an anthrax epidemic in Russia following an accident at a biological weapons plant. But it’s all swings and roundabouts, because 1979 also saw the first issue of Viz Comic going on sale. And now, with a rousing brass fanfare to celebrate its 40th year as the country’s most flatulent magazine, Viz is puffing out its cheeks to release its latest annual - The Trumpeter’s Lips. Within the 226 pages of this lavishly produced hardback you will find the very best bits from issues 262-271, including * Cartoons: The Fat Slags, Sid the Sexist, Mrs Brady Old Lady, Roger Mellie, Eight Ace, Buster Gonad, Big Vern and many, many more * Informative features: Let’s Go Dogging!, Secrets of the White House Shite House, How Did Henry VIII Mow His Lawn?, Who’s Who at a Car Boot Sale, and A Day in the Life of a Model Railway Enthusiast * Edge-of-your-seat adventures: In Search of the Giant Squid of Sumatra, The Crown Jewels Mystery, Wally Walton’s Emergency Scorpion Squad and Wall to Wall Carpet Warehouse, Ballet Nurse on a Pony, Pip of the Peloton, and Bad Bob the Randy Wonder Dog * More articles, spoof ads, Readers’ Letters and Top Tips than you could shake a really big stick at Just like our rubbish and dead were piled up in the streets four decades ago, Viz - The Trumpeter’s Lips will be piled up in shops and internet retailers this Christmas, guaranteeing a “Winter of This Content” (as specified above) for everyone.

Read more less

A groundbreaking study on the vital role of baroque theater in shaping modernist philosophy, literature, and performance.Finalist for the Outstanding Book Award by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Honorable Mention for the Balakian Prize by the International Comparative Literature Association, Winner of the Helen Tartar Book Subvention Award by the American Comparative Literature Association, Finalist of the MSA First Book Prize by the Modernist Studies AssociationBaroque style—with its emphasis on ostentation, adornment, and spectacle—might seem incompatible with the dominant forms of art since the Industrial Revolution, but between 1875 and 1935, European and American modernists connected to the theater became fascinated with it. In Baroque Modernity, Joseph Cermatori argues that the memory of seventeenth-century baroque stages helped produce new forms of theater, space, and experience around the turn of the twentieth century. In response, modern theater helped give rise to the development of the baroque as a modern philosophical idea. The book focuses on avant-gardists whose writing takes place between theory and performance: philosophical theater-makers and theatrical philosophers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Stéphane Mallarmé, Walter Benjamin, and Gertrude Stein. Moving between page and stage, this study tracks the remnants of seventeenth-century theater through modernist aesthetics across an array of otherwise disparate materials, including modern opera, Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater, poetic tragedies, and miracle plays. By reexamining the twentieth century's engagements with Gianlorenzo Bernini, William Shakespeare, Claudio Monteverdi, Calderón de la Barca, and other seventeenth-century predecessors, the book delineates an enduring tradition of baroque performance. Along the way, Cermatori expands our familiar narratives of "the modern" and traces a history of theatricality that reverberates into the twenty-first century. Baroque Modernity will appeal to readers in a wide array of disciplines, including comparative literature, theater and performance, art and music history, intellectual history, and aesthetic theory.

Read more less

The definitive history of coronations and the Royal Family, from acclaimed writer Roy Strong. ’What is the finest sight in the world? A Coronation.What do people talk most about? A Coronation.What is delightful to have passed? A Coronation.’Horace Walpole, 1761 As a boy of sixteen, Roy Strong watched the grand procession carrying Queen Elizabeth II to her coronation. The spectacle was considered the greatest public event of the century. But now, so many years later, many people have little notion of what a coronation is and are unaware of the rich resonances of the ritual, or its deep significance in terms of the committal of monarch to people. This book is the first of its kind – a comprehensive history that sets each coronation into its political, social, religious and cultural context. The story is one of constant re-invention as the service has had to respond to all the changes in fortune of the monarchy or the country: everything from legitimising usurpers to reconciling a Catholic rite to the tenets of Protestantism. It even had to be recreated from scratch after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. In this way, Strong tells the story of the British monarchy since the tenth century, and looks forward to the coronation of King Charles III. The musical history alone is one of extraordinary richness – involving Henry Purcell, Handel, Edward Elgar, William Walton – plus the celebratory poetry, the art and the spectacular engravings published at coronations are all explored, as is the more recent role of photographers. The book particularly concentrates on post-1603 developments, including the incredible story of the Stuarts, when the crown jewels used for hundreds of years at coronations were melted down as symbols of the hated Divine Right of Kings. As Charles III succeeds to the throne and preparations are made for his coronation, Strong speculates as to the revisions now called for to its ritual and pageantry to meet the changes in the role of the monarchy in the twenty-first century.

Read more less

Robbie Robertson's singular contributions to popular music have made him one of the most beloved songwriters and guitarists of his time. With songs like ‘The Weight’, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ and ‘Up on Cripple Creek’, he and his partners in the Band fashioned a music that has endured for decades, influencing countless musicians.In this captivating memoir, written over five years of reflection, Robbie employs his unique storyteller's voice to weave together the journey that led him to some of the most pivotal events in music history. He recounts the adventures of his half-Jewish, half-Mohawk upbringing on the Six Nations Indian Reserve and on the gritty streets of Toronto; his odyssey at sixteen to the Mississippi Delta, the fountainhead of American music; the wild, early years on the road with rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks; his unexpected ties to the Cosa Nostra underworld; the gripping trial-by-fire of 'going electric' with Bob Dylan on his 1966 world tour and their ensuing celebrated collaborations; the formation of the Band and the forging of their unique sound, culminating with history’s most famous farewell concert, brought to life for all time in Martin Scorsese’s great movie The Last Waltz. This is the story of a time and place - the moment when rock 'n' roll became life, when legends like Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley crisscrossed the circuit of clubs and roadhouses from Texas to Toronto, when the Beatles, Hendrix, the Stones and Warhol moved through the same streets and hotel rooms. It’s the story of exciting change as the world tumbled through the '60s and early '70s and a generation came of age, built on music, love and freedom. Above all, it’s the moving story of the profound friendship among five young men who together created a new kind of popular music. Testimony is Robbie Robertson’s story, lyrical and true, as only he could tell it.

Read more less

Lewis Foreman Day (1845-1910) is one of the most neglected figures in late nineteenth-century design. In exploring Day's dual career as an industrial designer of extraordinary range and versatility and a major writer and critic, this well-illustrated book restores his place among the influential figures of his time. Day's relationships with colleagues William Morris, Walter Crane, W.A.S. Benson and others situated him in the vortex of developments of design in Britain. Design historian Joan Maria Hansen examines Day's work as a prolific industrial designer whose mastery of pattern, colour, ornament and superb draughtsmanship resulted in tiles and art pottery, clocks and furniture, wallpapers, textiles, stained glass, and interiors of remarkable diversity and beauty. Day embraced modern technology. His views on the role of the designer for industry, along with his unshakable belief that a marriage of design and industrial processes was essential to produce beautiful furnishings for the majority of people, reveal him to be startlingly modern in his attitudes and practice in the changing world of industrial production. Today, collectors prize Lewis F. Day's clocks, furniture, tiles and art pottery, and books - which he both wrote and designed - and reproductions of his patterns for wallpapers and textiles are enjoyed by enthusiasts. Day's textbooks on design continue to influence designers, and his magazine journalism provides insightful and balanced commentary on developments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century design. This book - the very first full treatment of this major figure - is the definitive reference on Day's life and work and is an invaluable reference for collectors and dealers, decorative arts professionals, designers, business historians and enthusiasts of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century design.

Read more less

The Long Shadow of Waterloo explores how Waterloo was remembered by the various nations involved, including the French, British, Germans, the influence it had on these nations (and others, including the USA) and how this changed over the 100 years following the battle.The Battle of Waterloo ended a century of war between France and Great Britain and became a key part of their national identity, serving their political needs as the battle was refought throughout the 19th century in politics, books and art to create the myth of Waterloo. For Great Britain, Waterloo became a symbol of British hegemony while the multinational contribution to the battle was downplayed and for France it was remembered as a military disaster.Through looking at the history of the battle over the battle's significance in history, an insight is gained into how cultural myths and legends about a battle are made. Wellington and Napoleon both tried to shape the memory of the battle to their advantage. Wellington propogated the myth that the British won despite being outnumbered by a huge French army, while Napoleon chose to blame his subordinates for the loss, in particular Emmanuel de Grouchy. Grouchy spent the next 60 years struggling to defend his honour, claiming that Napoleon's account of the battle written during his exile at Saint Helena was imaginary and intended to cover Napoleon's own mistakes during the campaign.This book covers the battle's influence on figures such as Jomini and Clausewitz, military theorists who wanted to find the objective truth of Waterloo and use it as a guide for future wars, as well as Victor Hugo (and Les Miserables) who challenged the myths of battle to transform it into a win for France from which the Republic would emerge. The way Waterloo was used for entertainment is also explored, as battlefield tourists came from all over the world to vicariously experience the legendary battle through visualisations such as the travelling panoramas in England and poetry of Sir Walter Scott.

Read more less

From Snow White to Cinderella, Rapunzel to Rumpelstiltskin, the Brothers Grimm bequeathed a canon of stories which have become literary and childhood classics. The most widely read story collection after the Bible, their magical tales are stalwarts of early learning and imagination, listed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register as a vital part of our history and culture. This beautiful hardback anthology is based on the Grimm’s popular 1857 edition and features 27 of their best-loved stories in a vibrant and meticulous new translation commissioned for this publication. The tales are accompanied by exquisite vintage illustrations from the past 200 years, including masterpieces from the legendary Kay Nielsen, British artists Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham, and giants of 19th-century German illustration Gustav Süs, Heinrich Leutemann, and Viktor Paul Mohn. Additional historic and contemporary silhouettes dance across the pages like delicate black paper lace. In addition to the tales and illustrations, the book contains a foreword on the Grimms’ legacy, brief introductions to each fairy tale, and extended artists’ biographies in the appendix. For adults and children alike, this precious edition brings the eternal magic of the Grimms’ stories to the heart of every home.The following fairy tales are featured in the book:The Frog Prince, The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats, Little Brother and Little Sister, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Fisherman and His Wife, The Brave Little Tailor, Cinderella, Mother Holle, Little Red Riding Hood, The Bremen Town Musicians, The Devil with Three Golden Hairs, The Shoemaker and the Elves, Tom Thumb’s Travels, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Feathers, The Golden Goose, Jorinde and Joringel, The Goose Girl, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Star Coins, Snow White and Red Nose, The Hare and the Hedgehog, Puss n’ Boots, The Golden Key

Read more less

Erasmus Darwin and his grandson, Charles, were the two most important evolutionary theorists of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. Although their ideas and methods differed, both Darwins were prolific and inventive writers: Erasmus composed several epic poems and scientific treatises, while Charles is renowned both for his collected journals (now titled The Voyage of the Beagle) and for his masterpiece, The Origin of Species. In The Age of Analogy, Devin Griffiths argues that the Darwins' writing style was profoundly influenced by the poets, novelists, and historians of their era. The Darwins, like other scientists of the time, labored to refashion contemporary literary models into a new mode of narrative analysis that could address the contingent world disclosed by contemporary natural science. By employing vivid language and experimenting with a variety of different genres, these writers gave rise to a new relational study of antiquity, or "comparative historicism," that emerged outside of traditional histories. It flourished instead in literary forms like the realist novel and the elegy, as well as in natural histories that explored the continuity between past and present forms of life. Nurtured by imaginative cross-disciplinary descriptions of the past-from the historical fiction of Sir Walter Scott and George Eliot to the poetry of Alfred Tennyson-this novel understanding of history fashioned new theories of natural transformation, encouraged a fresh investment in social history, and explained our intuition that environment shapes daily life. Drawing on a wide range of archival evidence and contemporary models of scientific and literary networks, The Age of Analogy explores the critical role analogies play within historical and scientific thinking. Griffiths also presents readers with a new theory of analogy that emphasizes language's power to foster insight into nature and human society. The first comparative treatment of the Darwins' theories of history and their profound contribution to the study of both natural and human systems, this book will fascinate students and scholars of nineteenth-century British literature and the history of science.

Read more less

Dean Acheson is best remembered as President Harry Truman's powerful secretary of state, the American father of NATO, and a major architect of U.S. foreign policy in the decade following the Second World War. But Acheson also played a major role in politics and foreign affairs after his tenure in the Truman administration, as an important Democratic Party activist and theorist during the Eisenhower presidency and as a valued adviser during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. This engrossing book, the first to chronicle Acheson's postsecretarial career, paints a portrait of a brilliant, irascible, and powerful man acting during a turbulent period in American history.Drawing on the recently opened Acheson papers as well as on interviews with Acheson's family and with leading public figures of the era, Douglas Brinkley tells an intriguing tale that is part biography, part diplomatic history, and part politics. Brinkley considers Acheson's role in numerous NATO-related debates and task forces, the Berlin and Cuban missile crises, Vietnam War decision-making, the Cyprus dispute of 1964, the anti-de Gaulle initiative of the 1960s, and U.S.-African policy. He describes Acheson as a staunch anticommunist with a persistent Eurocentric focus, a man who was intolerant of American leaders such as George Kennan, J. William Fulbright, and Walter Lippmann for opposing his views, and who often feuded with JFK, LBJ, Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk. Finally, angered at the activities of anti-Vietnam War liberal Democrats, Acheson found himself in 1969 serving as one of Nixon's most important unofficial foreign policy advisers. Throughout this time, Acheson stayed in the public eye, helped by the six books he wrote after he left office (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Present at the Creation), his television appearances, lectures, testimony before Congress, and correspondence with European statesmen. Brinkley's book illuminates Acheson as elder statesman and reveals how a unique individual was able to influence policy-making and public opinion without the official trappings of office.

Read more less

Is your company a storyteller--or a storydoer? The old way to market a business was storytelling. But in today's world, simply communicating your brand's story in the hope that customers will listen is no longer enough. Instead, your authentic brand must be evident in every action the organization undertakes. Today's most successful businesses are storydoers. These companies create products and services that, from the very beginning, are manifestations of an authentic and meaningful story--one told primarily through action, not advertising. In True Story, creative executive Ty Montague argues that any business, regardless of size or industry, can embrace the principles of storydoing. Indeed, our best-run companies--from small start-ups to global conglomerates--organize around a coherent narrative that is then broadcast through every action they take (from product design to customer service to marketing). Montague shows why storydoing firms are nimble, more adaptive to change, and more efficiently run businesses. Montague is a founder of the growth consultancy co:collective and the former president and CCO of J. Walter Thompson, the largest advertising agency in North America. He brings his depth of creative business experience to the book and provides a clear framework and proven process for bringing you and your customers together in the creation of your brand story. Montague introduces five critical elements--what he calls the "the four truths and the action map"--that are the foundation of storydoing: * the participants (your customers, partners, and employees) * the protagonist (your company today) * the stage (the world around your business) * the quest (your driving ambition and contribution to the world) * your action map (the actions that will make your story real for participants) The book is filled with examples of how forward-thinking organizations--including Red Bull, Shaklee, Grind, TOMS Shoes, and News Corporation--are effectively using storydoing to transform their organizations and drive extraordinary results.

Read more less

THE TIMES' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR This book charts the personal and professional journey of Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2012 until 2022 and "one of the great Shakespearians of his generation" (Sunday Times). During his illustrious career, Doran has directed or produced all of the plays within Shakespeare's First Folio -- a milestone reached in the same year that the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of its original publication. Each chapter looks at a different play, considering the choices made and weaving in both autobiographical detail and background on the RSC, as well as giving insights into key collaborations, including those with actors such as Judi Dench, David Tennant, Harriet Walter, Patrick Stewart, Simon Russell Beale, Paterson Joseph and Doran's husband, the late Antony Sher, as well as seminal practitioners such as Cicely Berry, John Barton and Terry Hands. The book also includes 16 striking pages with stills from some of the RSC plays. Through Doran's account of this extraordinary journey, we see how Henry VIII, initially regarded as a poisoned chalice, became his lucky break; how the tragedy of 9/11 unfolded during a matinee of King John and how the language of the play went some way in helping to articulate the unfathomable; how a RSC supporter bequeathed their skull to the company to be used as Yorick in Hamlet; how meeting Nelson Mandela inspired the production of Julius Caesar; how Falstaff was introduced to China for the very first time; and how arachnophobia informed the production of Macbeth. This book uniquely captures the excitement, energy, surprises, joys and agonies of working on these greatest of plays; sheds new light on these plays through Doran’s own research and discoveries made in the rehearsal room; and gives unprecedented access into the craft, life and loves of this exceptional director. My Shakespeare is also available in audiobook format from audiobook retailers.

Read more less

Though, for most participants, the First World War ended on 11 November 1918, the Royal Navy found itself, despite four years of slaughter and war weariness, fighting a fierce and brutal battle in the Baltic Sea against Bolshevik Russia in an attempt to protect the fragile independence of the newly liberated states of Estonia and Latvia. This new book by Steve R Dunn describes the events of those two years when RN ships and men, under the command of Rear Admiral Walter Cowan, found themselves in a maelstrom of chaos and conflicting loyalties, and facing multiple opponents -the communist forces of the Red Army and Navy, led by Leon Trotsky; the gangs of freebooting German soldiers, the Freikorps, intent on keeping the Baltic states under German domination; and the White Russian forces, bent on retaking Petrograd and rebuilding the Russian Empire. During this hard-fought campaign there were successes on both sides. For example, the Royal Navy captured two destroyers that were given to the Estonians; but the submarine L-55 was sunk by Russian warships, lost with all hands. Seeking revenge in a daring sequence of attacks and using small coastal motor boats, the RN sank the cruiser Oleg and badly damaged two Russian battleships. Today few people are aware of this exhausting campaign and the sacrifices made by Royal Navy sailors (three VCs were won), but the pages of this book retell their exciting but forgotten stories and, using much first-hand testimony, bring back to life the critical naval operations that prevented the retaking of the new Baltic countries that Churchill saw as an essential shield against the encroachment of the Bolsheviks into Europe. An uneasy peace prevailed until 1939. 'This is a well-written and very readable account of an important but little-known campaign that still has relevance today. ... I recommend it highly' _Australian Naval Review_

Read more less

BY THE WINNER OF THE 2021 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE ‘Riveting and heartbreaking ... A compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure’ Maaza Mengiste, Guardian ‘A brilliant and important book for our times, by a wondrous writer’ Philippe Sands, New Statesman, Books of the Year _______________ While he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own people, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away. Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security – and the love of the beautiful Afiya. As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away… _______________ ‘One of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers … He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals’ Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee ‘In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact, if not fully whole’ Maaza Mengiste ‘Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair ... One scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment’ The Times

Read more less

After Betty Grable, but before there was Marilyn, America's penchant for popcorn blondes focused on LANA, the "ultimate movie star." She had it all: Looks to die for, money to burn, the romantic adulation of the world, and lovers who included the world's most desirable men. In her 1937 film, They Won't Forget, a 16-year-old Lana, without wearing a brassiere, walked down the street with her boobs bouncing. Censors protested, but when it was shown, America cheered and nicknamed her The Sweater Girl." From there, Lana competed with Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth as the pre-eminent pinup girl (so many men, so little time") of World War II. Horny GIs referred to her as the Girl We'd Like to Find in Every Port." From the start, her private life was marked with scandal: She aborted Mickey Rooney's baby; seduced a young John F. Kennedy; and fell for Frank Sinatra, who later caught her in bed with another love goddess, Ava Gardner. In the early 1940s, after a nationwide campaign promoting the sale of War Bonds, Carole Lombard frantically boarded a small plane headed back to Hollywood, suffering a fiery death when it crashed within 13 minutes of takeoff. The risk she took during that thunderstorm was motivated, it was said, by her obsession with rescuing her husband, Clark Gable, from the amorous clutches of Lana Turner. Tyrone Powertall, dark, photogenic, and famouseventually evolved into the greatest love of her life until the Aviator, Howard Hughes, arguably the most psychotic billionaire in the history of Hollywood, flew in to seduce both of them. Lana (aka The Ziegfeld Girl") didn't hear The Postman Always Rings Twice because she was in bed with John Garfield. Later, in search of love, she spent a Weekend at the Waldorf before moving to Green Dolphin Street and later to the notorious Peyton Place, she found it during an experiment with an Imitation of Life. Gable took her to a Honky Tonk and vowed, Somewhere I'll Find You," before their Homecoming reunion. With Ray Milland, she found A Life of Her Own before dancing to The Merry Widow waltz with sexy Fernando Lamas. Many notoriously hot menmany of them her filmmaking co-starslay in her future: Richard Burton, Sean Connery, and Errol in like Flynn." Samson (Victor Mature) was said to be Lana's Biggest Thrill." Lana rescued Peter Lawford from Elizabeth Taylor; Ricky Ricardo from Lucy; and, when not singing amore with Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas learned that she was Bad and Beautiful both on and off the screen. "The bombshell" once said, I wanted one husband and seven babies, but I got the reverseseven husbands and an only child!" She married Tarzan (Lex Barker) after his designation as The Sexiest Man in the World," but the union ended when she caught him seducing her teenaged daughter. Opinions about Lana were as varied as her changing looks. She was amoral," said MGM's CEO, Louis B. Mayer. Robert Taylor commented: She was the type of woman a guy would risk five years in jail for rape." Gloria Swanson sniffed, She wasn't even an actress...only a trollop." And Ronald Reagan--a man who later became U.S. president--asked, In what cathouse did she learn those tricks?" And then there was that embarrassing murder: Did Lana fatally stab her gangster lover, Johnny Stompanato, known for his links to the Mob? Or was the heinous act committed by her daughter, a traumatized teenager who, after time in reform school, officially outed herself as a lesbian? How did these whirlwinds of scandal affect the gal who had it all? According to Lana, I'd like to think that in some small way, I've helped to preserve the glamour and beauty and mystery of the movie industry." Never before has there been, until now, a definitive, uncensored, and comprehensive biography of "the Ultimate Movie Star," LANA TURNER. Until now.

Read more less

Ambrose McEvoy was one of the most modern and daring English society portrait painters of the early 20th century. His quick, confident style of painting drew the attention of many leading society figures, from Winston Churchill to Lady Diana Cooper, and in particular subjects who craved something beyond a simple ‘likeness’ in paint. Despite his success, when McEvoy died unexpectedly at the peak of his career in 1927, his name was soon forgotten. Divine People is the first major written study of McEvoy’s life and work and aims to firmly place this long-neglected artist back into the canon of 20th-century British art. Ambrose McEvoy (1877–1927) was a household name by 1915, with prominent socialites and debutantes vying for sittings in his Grosvenor Road studio. His patrons – typically young, well-known beauties – were dazzled not only by his remarkable ability to capture their character, but also his working methods, which one spectator described as an ‘awe-inspiring sight’. McEvoy would illuminate his subject using electric lights, switching between different coloured bulbs until he reached the level and colour of light he desired. This ‘Hollywood’ look, with his glamourous subjects lit from below as if caught mid-speech on stage, is what he soon became best known for. McEvoy had studied at the Slade School of Fine Art on the recommendation of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and soon after established himself as a talented painter of portraits and interior scenes. He exhibited his first work at the New English Art Club in 1901 and subsequently attracted the attention of wealthy patrons and collectors. His first major commission came in 1906, for two large religious pictures for the Long Tower Church in Londonderry, where they remain to this day. After a period spent in Dieppe with Walter Sickert in 1909 McEvoy’s style began to change and his handling became looser and more confident with bolder use of colour. In 1915 he firmly established his position as a portrait painter following the exhibition of his work Madame at the National Portrait Society. ‘[Madame] holds you spellbound from the moment you enter the gallery,’ wrote one critic. Two of his earliest admirers were Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough and Lady Diana Cooper, who sat for their portraits in 1917 and 1918 respectively. In the early 1920s McEvoy also made several trips to New York, where the famous art dealer and tastemaker Joseph Duveen was busy promoting his work. It was during these years he painted some of his best-known works including remarkable watercolours of ‘wild-child’ Lois Sturt and a portrait of James Ramsay MacDonald. In 1927, at the very peak of his career, McEvoy was tragically struck down with pneumonia and died on 4 January. Many of McEvoy’s friends and contemporaries including Augustus and Gwen John, William Rothenstein and William Orpen have become familiar names to British art enthusiasts, but McEvoy has remained on the side-lines. This is partly due to the fact that many of his most accomplished works have remained tucked away in private collections or left languishing in museum stores, however, it is also due to the absence of any reliable literature on his life and work. This publication hopes to restore him to his rightful place. Written in the early 1970s by Erik Akers-Douglas, 3rd Viscount Chilston (1910–1986), the original manuscript – of which only one copy was produced – was lost soon after it was submitted to a publisher in 1975. After several years of legal wrangling, Chilston decided to type a second copy and it was resubmitted to his agent. Chilston died the following month and the manuscript was never published. It was recently rediscovered by Philip Mould& Company and edited by Lawrence Hendra.

Read more less

Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire draws together MacGillivray's extensive research into the life and work of Norwegian-Shetlandic poet Kristján Norge, who vanished from Eilean a’ Bhàis in the Outer Hebrides in 1961. Comprising two previously unpublished manuscripts by Norge, Optik: A History of Ghost (1950) and Ravage (1961), this collection also includes rare original material, giving insight into Norge's troubled existence and mysterious disappearance. Optik: A History of Ghost, the opening triadic poem, typifies Kristján Norge's early work and is a meditation on Greek optics, horary ghostliness and illumination by fire. Composed in 1950, Optik draws on letters twelve and thirteen of the correspondence between scientist-inventor Sir David Brewster and Sir Walter Scott on natural magic, to isolate the figure of 'John Christ' whom Norge positions as a visionary homunculus created from the saline ash of alchemical phantasmic experiments. Ravage is the centrepiece of the collection, a numinous tract written in the months preceding Kristján Norge's disappearance in 1961, convinced he was a demon. Washed up in a storm, subsistence on Bàs had proved an increasing strain on Norge, who felt his self-exiled status intensively. In response to both this isolation and the unexpected revelation of his demoniacal status, Norge evolved a complex amnesiac system, aware that if only he could forget this singular aspect of himself, then release might follow. Inevitably cryptic, this Norgesian schema has been recovered from fragments concealed at ten sites on the Scottish island. Norge's impression of Eilean a’ Bhàis as an underworld threshold leant weight to his suspicion that the island was indeed attracting the Sluagh nam Marbh, or Host of the Dead, a Gaelic westerly wind of malign voices that allegedly imparted the knowledge of his demonhood to him. Optik: A History of Ghost and Ravage are supplemented by additional archival materials which flesh out Norge's intellectual and personal concerns. Among these is a detailed schema of his amnesiac process, items of correspondence, maps, photographs and logbook entries. A work of fiction entitled The Wind of Voices, which is based on this mercurial period in Norge's life, concludes the collection. MacGillivray is the Highland name of writer and artist Kirsten Norrie. She has published three other poetry books, The Last Wolf of Scotland (Pighog/Red Hen, 2013), The Nine of Diamonds: Surroial Mordantless (Bloodaxe Books, 2016) and The Gaelic Garden of the Dead (Bloodaxe Books, 2019).

Read more less

Neben der 'Theologie des Alten Testaments' und der 'Literatur- und Religionsgeschichte Israels' gehört die 'Anthropologie' zu den Kernthemen der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Das Lehrbuch von Bernd Janowski bearbeitet dieses Thema in umfassender Weise, indem es sich in sieben Abschnitte gliedert: Einführung, Lebensphasen, Personbegriff, Soziales Handeln, Welterfahrung, Anthropologien im Alten Testament, Resümee. Ein ausführlicher Quellenhang veranschaulicht das Thema anhand ausgewählter Texte und Bilder aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments. "Bernd Janowski hat [...] einen großartigen Gesamtentwurf vorgelegt, der schon jetzt als Standardwerk bezeichnet werden kann. Galt bis dahin die Anthropologie des Alten Testaments von Hans Walter Wolff aus dem Jahr 1973 als maßgebliches Werk, so dürfte nun die beeindruckende Darstellung des emeritierten Tübinger Alttestamentlers an deren Stelle treten."Ludger Schwienhoerst-Schönberger in Christ in der Gegenwart , Nr. 21/2019, S. 226 "Bernd Janowskis monumentales opus magnum, in dem eine lebenslange Beschäftigung mit anthropologischen Themen der Bibel ihren Höhepunkt erreicht, darf schon jetzt als das künftig unentbehrliche Standardwerk zu allen Fragen im Umkreis bezeichnet werden. [...] Eine uneingeschränkte Leseempfehlung, die jedem Interessierten dringend ans Herz gelegt sei!"Friedhelm Hartenstein in Theologische Literaturzeitung 144, Buch des Monats (Juli/August 2019) "Bernd Janowski hat mit seiner Anthropologie des Alten Testaments ein materialreiches Kompendium vorgelegt, ein Nachschlagewerk, ein Lesebuch, ein Lehrwerk, ein kluges Buch, von dem sich die interessierte Leserschaft gern zum Nach- und Selberdenken anregen lässt. Zweifellos liegt für die alttestamentliche Anthropologie hier ein Referenzwerk vor."Achim Behrens in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung , 115 (2020), S. 449-452 "[...] ein wahres Meisterwerk, das jede/r Student/in der Theologie zu Rate ziehen wird. Auch die Fachexegese darf sich über ein äußerst hilfreiches Handbuch freuen, das man durcharbeiten und auf das man immer wieder als Nachschlagewerk zurückgreifen wird."Thomas Hieke in Biblische Notizen , 184 (2020), S. 149-150 "Dieses Buch stellt die alttestamentliche Anthropologie erfrischend neu, übersichtlich und umfassend dar und ist ein unschätzbarer Beitrag nicht nur zur alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft, sondern ebenfalls zur praktischen Theologie. Darüber hinaus sei es ausdrücklich als Nachschlagewerk oder zur Gesamtlektüre in Studium, Vikariat und Pfarramt empfohlen."Lukas Altvater auf https://netzwerktheologie.wordpress.com "Insgesamt kann allen die Anschaffung dieses Standardwerkes, das man mit Gewinn und mit Genuss liest, nur empfohlen werden."Kathrin Gies in Theologische Revue 118, Juli 2022 "Janowskis 'Anthropologie' füllt eine seit Jahrzehnten überfällige Lücke der alttestamentlichen Theologie und Exegese und wird allein aus diesem Grund schon zu einem Standardwerk avancieren."Benedikt Collinet in bbs 12.2020, www.bibelwerk.de/verein/buecherschau "Mit seiner Anthropologie des Alten Testaments ist Bernd Janowski ein großer Wurf gelungen, dem man eine lange Halbwertszeit wünscht! Nicht nur für Studierende, sondern für jeden, der sich mit der Gedankenwelt des Alten Testaments auseinandersetzen möchte, ist das Handbuch nur zu empfehlen."Fabian Brand auf https://theologieundwelt.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/anthropologie-des-alten-testam

Read more less

Shortlisted, Best Atlantic Published Book Award and Canadian Regional Design AwardA major publication comprising 256 pages with 75 colour plates and 60 black-and-white photographs provides extensive documentation of the exhibition Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.Along with a complete catalogue of artworks, it features an overview and history of the historic collection, along with curatorial commentary on each work of art by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery's Curator and Deputy Director, and curator of the exhibition, Terry Graff. Further, it includes important essays by five internationally respected art historians, scholars, and curators, Elliot King, James Hamilton, Richard Calvocoressi, Angus Stewart, and Katharine Eustace, that focus on several key works of art. In addition, Bernard Riordon, Director and CEO of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, provides a foreword and timely essay documenting the recently resolved legal battle with the Beaverbrook Foundation (UK) over ownership of several works. Elliot King, art historian and leading specialist on the work of Salvador Dalí and curator of the recent exhibition Dalí: The Late Work at the High Museum of Art, examines Dalí's monumental painting Santiago El Grande. James Hamilton, curator and art historian, who has written several books, lectured internationally, and curated several important exhibitions on JMW Turner, examines Turner's Fountain of Indolence. Richard Calvocoressi, Director of the Henry Moore Foundation and former Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, provides special insight into Lucien Freud's Hotel Bedroom. Angus Stewart, independent curator known for his many exhibitions at the Olympia London fine art and antiques fair, including the major 2003 project that marked the centenary of artist Graham Sutherland's birth, examines important Sutherland works, such as Helena Rubinstein, Studies for Churchill, and Portrait of Lord Beaverbrook. Katharine Eustace, art historian and curator, whose publications include Continuity and Change: Twentieth Century Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, provides a thoughtful essay on Walter Sickert in relation to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery's Sickert paintings, such as H.M. King Edward VIII.Proof copies of 200-copy special edition of Masterworks of Beaverbrook Art Gallery. These proof copies (of which there are only 12) are presented in an an embossed paper-covered slipcase. Each copy includes is signed by the Director and Director Emeritus of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Sewn-bound with marbled endpapers, a marker ribbon, and including an artist proof of a limited edition of a portrait of Lord Beaverbrook by Graham Sutherland, this edition is designed as a keepsake for future generations.

Read more less

Finalist for the 2023 CASEY Award Fernando Valenzuela was only twenty years old when Tom Lasorda chose him as the Dodgers’ opening-day starting pitcher in 1981. Born in the remote Mexican town of Etchohuaquila, the left-hander had moved to the United States less than two years before. He became an instant icon, and his superlative rookie season produced Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards—and a World Series victory over the Yankees. Forty years later, there hasn’t been a player since who created as many Dodgers fans. After the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in the late 1950s, relations were badly strained between the organization and the Latin world. Mexican Americans had been evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles—some forcibly—for well below market value so the city could sell the land to team owner Walter O’Malley for a new stadium. For a generation of working-class Mexican Americans, the Dodgers became a source of great anguish over the next two decades. However, that bitterness toward the Dodgers vanished during the 1981 season when Valenzuela attracted the fan base the Dodgers had tried in vain to reach for years. El Toro, as he was called, captured the imagination of the baseball world. A hero in Mexico, a legend in Los Angeles, and a phenomenon throughout the United States, Valenzuela did more to change that tense political environment than anyone in the history of baseball. A new fan base flooded Dodger Stadium and ballparks around the United States whenever Valenzuela pitched in a phenomenon that quickly became known as Fernandomania, which continued throughout a Dodger career that included six straight All-Star game appearances.Daybreak at Chavez Ravine retells Valenzuela’s arrival and permanent influence on Dodgers history while bringing redemption to the organization’s controversial beginnings in LA. Through new interviews with players, coaches, broadcasters, and media, Erik Sherman reveals a new side of this intensely private man and brings fresh insight to the ways he transformed the Dodgers and started a phenomenon that radically altered the country’s cultural and sporting landscape.

Read more less