Download or read book Tom Hardy Rise of a Legend written by James Haydock and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THERE IS A MAN BLAZING A TRAIL ACROSS THE SILVER SCREEN, DELIVERING PERFORMANCES OF SUCH ELECTRIC INTENSITY THAT HE HAS UNITED CRITICS AND CASUAL MOVIEGOERS ALIKE. THAT MAN IS TOM HARDY.Starring roles as Britain’s most dangerous prisoner in Bronson, both Kray twins in Legend and the villainous brute Bane in The Dark Knight Rises have showcased his raw talent, edginess and ability to utterly inhabit his characters. He has also cemented his status as that rare thing: the man that women want and men want to be. His appeal is endless.But things weren’t always so promising. Cloistered in a life of suburban predictability, a teenage Tom began getting his thrills from drugs and petty crime. He made his first mark in the award-winning series Band of Brothers but, in 2003, Tom collapsed on the streets of Soho, brought low by drug abuse. Yet, with the single-minded commitment that has come to characterise his acting performances, Tom banished his demons once and for all.Now, with the title role in the long-awaited Mad Max: Fury Road under his belt, and Hollywood at his feet, there is just no stopping this magnetic figure. This affectionate and in-depth biography reveals all the faces of Tom Hardy: the wayward boy he was, the driven professional he now is and the all-time legend he is sure to become.

Download or read book Frances Kray The Tragic Bride The True Story of Reggie Kray s First Wife written by Jacky Hyams and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full account of the beautiful, innocent young woman who married Reggie Kray - and became trapped in the violent and terrifying world of the Kray Twins.She was young, very beautiful and had everything to live for - but the life of Frances Shea, wife of Reggie Kray, remains one of the most tragic stories of the Sixties.Courted by Reggie as a schoolgirl, Frances was lured into an outwardly glamorous world of nightclubs, expensive clothes and showbiz parties. Yet she very soon discovered the real world of the Kray Twins, the hidden, twisted world where violence, drink, drugs and terror dominated everything.Frances broke away and briefly enjoyed other relationships, struggling to maintain her freedom. Yet Reggie would never let her go. Paranoid and obsessive, he monitored her every move, stalking her night and day.By the time she married Reggie in their ‘Wedding of the Year’ in 1965, Frances and her family had become inextricably linked with the Twins’ downward spiral from gangland extortion and brutality into senseless murder and mayhem.Trapped, desperate and unable to cope, just two years later Frances died from a drug overdose.Only now, 50 years later, in a revealing and shocking examination of the facts, the truth about the life of Frances Shea and her short marriage to Reggie Kray is finally revealed in this new, revised edition. With hitherto unseen photographs, documents and revelations, the book explodes the many myths surrounding the marriage. In doing so, it uncovers the sordid reality of the Kray world - and shows how the effect of this tragic, doomed relationship haunted the lives of Frances’s loved ones right to the end.

Download or read book Simpson and the Donkey written by Peter Cochrane and published by Melbourne University. This book was released on 1992 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The simple tale of Simpson and his donkey is the pre-eminent legend of Australian heroism. It is the story of a humble water-carrier, a rescuer of wounded men, a tale of compassion, stoic persistence, with a tragic end. His tale is an integral part of the Anzac story.

Download or read book Cary Grant the Making of a Hollywood Legend written by Mark Glancy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive new account of the professional and personal life of one of Hollywood's most unforgettable, influential stars. Archie Leach was a poorly educated, working-class boy from a troubled family living in the backstreets of Bristol. Cary Grant was Hollywood's most debonair film star--the embodiment of worldly sophistication. Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend tells the incredible story of how a sad, neglected boy became the suave, glamorous star many know and idolize. The first biography to be based on Grant's own personal papers, this book takes us on a fascinating journey from the actor's difficult childhood through years of struggle in music halls and vaudeville, a hit-and-miss career in Broadway musicals, and three decades of film stardom during Hollywood's golden age. Leaving no stone unturned, Cary Grant delves into all aspects of Grant's life, from the bitter realities of his impoverished childhood to his trailblazing role in Hollywood as a film star who defied the studio system and took control of his own career. Highlighting Grant's genius as an actor and a filmmaker, author Mark Glancy examines the crucial contributions Grant made to such classic films as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), Charade (1963) and Father Goose (1964). Glancy also explores Grant's private life with new candor and insight throughout the book's nine sections, illuminating how Grant's search for happiness and fulfillment lead him to having his first child at the age of 62 and embarking on his fifth marriage at the age of 77. With this biography--complete with a chronological filmography of the actor's work--Glancy provides a definitive account of the professional and personal life of one of Hollywood's most unforgettable, influential stars.

Download or read book Tragedy and Triumph in Orbit written by Ben Evans and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: April 12, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering journey into space. To commemorate this momentous achievement, Springer-Praxis is producing a mini series of books that reveals how humanity’s knowledge of flying, working, and living in space has grown in the last half century. “Tragedy and Triumph” focuses on the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union swung like a pendulum between harmony and outright hostility. The glorious achievements of the shuttle were violently arrested by the devastating loss of Challenger in 1986, while the Soviet program appeared to prosper with the last Salyut and the next-generation Mir orbital station. This book explores the continued rivalry between the two superpowers during this period, with each attempting to outdo the other – the Americans keen to build a space station, the Soviets keen to build a space shuttle – and places their efforts in the context of a bitterly divisive decade, which ultimately led them into partnership.

Download or read book The Colonel written by Richard Norton Smith and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-19 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the acclaimed biography of a giant of American journalism. As editor-publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Robert R. McCormick came to personify his city. Drawing on McCormick's personal papers and years of research, Richard Norton Smith has written the definitive life of the towering figure known as The Colonel.

Download or read book The Almanac of American History written by Milton Schlesinger and published by Dorset Press. This book was released on 1995-04 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Radetzky March written by Joseph Roth and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author’s masterpiece, an epic saga of a family and an empire in decline, is “full of psychological penetration and tragic force” (The New Yorker). The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth’s classic novel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, follows three generations of the privileged von Trotta family as Europe advances inexorably toward World War I. With a breadth and richness that draws comparison to Tolstoy, it encompasses the entire social fabric of Austro-Hungarian society. Shot through with dark humor and tragic irony, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times. “A masterpiece . . . The totality of Joseph Roth’s work is no less than a tragédie humaine achieved in the techniques of modern fiction. No other contemporary writer, not excepting Thomas Mann, has come close to achieving the wholeness . . . that Lukács cites as our impossible aim.” —Nadine Gordimer

Download or read book Southeast Asian Personalities of Chinese Descent written by Leo Suryadinata and published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. This book was released on 2012 with total page 1611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a bold project recording the lives of a particular group of Southeast Asians. Most of the people whose biographies are included here have settled down in the ten countries that constitute the region. Each of them has either self-identified as Chinese or is comfortable to be known as someone of Chinese ancestry. There are also those who were born in China or elsewhere who came here to work and do business, including seeking help from others who have ethnic Chinese connections. With the political and economic conditions of the region in a great state of flux for the past two centuries, it is impossible to find consistency in the naming process. Confucius had stressed that correct names make for the best relationships. In this case, Professor Leo Suryadinata has been pursuing for decades the elusive goal of finding the right name to give to the large numbers of people who have, in one way or another, made their homes in, or made some difference to, Southeast Asia. I believe that, when he and his colleagues selected the biographies to be included here, they have taken a big step towards the rectification of identities for many leading personalities. In so doing, he has done us all a great service." - Professor Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore

Download or read book The John Ford Encyclopedia written by Sue Matheson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winner of four Academy Awards for directing, John Ford is considered by many to be America’s greatest native-born director. Ford helmed some of the most memorable films in American cinema, including The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man, as well as such iconic westerns as Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In The John Ford Encyclopedia, Sue Matheson provides readers with detailed information about the acclaimed director’s films from the silent era to the 1960s. In more than 400 entries, this volume covers not only the films Ford directed and produced but also the studios for which he worked; his preferred shooting sites; his World War II documentaries; and the men and women with whom he collaborated, including actors, screenwriters, technicians, and stuntmen. Eleven newly discovered members of the John Ford Stock Company are also included. Encompassing the entire range of the director’s career—from his start in early cinema to his frequent work with national treasure John Wayne—this is a comprehensive overview of one of the most highly regarded filmmakers in history. The John Ford Encyclopedia will be of interest to professors, students, and the many fans of the director’s work.

Download or read book A History of the Myers Overstreet and Gray Families written by Jourdan George Myers and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Myers (ca.1660-ca.1725)--of Swiss anabaptist lineage--and his family immigrated from The Netherlands to New Castle, Delaware in 1682, and settled in Philadelphia. Descendants and relatives lived in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, Kan- sas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, California and elsewhere.

Download or read book Suburban Landscapes written by Paul H. Mattingly and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History Most Americans today live in the suburbs. Yet suburban voices remain largely unheard in sociological and cultural studies of these same communities. In Suburban Landscapes: Culture and Politics in a New York Metropolitan Community, Paul Mattingly provides a new model for understanding suburban development through his narrative history of Leonia, New Jersey, an early commuter suburb of New York City. Although Leonia is a relatively small suburb, a study of this kind has national significance because most of America's suburbs began as rural communities, with histories that predated the arrival of commuters and real estate developers. Examining the dynamics of community cultural formation, Mattingly contests the prevailing urban and suburban dichotomy. In doing so, he offers a respite from journalistic cliches and scholarly bias about the American suburb, providing instead an insightful, nuanced look at the integrative history of a region. Mattingly examines Leonia's politics and culture through three eras of growth and change (1859-94, 1894-1920, and 1920-60). A major part of Leonia's history, Mattingly reveals, was its role as an attractive community for artists and writers, many contributors to national magazines, who created a 'suburban' aesthetic. The work done by generations of Leonias' artists provides an important vantage and a wonderful set of tools for exploring evolving notions of suburban culture and landscape, which have broad implications and applications. Oral histories, census records, and the extensive work of Leonia's many artists and writers come together to trace not only the community's socially diverse history, but to show how residents viewed the growth and transformation of Leonia as well.

Download or read book Dylan Thomas written by Hannah Ellis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Celebration is a unique collection of specially commissioned essays celebrating the poet's life and work one hundred years after his birth in 1914. Edited by his granddaughter, Hannah Ellis, who introduces each section by theme, the book is divided into three parts concerning Thomas's early years, later life and his lasting legacy. Highlights include essays from noted biographers Andrew Lycett and David N. Thomas, National Poet for Wales Gillian Clarke on Under Milk Wood, and poetry by Archbishop Emeritus Rowan Williams. The book also includes essays by poet Owen Sheers and BBC Radio 6 presenter Cerys Matthews, as well as numerous testimonies and poems from the likes of former President of the United States Jimmy Carter, Phillip Pullman and actor Michael Sheen. With a foreword by comedian and former Monty Python Terry Jones, Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Celebration is a rich and personal reflection on the lasting legacy of Britain's greatest poet.

Download or read book Chicago s Great Fire written by Carl Smith and published by Grove Atlantic. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive chronicle of the 1871 Chicago Fire as remembered by those who experienced it—from the author of Chicago and the American Literary Imagination. Over three days in October, 1871, much of Chicago, Illinois, was destroyed by one of the most legendary urban fires in history. Incorporated as a city in 1837, Chicago had grown at a breathtaking pace in the intervening decades—and much of the hastily-built city was made of wood. Starting in Catherine and Patrick O’Leary’s barn, the Fire quickly grew out of control, twice jumping branches of the Chicago River on its relentless path through the city’s three divisions. While the death toll was miraculously low, nearly a third of Chicago residents were left homeless and more were instantly unemployed. This popular history of the Great Chicago Fire approaches the subject through the memories of those who experienced it. Chicago historian Carl Smith builds the story around memorable characters, both known to history and unknown, including the likes of General Philip Sheridan and Robert Todd Lincoln. Smith chronicles the city’s rapid growth and its place in America’s post-Civil War expansion. The dramatic story of the fire—revealing human nature in all its guises—became one of equally remarkable renewal, as Chicago quickly rose back up from the ashes thanks to local determination and the world’s generosity. As we approach the fire’s 150th anniversary, Carl Smith’s compelling narrative at last gives this epic event its full and proper place in our national chronicle. “The best book ever written about the fire, a work of deep scholarship by Carl Smith that reads with the forceful narrative of a fine novel. It puts the fire and its aftermath in historical, political and social context. It’s a revelatory pleasure to read.” —Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Carmen Pomi s written by Chris Rowe and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carmen Pomiès (1900-1982) is a significant figure in the history of women’s football in the interwar years. Carmen was in the first generation of women’s sport in France, first in athletics, winning medals throwing the javelin in international competitions, and playing football for Fémina Sports and France from 1920. Her life in sport is intertwined with key personalities such as Alice Milliat and Violette Morris. Carmen also played a huge part in the story of women’s football in England: she played many times for and against the famous Dick, Kerr Ladies of Preston, including their 1922 football tour of the United States. Carmen became almost an honorary Englishwoman, making lifelong friends of important footballers such as Florrie Redford, Lily Parr and Lizzy Ashcroft. During these years, Carmen was not only a player but also an important influence in promoting the game and fighting for equality. Carmen also had fascinating siblings: her brother Georges was a film star and famous modern dancer who died tragically young, her older sister Hélène was a left-wing author and translator. From 1940 Carmen was secretary to a famous film star, Renée Saint-Cyr, and was active in the French Resistance. In 1946, she settled in Rochester NY before moving to New York to work for the United Nations. From 1956, her life is shrouded in mystery because of gaps in the evidence. She died in France in 1982. So her life is about much more than just football!

Download or read book The Artist Operas of Pfitzner Krenek and Hindemith written by Claire Taylor-Jay and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length study of the genre of 'artist-opera', in which the work's central character is an artist who is uncomfortable with his place in the world. It investigates how three such operas (Pfitzner's Palestrina (1915), Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1926) and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (1935)) contributed to the debate in early twentieth-century Germany about the place of art and the artist in modern society, and examines how far the artist-character may be taken as functioning as a persona for the real composer of the work. Because of their concern with the place of art within society, the works are also engaged with inherently political questions, and each opera is read in the light of the political context of its time: conservatism circa World War I, Americanism and democracy, and the rise of National Socialism.

Download or read book The Busby Babes written by Max Arthur and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-03-18 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 6 February 1958, a plane took off from a snowy Munich airport carrying probably the finest club side the world has ever known. Moments later, the aircraft crashed, killing some of the most legendary names in British football. This book is dedicated to those players - Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor, the mighty Duncan Edwards and the others whose lives were cut off in their prime - and their indomitable manager, Sir Matt Busby. Max Arthur has sought out all the players who survived the crash and spoken to the relatives and friends of those who died. From these interviews, sometimes serious but often humorous, he has captured their remarkable spirit and created a unique portrait of all the Busby Babes.