Download or read book The Frenzy of Renown written by Leo Braudy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-11-25 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Remarkably ambitious . . . an impressive tour de force.” —Washington Post Book World For Alexander the Great, fame meant accomplishing what no mortal had ever accomplished before. For Julius Caesar, personal glory was indistinguishable from that of Rome. The early Christians devalued public recognition, believing that the only true audience was God. And Marilyn Monroe owed much of her fame to the fragility that led to self-destruction. These are only some of the dozens of figures that populate Leo Braudy’s panoramic history of fame, a book that tells us as much about vast cultural changes as it does about the men and women who at different times captured their societies' regard. Spanning thousands of years and fields ranging from politics to literature and mass media, The Frenzy of Renown explores the unfolding relationship between the famous and their audiences, between fame and the representations that make it possible. Hailed as a landmark at its original publication and now reissued with a new Afterword covering the last tumultuous decade, here is a major work that provides our celebrity-obsessed, post-historical society with a usable past. “Expansive . . . Braudy excels at rocketing a general point into the air with the fuel of drama. ” —Harper's
Download or read book The Frenzy of Renown written by Leo Braudy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1987-12 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is fame? A name? A face? The "it" in "making it"? In this wide-ranging and ambitious book, Leo Braudy traces the evolving definition of fame from the time of Homer to the present. As Braudy points out, fame is far from just a 20th-century obsession: it has a history, and the twists and turns of that history have determined the terms by which we now understand the phenomenon. Beginning with the Homeric epics and exploits of Alexander the Great, and proceeding to our current idolatry of media figures, the book explains how the definition of fame depends on the political and social system in which it is found, the culture's concept of what a person is, and, of course, the media available for disseminating images. Over the past 2,500 years, fame has had a variety of meanings: from the Roman commitment to public action and the Christian belief that God is the ultimate audience; to the Renaissance idea of the heroic artist and 19th-century notions of posterity and the avant garde; to the idealization of the king and the view that movie stars are the consummate role models. Drawing on art, literature, political history, religion, and philosophy, The Frenzy of Renown offers a fascinating parade of personalities--Julius Caesar and Jesus, Charlemagne and Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler and Marilyn Monroe--all of whom have changed the way everyone appears in the eyes of others.
Download or read book The frenzy of renown written by Leo Braudy and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Chivalry to Terrorism written by Leo Braudy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-12-08 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manliness has always been linked to physical prowess and to war; indeed the warrior has been the archetypal man across countless cultures throughout time. In this magisterial excursion through literature, history, warfare, and sociology, one of our most prominent scholars tracks the complex relationship between the changing methods and goals of warfare and shifting models of manhood. This journey takes us from the citizen soldiers of ancient Greece to the medieval knights to the misogynistic terrorists of Al Qaeda. As he chronicles these transformations, Leo Braudy weighs the significance of everything from weapon technology to the hairstyles favored during different eras. He offers fresh insights on codes of war and codes of racial purity, and on cultural and historical figures from Socrates to Don Quixote to Napoleon to Custer to Rambo. Epic in scope and free of academic jargon, From Chivalry to Terrorism is a masterwork of scholarship that is both accessible and breathtakingly ambitious.
Download or read book Haunted written by Leo Braudy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Shaping Fear -- 2 Between Hope and Fear: Horror and Religion -- 3 Terror, Horror, and the Cult of Nature -- 4 Frankenstein, Robots, and Androids: Horror and the Manufactured Monster -- 5 The Detective's Reason -- 6 Jekyll and Hyde: The Monster from Within -- 7 Dracula and the Haunted Present -- 8 Horror in the Age of Visual Reproduction -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z -- Illustrations
Download or read book Illusions of Immortality written by David Giles and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What drives people to crave fame and celebrity? How does fame affect people psychologically? These issues are frequently discussed by the media but up till now psychologists have shied away from an academic away from an academic investigation of the phenomenon of fame. In this lively, eclectic book David Giles examines fame and celebrity from a variety of perspectives. He argues that fame should be seen as a process rather than a state of being, and that 'celebrity' has largely emerged through the technological developments of the last 150 years. Part of our problem in dealing with celebrities, and the problem celebrities have dealing with the public, is that the social conditions produced by the explosion in mass communications have irrevocably altered the way we live. However we know little about many of the phenomena these conditions have produced - such as the 'parasocial interaction' between television viewers and media characters, and the quasi-religious activity of 'fans'. Perhaps the biggest single dilemma for celebrities is the fact that the vehicle that creates fame for them - the media - is also their tormentor. To address these questions, David Giles draws on research from psychology, sociology, media and communications studies, history and anthropology - as well as his own experiences as a music journalist in the 1980s. He argues that the history of fame is inextricably linked to the emergence of the individual self as a central theme of Western culture, and considers how the desire for authenticity, as well as individual privacy, have created anxieties for celebrities which are best understood in their historical and cultural context.
Download or read book The Drama of Celebrity written by Sharon Marcus and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive? In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable. Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era's most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel. Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.
Download or read book The Hollywood Sign written by Leo Braudy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story behind the massive white block letters set into a steep Los Angeles hillside—and the city and culture they represent: “Terrific.”—San Francisco Chronicle To so many who see its image, the Hollywood sign represents the earthly home of that otherwise ethereal world of fame, stardom, celebrity—the American and worldwide aspiration to be in the limelight, to be, like the Hollywood sign itself, instantly recognizable. How an advertisement erected in 1923, touting the real estate development Hollywoodland, took on a life of its own is a story worthy of a movie itself. Leo Braudy traces the remarkable life of this distinctly American landmark, which has been saved over the years by a various fans and supporters, among them Alice Cooper and Hugh Hefner, who spearheaded its reconstruction in the 1970s. He also uses the sign’s history to offer an intriguing look at the rise of the film business from its earliest, silent days through the development of the studio system that helped define modern Hollywood. Mixing social history, urban studies, literature, and film, along with forays into such topics as the lure of Hollywood for utopian communities and the development of domestic architecture in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Sign is a fascinating account of how a temporary structure has become a permanent icon of American culture. “An entertaining tale.”—The Washington Post
Download or read book Written on Water written by Eileen Chang and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now back in print, these witty, insightful ssays on fashion, cinema, wartime, and everyday life demonstrate why Eileen Chang was and is a major icon of twentieth-century Chinese literature. Eileen Chang is one of the most celebrated and influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her own life as a writer and woman, set amid the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. In a style at once meditative and vibrant, Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also reflects on Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, and the popularity of the Peking Opera. Chang engages the reader with her sly and sophisticated humor, conversational voice, and intense fascination with the subtleties of everyday life. In her examination of Shanghainese food, culture, and fashions, she not only reveals but also upends prevalent attitudes toward women, presenting a portrait of a daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a revolution looms.
Download or read book Woman of Valor written by Ellen Chesler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating biography of Margaret Sanger—the woman who fought for birth control in America—describes her childhood, her private life, her relationships with Emma Goldman and John Reed, her public role, and more. Margaret Sanger went to jail in 1917 for distributing contraceptives to immigrant women in a makeshift clinic in Brooklyn. She died a half-century later, just after the Supreme Court guaranteed constitutional protection for the use of contraceptives. Now, Ellen Chesler provides an authoritative and widely acclaimed biography of this great emancipator, whose lifelong struggle helped women gain control over their own bodies. An idealist who mastered practical politics, Sanger seized on contraception as the key to redistributing power to women in the bedroom, the home, and the community. For fifty years, she battled formidable opponents ranging from the US Government to the Catholic Church. Her crusade was both passionate and paradoxical. She was an advocate of female solidarity who often preferred the company of men; an adoring mother who abandoned her children; a socialist who became a registered Republican; a sexual adventurer who remained an incurable romantic. Her comrades-in-arms included Emma Goldman and John Reed; her lovers, Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. Drawing on new information from archives and interviews, Chesler illuminates Sanger’s turbulent personal story as well as the history of the birth control movement. An intimate biography of a visionary rebel, Woman of Valor is also an epic story that extends from the radical movements of pre-World War I to the family planning initiatives of the Great Society. At a time when women’s reproductive and sexual autonomy is once again under attack, this landmark biography is indispensable reading for the generations in debt to Sanger for the freedoms they take for granted.
Download or read book Jean Renoir written by Leo Braudy and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity written by David Haven Blake and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relationship between poetry and fame? What happens to a reader's experience when a poem invokes its author's popularity? Is there a meaningful connection between poetry and advertising, between the rhetoric of lyric and the rhetoric of hype? One of the first full-scale treatments of celebrity in nineteenth-century America, this book examines Walt Whitman's lifelong interest in fame and publicity. Making use of notebooks, photographs, and archival sources, David Haven Blake provides a groundbreaking history of the rise of celebrity culture in the United States. He sees Leaves of Grass alongside the birth of commercial advertising and the nation's growing obsession with the lives of the famous and the renowned. As authors, lecturers, politicians, entertainers, and clergymen vied for popularity, Whitman developed a form of poetry that routinely promoted and, indeed, celebrated itself. Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity proposes a fundamentally new way of thinking about a seminal American poet and a major national icon.
Download or read book The World in a Frame written by Leo Braudy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1984-07-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An exciting, entertaining exploration of films. . . . [Braudy] attempts to understand rather than promulgate rules and categories, and somehow to keep the criteria of enjoyment in some meaningful connection with the criteria of judgment."—Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
Download or read book Building The Dream written by Gwendolyn Wright and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2012-05-09 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Gwendolyn Wright, the houses of America are the diaries of the American people. They create a fascinating chronicle of the way we have lived, and a reflection of every political, economic, or social issue we have been concerned with. Why did plantation owners build uniform cabins for their slaves? Why were all the walls in nineteenth-century tenements painted white? Why did the parlor suddenly disappear from middle-class houses at the turn of the century? How did the federal highway system change the way millions of Americans raised their families? Building the Dream introduces the parade of people, policies, and ideologies that have shaped the course of our daily lives by shaping the rooms we have grown up in. In the row houses of colonial Philadelphia, the luxury apartments of New York City, the prefab houses of Levittown, and the public-housing towers of Chicago, Wright discovers revealing clues to our past and a new way of looking at such contemporary issues as integration, sustainable energy, the needs of the elderly, and how we define "family."
Download or read book Conversations with Frank Gehry written by Barbara Isenberg and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-01-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented, intimate, and richly illustrated portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world’s most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last twenty years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work. Gehry’s subjects range from his childhood—when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother’s kitchen—to his relationships with clients and his definition of a “great” client. We learn about his architectural influences (including Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright) and what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg. We explore the thinking behind his designs for the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the redevelopment of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany’s, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. And we follow as Gehry illuminates the creative process by which his ideas first take shape—for example, through early drawings for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the building’s trademark undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry himself allow us to see how so many of his landmark buildings have come to fruition, step by step. Conversations with Frank Gehry is essential reading for everyone interested in the art and craft of architecture, and for everyone fascinated by the most iconic buildings of our time, as well as the man and the mind behind them.
Download or read book A Companion to Photography written by Stephen Bull and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Companion to Photography presents a contemporary approach to the subject, advancing the critical ideas that inform the study of photography in the 21st century. Features a collection of original, up-to-date essays relating to contemporary photography Introduces several new ideas that expand current photographic theory Combines essays by established and emerging writers, providing a dynamic and engaging discussion Essays are organized in thematic sections: photographic interpretation, markets, popular photography, documents, and fine art Seamlessly incorporates discussion of digital photography throughout"--
Download or read book Constructing Charisma written by Edward Berenson and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Railroads, telegraphs, lithographs, photographs, and mass periodicals--the major technological advances of the 19th century seemed to diminish the space separating people from one another, creating new and apparently closer, albeit highly mediated, social relationships. Nowhere was this phenomenon more evident than in the relationship between celebrity and fan, leader and follower, the famous and the unknown. By mid-century, heroes and celebrities constituted a new and powerful social force, as innovations in print and visual media made it possible for ordinary people to identify with the famous; to feel they knew the hero, leader, or "star"; to imagine that public figures belonged to their private lives. This volume examines the origins and nature of modern mass media and the culture of celebrity and fame they helped to create. Crossing disciplines and national boundaries, the book focuses on arts celebrities (Sarah Bernhardt, Byron and Liszt); charismatic political figures (Napoleon and Wilhelm II); famous explorers (Stanley and Brazza); and celebrated fictional characters (Cyrano de Bergerac).
