Download or read book In Pursuit of a Vanishing Star written by Gustaf Sobin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002-12-04 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the life of Greta Garbo, Gustaf Sobin spins a masterful tale about the enigmatic nature of idolatry.
Download or read book The Vanishing Man written by Laura Cumming and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velazquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history. When Laura Cumming stumbled on a startling trial involving John Snare, it sent her on a search of her own. At first she was pursuing the picture, and the life and work of the elusive painter, but then she found herself following the bookseller's fortunes too - from London to Edinburgh to nineteenth-century New York, from fame to ruin and exile. An innovative fusion of detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velazquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before
Download or read book The Forest of Vanishing Stars written by Kristin Harmel and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The New York Times bestselling author of the "heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism" (People) The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis-until a secret from her past threatens everything"--
Download or read book Vanishing America written by James Conaway and published by Counterpoint. This book was released on 2007-09-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rich American landscape, both natural and cultural, is being threatened and in some cases wiped away completely. Preservation Editor-at-Large James Conaway takes to the road in Vanishing America, exploring the places, people, and traditions that have helped to shape our national identity. Part personal narrative and part travelogue, his journey offers a smart and informative account from across the country. From D.C's National Cathedral to a deserted cabin in Big Sur, from dinosaur bones in New Mexico's Bisti Badlands to the weatherworn facade of New Orleans, along the way Conaway meets cowboys, hippies, real estate developers, and many others whose stories weave into a national identity at once created, disappearing, destroyed, and continually redefined. Many of the best reflections of what the country once stood for lie around us abused, exploited, or ignored. How do we resolve the notion of preservation within a culture so dependent on growth and prosperity? With wit and acute urgency, Conaway reminds us that every bit of property, historic landmark, and distinct community, is vulnerable. These essays serve as a lament for what's being lost, a prompt for what we still have to preserve, and a celebration of our nation's unique characteristics.
Download or read book Greta Garbo written by David Bret and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the male-oriented studio system, Greta Garbo wielded a power no other actress has ever possessed, before or since. Be it producer, director, lover or journalist, Garbo called the shots, and when she decided that she was done with the whirlwind of life as Hollywood's darling she withdrew completely, leaving her public begging for an encore that never came. Though there have been numerous biographies of Garbo, this is the first to investigate fully the two so-called missing periods in the life of this most enigmatic of Hollywood stars: the first during the late 1920s, forcing MGM to employ a lookalike to conceal what was almost certainly a pregnancy; the second during World War II when Garbo was employed by British Intelligence to track down Nazi sympathisers. It also analyses in detail the original, uncensored copies of Garbo's films - with the exception of The Divine Woman, of which no complete print survives - and offers substantial evidence that John Gilbert was not, in fact, the great love of her life. Rather her true affections lay with the gay, Sapphic and Scandinavian members of her very intimate inner circle. Using previously unsourced material, along with anecdotes from friends and colleagues that have never before been published, David Bret paints a rounded portrait of Garbo's childhood in Sweden, her rise to stardom and her all-too-brief reign as queen of MGM. Hers is a truly remarkable story, recounted here with warmth, intensity and unique insight.
Download or read book Sappho s Leap written by Erica Jong and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel of ancient Greece tells the story of the epic poet's journeys, loves, and losses.
Download or read book Love Warps the Mind a Little A Novel written by John Dufresne and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-01-17 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reissue of a favorite novel by “a generous and lyric storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle) known for his tragicomic voice and unforgettable characters. Ever since Lafayette Proulx quit his day job, left his wife, hauled his dog and his Royal portable across town to Judi Dubey’s house, and set out at last to be a fiction writer, his life has been a sordid mess. Judi’s exotically dysfunctional family isn’t all to blame. Sure, the murders are disconcerting. And, yes, Judi’s father’s gone off the deep end. Worse are the vicious rejection letters Laf gets from editors. To top it off, Laf’s falling for Judi at the same time he’s nettled with guilt, is in marriage counseling with his wife, and is writing his long-hoped-for novel. When Judi is diagnosed with stage IV cancer, they both struggle to find the memory that will comfort, the truth that will redeem in a world where everyone suffers some kind of love disorder. John Dufresne, called “a highly readable Faulkner,” will once again take the literary world by storm with this new tragicomic tale.
Download or read book The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank A Novel written by Ellen Feldman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2006-05-17 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An appealing and inventive novel…original and cathartic." —Dana Kennedy, New York Times On February 16, 1944, Anne Frank recorded in her diary that Peter, whom she at first disliked and eventually came to love, had confided to her that if he got out alive, he would reinvent himself entirely. This novel is the story of what might have happened if the boy in hiding had survived to become a man. Peter arrives in America, the land of self-creation, and passes as a Christian. Successful in business and rich in love in the boom years of the 1950s, he thrives in the present, plans for the future, and has no past. But there is a cost to his charade. When The Diary of a Young Girl is published to worldwide acclaim, it triggers paralyzing memories of his experiences in the secret annex in Amsterdam. The diary is his story too, and once the floodgate of memory opens, his life spirals out of control. Based on extensive research of Peter van Pels and the strange and disturbing life Anne Frank's diary took on after her death, this is a novel about the memory of death, the death of memory, and the inescapability of the past. Reading group guide included.
Download or read book Foreign Babes in Beijing Behind the Scenes of a New China written by Rachel DeWoskin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-07-26 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For a real insider’s look at life in modern China, readers should turn to Rachel DeWoskin.”—Sophie Beach, The Economist Determined to broaden her cultural horizons and live a “fiery” life, twenty-one-year-old Rachel DeWoskin hops on a plane to Beijing to work for an American PR firm based in the busy capital. Before she knows it, she is not just exploring Chinese culture but also creating it as the sexy, aggressive, fearless Jiexi, the starring femme fatale in a wildly successful Chinese soap opera. Experiencing the cultural clashes in real life while performing a fictional version onscreen, DeWoskin forms a group of friends with whom she witnesses the vast changes sweeping through China as the country pursues the new maxim, “to get rich is glorious.” In only a few years, China’s capital is transformed. With “considerable cultural and linguistic resources” (The New Yorker), DeWoskin captures Beijing at this pivotal juncture in her “intelligent, funny memoir” (People), and “readers will feel lucky to have sharp-eyed, yet sisterly, DeWoskin sitting in the driver’s seat”(Elle).
Download or read book Buffalo Afternoon written by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buffalo Afternoon is the story of three generations of the Bravado family--Italian American, working-class, determined, proud, troubled. At the heart of this enthralling novel is Pete, a Vietnam vet whose fate is shaped by his grandfather's beliefs about America and reshaped by a cataclysm of American history. Reading group guide included.
Download or read book Due Preparations for the Plague written by Janette Turner Hospital and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the lives of two strangers become connected by the tragic loss of parents in a hijacked Paris-New York flight, they find themselves entangled in a web of terror, death, and betrayal.
Download or read book The Hazards of Good Breeding A Novel written by Jessica Shattuck and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-04-17 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "pitch perfect" (Los Angeles Times) first novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle. This "richly appointed and generously portrayed" (Kirkus Reviews) debut novel tells the story of a WASPy, old-Boston family coming face to face with an America much larger than the one it was born in. Told from five perspectives, the novel spans an explosive week in the life of the Dunlaps, culminating in a series of events that will change their way of life forever. Caroline Dunlap has written off the insular world of the Boston deb parties, golf club luaus, and WASP weddings that she grew up with. But when she reluctantly returns home after her college graduation, she finds that not everything is quite as predictable, or protected, as she had imagined. Her father, the eccentric, puritanical Jack Dunlap, is carrying on stoically after the breakup of his marriage, but he can't stop thinking of Rosita, the family housekeeper he fired almost six months ago. Caroline's little brother, Eliot, is working on a giant papier-mâché diorama of their town—or is he hatching a plan of larger proportions? As the real reason for Rosita's departure is revealed, the novel culminates in a series of events that assault the fragile, sheltered, and arguably obsolete world of the Dunlaps. Opening a window into a family's repressed desires and fears, The Hazards of Good Breeding is a startlingly perceptive comedy of manners that heralds a new writer of dazzling talent. A New York Times Notable Selection and a Boston Globe Book of the Year.
Download or read book The Last Summer of the World A Novel written by Emily Mitchell and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-07-17 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Absorbing…Mitchell's novel [is] the real thing." —Boston Globe In the summer of 1918, with the Germans threatening Paris, Edward Steichen arrives in France to photograph the war for the American army. There, he finds a country filled with poignant memories for him: early artistic success, marriage, the birth of two daughters, and a love affair that divided his family. Told with elegance and transporting historical sensitivity, Emily Mitchell’s first novel captures the life of a great American artist caught in the reckoning of a painful past in a world beset by war. A Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lion's Fiction Award and named a Best Book of the Year by the Providence Journal, the Austin-American-Stateman, and the Madison Capital Times.
Download or read book House Lights A Novel written by Leah Hager Cohen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-10-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Tantalizing ... captivating ... provocative.”—Booklist Late in her twentieth year, Beatrice, who dreams of a life on the stage, is confronting a home life torn asunder. She mails a letter on the sly to her grandmother, a legendary actress long estranged from the family, sparking events that will change her life forever. Powerfully written and psychologically intricate, House Lights illuminates the corrosive power of family secrets and the redemptive struggle to find truth, forgiveness, and love.
Download or read book Aura written by Gustaf Sobin and published by Counterpath Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Writing. Essays. Literary Criticism. Gustaf Sobin's final book of essays continues his meditations on the meaning of archaeological vestiges in the south of France. Sobin's writing synthesizes insights from anthropology, philosophy, theology, and the history of art to produce a spiritual and poetic travelogue through vanished time. Left uncompleted at the end of his life, the present volume would have concluded the trilogy whose first two volumes were published by University of California Press (Luminous Debris [1999] and Ladder of Shadows [2008]). The scope and ambition of Sobin's poetic archaeology can be compared only to Walter Benjamin's Arcades project, also left uncompleted, and which similarly sought to draw poetic and philosophical insights from the remnants of material culture.
Download or read book The Honey Trail written by Grace Pundyk and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique look at the history, culture, tradition, and environmental impact of honey The Honey Trail is a global travel narrative that looks at different aspects of how honey and bees are being affected by globalization, terrorism, deforestation, the global food trade, and climate change. This unique book not only questions the state of our environment and the impact it is having on bees and honey, it also takes readers on an adventure across Yemeni deserts and Borneo jungles, through the Mississippi Delta and Tasmania's rainforests, over frozen Siberian snowscapes and ancient Turkish villages all in search of the liquid gold known as honey. Including fascinating insights such as: • A bee produces only a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime • China is the world's largest honey producer • Honey is only used as medicine in Borneo • There are more than thirty-five mono-floral honeys in Tuscany.
Download or read book Verse written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
