Search results for ""New Amsterdam Books""

This intense yet panoramic novel is based on an actual episode during the battle of Wagram, in Austria, as it appears in the diary of one of Napoleons generals: two cavalry regiments that did their best to annihilate each other before the gates of Vienna in 1809 belonged to the Prince of SaxeTeschen, and on his orders fought on opposing sides. Re-baptized SaxeSalza in the novel, the Prince, on the eve of the battle, transfers his wife's young lover from his own unit to the other regiment, so that he may kill and be killed by his brothers-in-arms. But long before that climactic moment, against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the fortunes of the Hapsburgs and the conquests of Napoleon, an exalting and terrifying love has engulfed Clemence of Saxe-Salza and Otto Apfelgrun. Diplomacy, court intrigue, the marching and countermarching of marvelously uniformed and accoutered toy soldiers, explodes in sudden carnage, and the love of Clemence and Otto is buried beneath a hundred thousand of the dying and the dead.

Read more less

This book, which covers new ground, is a study of high and low art, official and unofficial, in the Soviet Union and the West in the Cold War years, 1945–62. It is a paradox that the Soviet Union, a nation born of revolution, should have encouraged 'official' art which was conservative and conformist, whereas Western Europe, and the USA in particular, should preach traditional values, but have a high art which spoke of dissent. Other curious contradictions and parallels emerge—Soviet 'official' art was predominantly realist in style and popular with the general public, as were popular prints in the West. Both have largely been ignored by the western art establishment. It is the unofficial art of the Soviet Union and the high art of the West—for example, Rothko, Pollock, Bacon and Dubuffet—which have always attracted critical attention. Christine Lindey's pioneering study examines these paradoxes and illustrates many artists, notably those from the Soviet Union, whose work has rarely been seen in the West. As glasnost changes our perceptions of the contemporary Soviet Union, here is the first history of all aspects of art there in the postwar years, set in the political context, and comparing it with developments in art in the West.

Read more less

In this powerful and visionary novel of Celtic Britain in the tenth century, Sian Hayton writes of the Christianizing of the pagan world that was the overthrow of woman; of one particular woman in the north of Britain who comes to the monks to learn about the new faith, and they are scandalized by her beauty and her physical strength–is not all flesh incurably foul and corrupt?–and her candid heart–did not Eve in her accursed innocence betray mankind to woe? And they rejected her, and she set off on foot to return whence she had come. One of the monks, Selyf, a roan no longer young, follows after her in the hope of finding her traces, and overtaking her, and sifting her to establish whether she is a witch or merely ignorant of God's word. What he learns, and retails in letters to his bishop, is a stupendous legend of chathonic powers and of a race that dies in every generation to be reborn with all the knowledge of its line. Selyf's letters are studied by his successor, a younger and more worldly man, whose marginal gloss makes it clear that neither man has lived a life that will help him to assess the evidence before him, and neither can determine whether the woman is good or evil. Sian Hayton's language is simple, direct, and numinous, Her allegory is the fable of life.

Read more less

...A valid and informed analysis of the Victorian stage and a sourcebook that is remarkably rich...-Theatre Notebook

Read more less

Leon Edel has recently noted that "there exists, I am sorry to say, no criticism of biography worthy of the name. Reviewers and critics have learned how to judge plays, poems, novels—but they reveal their helplessness in the face of a biography." The Biographer's Art, by concentrating on the aesthetics of the genre, responds to the need for serious criticism of life-writing. This book is both a history of the genre and a substantial analysis of the great literary biographies from Johnson's Life of Savage (1744) and Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791) through Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918) and Symons' The Quest for Corvo (1934) to the three greatest biographies of the mid-twentieth century: Ellmann's James Joyce (1959), Painter's Marcel Proust (1959, 1965), and Edel's monumental Henry James (1953-72). The masterful biographies by Ellmann, Painter, and Edel, that continue the tradition begun by Johnson and Boswell and show the influence of Strachey's innovative work, confirm that biography is still a flourishing art form. By firing the facts of an author's life with their own imagination, illuminating the relationship between daily existence and imaginative life, these life-writers follow the same process as fiction writers and create their own significant works of art.

Read more less

The study of elections and voting patterns has been one of the fastest growing fields of political science in the past few decades. It has produced one of the most characteristic artifacts of Western political culture: the public-opinion poll. But what makes people vote the way they do—social class, race, and sex? Or more ephemeral factors, like ideology, party identifications, money and mass-media campaigns? The authors argue that it is futile to ask the question, 'What decides elections?' without first considering another: What do elections decide? Elections and Voters therefore examines competitive electoral systems: how they work, how they are manipulated, and how to interpret the results of elections held under their rules. Ideologies and images, sociological and economic influences, and the effects of the media, money, and opinion polls themselves are discussed, as are noncompetitive elections in four countries commonly omitted from such studies: the Soviet Union, Poland, Mexico, and Kenya. Completely free of jargon, Elections and Voters is indispensable not only to students of politics but also to its practitioners: journalists, politicians, pollsters—and voters themselves.

Read more less

Henry Fairfax's life is one of orderly routine: accounting and management by day, the writing of radio plays by night, and a circle of friends. But only a few years ago he had lived through a painful divorce after nine years. And very early in the narrative, surprised by a sudden attack in the night, Fairfax stops a would-be mugger with a heavy right-hand blow. But what is he to think when Laura, now an independent, successful businesswoman, suggests that they marry again? They had parted loathing each other. And yet it possible that Henry's heart, like the mugger, may surprise him. Stanley Middleton's novel treats once more of the choices that seemingly comfortable people have to make. The issues he raises speak to the human condition, and make moving drama of our daily lives.

Read more less

Treats, through excerpts from contemporary opinion and official documents, various aspects of the little world of theatre in the full context of Elizabethan-Jacobean life and times.

Read more less

The development of modern communications has undermined the traditional division of mankind into separate national societies, each of these properly the subject of individual analysis. The social, economic, intellectual, and cultural differences which once made that kind of analysis very nearly inevitable are now increasingly breaking down. People in general are today closely interdependent with those who live in other societies. Decisions made in other parts of the world have immediate effects upon millions of persons very far removed geographically from the lands that are the epicenters of this or that change in thought or practice. As a result, the entire population of the globe are members of a single, hugely complex but closely interrelated social organism. In this book, Evan Luard seeks to analyze that wider society, making use of many of the concepts traditionally used in the study of smaller societies–for example, structure, ideology, role, status, conflict, norms, authority. The preface to International Society recalls the trilogy of studies written by Luard in recent years, all of which bore the subtitle. "A study in International Sociology." The first of these described the characteristics of a succession of historical examples of societies consisting of more than a single state, in the light of the concepts mentioned above. The second book examines the differing kinds of economic relationships that arose among the number of such societies. The third volume was devoted to the changing character of war during recent centuries showing how itrs forms and purposes have varied from one international society to another in accordance with the interests, goals, and ideology of the governing elites in each period. International Society presents a synthesis main findings and insights of the earlier works, amounting to a fresh and sometimes startling characterization of the gravitational force of the new world community that is willy-nilly changing the consciousness and actions of individuals and pe

Read more less

Hamlet is probably the most famous play in the world. The distinguished English critic, J. C. Trewin, saw his first performance of it in 1922, and thereafter, professionally, as drama critic successively of the Observer, Punch, and the Illustrated London News, he saw it repeatedly through sixty years of theatrical history. In this most unusual book of theatrical criticism he discusses all the leading Hamlets, including John Barrymore, John Gielgud, Maurice Evans, Michael Redgrave, and Laurence Olivier. He reflects on how the play has sounded through its many productions, how it has looked to audiences, how the critics reacted, what were the backstage arguments and the changing mores of theatrical life. Trewin's criticism is not only judicious. It is impassioned: "In March 1924, I had my first overwhelming theatrical experience. "Great," often implying no more than a night's enthusiasm, is a word like "marvellous" and "wonderful," to use sparely; but after sixty years I use it for the Hamlet of Ernest Milton...an American actor of Jewish descent who had settled in England, and who had conquered the Old Vic with his romantic passion and the surge of his verse-speaking.... On seeing the Ghost he had indeed a supernatural visitation; he became a man possessed. "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" was breathed, barely audible, as he swung round from Horatio. When he was left alone on the battlements the haunting cry, "Hillo! ho! ho! boy! Come, bird, come!" rose as I would never know it again. From the distant night I think still of throat-tightening excitement, of an emotional force sometimes almost demonic. Speech after speech he double-charged. I cannot say at this distance how many Hamlet problems he answered, though the voice speaks unblurred. For me, with his felicities and faults, his leaping across every chasm, he governed the stage as the man himself, of "the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword." A joy of a book.

Read more less

This is a book for readers who are interested in the art and the social history of the Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts of that period are a primary source of information about the way in which men and women went about the everyday business of living–working on the land, engaging in trade and commerce, devoting themselves to crafts and manufactures, or carrying on the range of activities that we now regard as the professions. Many of the scenes reproduced in this superbly illustrated account are simply works of art in their own right; others are taken from manuscripts that are famous for the very high quality of their illumination. Patricia Basing provides a rich commentary, full of interesting observations, that relates each picture its historical context, explores the connections between the illustrations and text, and gives an account of the general background of manuscript production in medieval times.

Read more less

No figure has contributed as much to American culture as that of the cowboy. Describing American dreams and values as seen through the cowboy image, Jack Weston contrasts that image with reality: the hardworking rider who had to fight not only the elements but his employer in order to make a slender living. The Real American Cowboy is a fascinating account of real life in the Wild West–not glamorous as in the movies, but full of the excitement of a hard and dangerous trade. The very special treatment of the cowboy image in nineteenth-century journalism and the dime novel, and in the twentieth-century media as well, explains the growth of the cowboy myth and its effect on America's goals and assumptions. In analyzing the differences between the myth and the historical reality, this book offers an important new assessment of the Western–and the West–in fiction, film, and in life.

Read more less

In the autumn of 1988 a group of Israeli women donned prayer shawls, took up the Torah, and gathered at the Wailing Wall to pray. The religious leaders of the State of Israel were appalled and proposed that the holy relics, so defiled, be burned. The Catholic Church has steadfastly refused to ordain women as priests. Examples of exclusionary practice abound in all the major religions. In the face of such attitudes and practices, how can women share fully in the spiritual wealth of which our religions are the expression? To what extent are patriarchy, androcentrism, and sexism inherent in all religious institutions? How is the women's movement linked to the age-old quest for spirituality, the search for meaning, for ultimate values, for liberation and transcendence? Ursula King believes that in recounting their own experience, women everywhere are expressing a new view of the world and a new spirituality for themselves and a response to the needs and opportunities of the age. In this book she explores the implicit and explicit demands of feminism, and discusses themes posed by women mystics, by goddess-worship in other cultures and in our own, by historical matriarchy, by feminist theology. Women and Spirituality is concerned with important issues of personal and social change, and the perspectives they open to non-violence, peace and the protection of the ecological matrix that supports our existence. It gives a wide-ranging account of women's relations with the world's religions and the spiritual dimension of human life.

Read more less

"New...has written an untraditional book, for it approaches Canadian literature in a novel fashion, includes a whole new aspect of the national written record, places books in a supplementary chronological table...that relates them to international social and cultural events and movements, and assumes both the general reader and the scholar as its user."—Choice

Read more less

How has the Hotchkiss School managed to accommodate a hundred years of unprecedented change—a century during which horse-and-buggy trails have become less familiar than the fiery trails of space-bound vehicles, and Victorian propriety has yielded to unabashed self-expression? The short answer—carefully; certainly not without considerable tension and the constant need to mediate between the forces of tradition and innovation. Oh yes, also by following the golden rule: do not disturb the cherished memories of alumni—and, more recently, of alumnae as well.

Read more less

Rarely exhibited and in superb condition, the watercolor collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge is one of the finest in the world. This book contains the gems of that collection—approximately 150, all of them reproduced large and in color, mostly for the first time. The most famous artists of this, the 'Golden Age' of British watercolor art, are all represented (Turner, Cotman, DeWint, Cox, Cozens, Girtin, Palmer, Constable, Ruskin, Sandby, Towne, Varley) together with some less well known, or better known for work in other media—Wilson, Wright of Derby, Romney, Gainsborough, Holland, for example. But the collection is most remarkable for the outstanding quality of the individual paintings, and Jane Munro (Senior Assistant Keeper at the Museum) emphasizes this in a text that closely examines each particular work and locates it in the artist's career.

Read more less

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, rich in architectural and horticultural treasures, are among the most beloved of the world's gardens. Each year more than a million visitors explore the grounds and the greenhouses, seeking the beauty, the peace, the knowledge that this living laboratory and pleasure garden can give. One of the great attractions of Kew is the air of permanence that comes in large part from those architectural features that have survived the centuries, creating an oasis in a sea of change. James Bartholomew, a young Scottish-American, is perhaps the ideal photographer for Kew. At once self-taught and classic in his approach, he has spent three years compiling this timeless portrait. His photographs are carefully composed still-lifes, perceptive studies of historic buildings: the 1848 Palm House (now dismantled for restoration), the Temperate House, the splendid Pagoda. And of great trees: the whorled branches of a Norfolk Island pine, the roots of the beech at Rock Walk in Kew's Wakehurst Place gardens. Bartholomew uses Ansel Adams' Zone System for analyzing tonal range, and his photographs partake of the clarity and faithfulness of Adams' own. The Magic of Kew is an extraordinary folio of 100 beautifully realized images, bringing to us the famous and the little known in Kew, revealing a wealth of architectural detail as well as the nobility of trees and landscapes that have delighted generations of visitors. And now many of these images serve as memorials to great and ancient trees that are no more, trees destroyed by the terrible hurricane that so ravaged Kew in October of 1987. James Bartholomew was born in New York in 1960. He studied at the Parsons School of Design and at the New School for Social Research, and settled in England in 1984. His photographs have been exhibited in both the United States and in England.

Read more less

English artists have made a unique contribution to the art of watercolor painting. In no other Western country has this very attractive medium been used so consistently, or for works of such stature, as in England between 1750 and the present day. In this general survey of the whole period, Graham Reynolds, formerly Keeper of Paintings and of Prints and Drawings at the Victoria & Albert Museum, discusses the paintings of over 100 artists including the well-known watercolorists such as Cozens, Girtin, Cotman and De Wint, as well as artists who are equally known for their work in other media - Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, Sargent, Henry Moore. The 140 illustrations, 64 in color, show the work of these and lesser-known artists and reveal the versatility of this medium, so the reader will be introduced to its use for illustrative caricature and portraiture as well as to the finest examples of traditional landscape watercolors.

Read more less

This intense yet panoramic novel is based on an actual episode during the battle of Wagram, in Austria, as it appears in the diary of one of Napoleons generals: two cavalry regiments that did their best to annihilate each other before the gates of Vienna in 1809 belonged to the Prince of SaxeTeschen, and on his orders fought on opposing sides. Re-baptized SaxeSalza in the novel, the Prince, on the eve of the battle, transfers his wife's young lover from his own unit to the other regiment, so that he may kill and be killed by his brothers-in-arms. But long before that climactic moment, against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the fortunes of the Hapsburgs and the conquests of Napoleon, an exalting and terrifying love has engulfed Clemence of Saxe-Salza and Otto Apfelgrun. Diplomacy, court intrigue, the marching and countermarching of marvelously uniformed and accoutered toy soldiers, explodes in sudden carnage, and the love of Clemence and Otto is buried beneath a hundred thousand of the dying and the dead.

Read more less

The purpose of this absorbing collection is to illuminate the world of the theatre by setting it squarely in its historical context. To that end, Professor Evans draws on the whole spectrum of Elizabethan-Jacobean writing, from official documents to diaries and letters. Part I, The Theatre and the World, deals, through contemporary writings, with the drama itself, the audiences and their responses, theatrical companies, acting and actors, and buildings and technical matters. Part II, The Worlds and the Theatre, illustrates how the problems of everyday life, complicated as they were by moral, religious, social, political, and economic issues, provided an ever-fruitful source of materials to the dramatists who practiced their craft during this extraordinarily creative period.

Read more less