The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice: The Stories of Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim

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Publisher : Thames & Hudson
ISBN 13 : 0500773963
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice: The Stories of Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim by : Judith Mackrell

Download or read book The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice: The Stories of Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim written by Judith Mackrell and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Venice’s “Unfinished Palazzo”— told through the lives of three of its most unconventional, passionate, and fascinating residents: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Veniers waned midconstruction and the project was abandoned. Empty, unfinished, and decaying, the building was considered an eyesore until the early twentieth century when it attracted and inspired three women at key moments in their lives: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim. Luisa Casati turned her home into an aesthete’s fantasy where she hosted parties as extravagant and decadent as Renaissance court operas, spending small fortunes on her own costumes in her quest to become a “living work of art” and muse. Doris Castlerosse strove to make her mark in London and Venice during the glamorous, hedonistic interwar years, hosting film stars and royalty at glittering parties. In the postwar years, Peggy Gugenheim turned the Palazzo into a model of modernist simplicity that served as a home for her exquisite collection of modern art that today draws tourists and art lovers from around the world. Each vivid life story is accompanied by previously unseen materials from family archives, weaving an intricate history of these legendary art world eccentrics.

The Unfinished Palazzo

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Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0500294569
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Unfinished Palazzo by : Judith Mackrell

Download or read book The Unfinished Palazzo written by Judith Mackrell and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A breathtaking social portrait, peeling the glitter from privileged lives even as it fleshes out the spectacle they created.” —The Washington Post Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Veniers waned during construction and the project was abandoned. Empty, unfinished, and decaying, the building was considered an eyesore until the early twentieth century, when it attracted and inspired three women at key moments in their lives: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim. Their extraordinary, acclaimed story is now available in paperback. Luisa Casati turned her home into an aesthete’s fantasy, where she hosted parties as extravagant and decadent as Renaissance court operas, spending small fortunes on her own costumes in her quest to become a “living work of art” and muse. Doris Castlerosse strove to make her mark in London and Venice during the glamorous interwar years, hosting film stars and royalty at glittering parties. In the postwar years, Peggy Guggenheim turned the Palazzo into a model of modernist simplicity that served as a home for her exquisite collection of modern art. Each vivid life story is accompanied by previously unseen materials from family archives, weaving an intricate history of these legendary art world eccentrics.

The Unfinished Palazzo

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Author :
Publisher : Regan Arts.
ISBN 13 : 9781941393451
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis The Unfinished Palazzo by : Judith Mackrell

Download or read book The Unfinished Palazzo written by Judith Mackrell and published by Regan Arts.. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judith Mackrell brings to life the history of Venice’s mysterious and idiosyncratic Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, “the Unfinished Palazzo,” through the lives of three of its most eccentric, passionate, and rule-breaking residents—Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim. Venice, 1750: The powerful Venier family commissions a beautiful palazzo on the Grand Canal, one they intend to cast a shadow on every other domestic building on its stretch of the canal. Yet the Republic of Venice—and the Venier family’s fortune—began to wane and the project was abandoned, with only one story completed. Luisa Casati. Doris Castlerosse. Peggy Guggenheim. These three women inhabited the Palazzo at different periods, from the start of the twentieth century to the 1960s. Each came from a different country—an Italian, a Brit, and an American—but they had a surprising amount in common, above and beyond their ownership of the same extraordinary building. Amongst other things, all of them had scandalous lives, a passionate interest in art (although in the case of Luisa Casati, the subject had almost invariably to be herself), a fascination with sex, and a deep love of Venice. And, all surrounded themselves with and amazing supporting cast at so many glamorous parties, from D’Annunzio and Nijinsky, via Noel Coward and Cecil Beaton, to Yoko Ono amongst the Picassos. Mackrell weaves an intricate history of the Unfinished Palazzo, bringing it—and its legendary inhabitants—to life.

The Unfinished Palazzo

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Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0500518661
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis The Unfinished Palazzo by : Judith Mackrell

Download or read book The Unfinished Palazzo written by Judith Mackrell and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Venice’s “Unfinished Palazzo”— told through the lives of three of its most unconventional, passionate, and fascinating residents: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Veniers waned midconstruction and the project was abandoned. Empty, unfinished, and decaying, the building was considered an eyesore until the early twentieth century when it attracted and inspired three women at key moments in their lives: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim. Luisa Casati turned her home into an aesthete’s fantasy where she hosted parties as extravagant and decadent as Renaissance court operas, spending small fortunes on her own costumes in her quest to become a “living work of art” and muse. Doris Castlerosse strove to make her mark in London and Venice during the glamorous, hedonistic interwar years, hosting film stars and royalty at glittering parties. In the postwar years, Peggy Gugenheim turned the Palazzo into a model of modernist simplicity that served as a home for her exquisite collection of modern art that today draws tourists and art lovers from around the world. Each vivid life story is accompanied by previously unseen materials from family archives, weaving an intricate history of these legendary art world eccentrics.

Flappers

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Publisher : Pan Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0230771688
Total Pages : 526 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Flappers by : Judith Mackrell

Download or read book Flappers written by Judith Mackrell and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many young women, the 1920s felt like a promise of liberty. It was a period when they dared to shorten their skirts and shingle their hair, to smoke, drink, take drugs and to claim sexual freedoms. In an era of soaring stock markets, consumer expansion, urbanization and fast travel, women were reimagining both the small detail and the large ambitions of their lives. In Flappers, acclaimed biographer Judith Mackrell follows a group of six women - Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Tamara de Lempicka - who, between them, exemplified the range and daring of that generation's spirit. For them, the pursuit of experience was not just about dancing the Charleston and wearing fashionable clothes. They made themselves prominent among the artists, icons, and heroines of their age, pursuing experience in ways that their mothers could never have imagined, seeking to define what it was to be young and a woman in an age where the smashing of old certainties had thrown the world wide open. Talented, reckless and wilful, with personalities that transcended their class and background, they re-wrote their destinies in remarkable, entertaining and sometimes tragic ways. And between them they blazed the trail of the New Woman around the world.

Passing for Human

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Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0525508929
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)

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Book Synopsis Passing for Human by : Liana Finck

Download or read book Passing for Human written by Liana Finck and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visually arresting graphic memoir about a young artist struggling against what’s expected of her as a woman, and learning to accept her true self, from an acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Guardian • New York • Refinery29 • Kirkus Reviews In this achingly beautiful graphic memoir, Liana Finck goes in search of that thing she has lost—her shadow, she calls it, but one might also think of it as the “otherness” or “strangeness” that has defined her since birth, that part of her that has always made her feel as though she is living in exile from the world. In Passing for Human, Finck is on a quest for self-understanding and self-acceptance, and along the way she seeks to answer some eternal questions: What makes us whole? What parts of ourselves do we hide or ignore or chase away—because they’re embarrassing, or inconvenient, or just plain weird—and at what cost? Passing for Human is what Finck calls “a neurological coming-of-age story”—one in which, through her childhood, human connection proved elusive and her most enduring relationships were with plants and rocks and imaginary friends; in which her mother was an artist whose creative life had been stifled by an unhappy first marriage and a deeply sexist society that seemed expressly designed to snuff out creativity in women; in which her father was a doctor who struggled in secret with the guilt of having passed his own form of otherness on to his daughter; and in which, as an adult, Finck finally finds her shadow again—and, with it, her true self. Melancholy and funny, personal and surreal, Passing for Human is a profound exploration of identity by one of the most talented young comic artists working today. Part magical odyssey, part feminist creation myth, this memoir is, most of all, an extraordinary, moving meditation on what it means to be an artist and a woman grappling with the desire to pass for human. Praise for Passing for Human “In its ambition, framing, and multiple layers, [Passing for Human] raises the bar for graphic narrative. Even fans of [Liana Finck’s] work in the New Yorker will be blindsided by this outstanding book.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A sure hit for readers of graphic memoirs, this explores feeling different while recognizing sameness in others and making art while embracing being a work-in progress oneself.”—Annie Bostrom, Booklist “This story is as tender as it is wry. . . . Becoming human is a lifelong task—but Finck illustrates it with humor and panache.”—Publishers Weekly

Infinite Variety

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781517903718
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Infinite Variety by : Scot D. Ryersson

Download or read book Infinite Variety written by Scot D. Ryersson and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in the United States by Viridian Books, New York, 1999; first published in Great Britain by Pimlico, an imprint of Random House Group UK, 2000; first University of Minnesota Press edition published in 2004"--Title page verso.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Peggy Guggenheim Collection by : Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Download or read book Peggy Guggenheim Collection written by Peggy Guggenheim Collection and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay by Philip Rylands.

The Mistress of Mayfair

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Publisher : The History Press
ISBN 13 : 0750969652
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (59 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mistress of Mayfair by : Lyndsy Spence

Download or read book The Mistress of Mayfair written by Lyndsy Spence and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The plot could have been inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, but unlike Waugh's novel – which parodies the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’ – The Mistress of Mayfair is a real-life story of scandal, greed, corruption and promiscuity at the heart of 1920s and ’30s high society, focusing on the wily, willful socialite Doris Delevingne and her doomed relationship with the gossip columnist Valentine Browne, Viscount Castlerosse. Marrying each other in pursuit of the finer things in life, their unlikely union was tempestuous from the off, rocked by affairs (with a whole host of society figures, including Cecil Beaton, Diana Mitford and Winston Churchill, amongst others) on both sides, and degenerated into one of London’s bitterest, and most talked about, divorce battles. In this compelling new book, Lyndsy Spence follows the rise and fall of their relationship, exploring their decadent society lives in revelatory detail and offering new insight into some of the mid twentieth century’s most prominent figures.

The Marchesa Casati

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Marchesa Casati by : Scot Ryersson

Download or read book The Marchesa Casati written by Scot Ryersson and published by . This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visual biography about the Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957), telling Casati's life story alongside the art and designs she has inspired, featuring 200 images covering her lifetime and beyond.

The Correspondents

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0385547692
Total Pages : 522 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis The Correspondents by : Judith Mackrell

Download or read book The Correspondents written by Judith Mackrell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting, untold history of a group of heroic women reporters who revolutionized the narrative of World War II—from Martha Gellhorn, who out-scooped her husband, Ernest Hemingway, to Lee Miller, a Vogue cover model turned war correspondent. "Thrilling from the first page to the last." —Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women "Just as women are so often written out of war, so it seems are the female correspondents. Mackrell corrects this omission admirably with stories of six of the best…Mackrell has done us all a great service by assembling their own fascinating stories." —New York Times Book Review On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men. The Correspondents follows six remarkable women as their lives and careers intertwined: Martha Gellhorn, who got the scoop on Ernest Hemingway on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a “society girl columnist” turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first English journalist to break the news of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men. From chasing down sources and narrowly dodging gunfire to conducting tumultuous love affairs and socializing with luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, and Man Ray, these six women are captured in all their complexity. With her gripping, intimate, and nuanced portrait, Judith Mackrell celebrates these courageous reporters who risked their lives for the scoop.

Lady in Waiting

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Publisher : Hachette Books
ISBN 13 : 0306846357
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (68 download)

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Book Synopsis Lady in Waiting by : Anne Glenconner

Download or read book Lady in Waiting written by Anne Glenconner and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover untold secrets with this extraordinary memoir of drama and tragedy by Anne Glenconner—a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact. A unique witness to landmark moments in royal history, Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret until her death in 2002, Anne's life has encompassed extraordinary drama and tragedy. In Lady in Waiting, she will share many intimate royal stories from her time as Princess Margaret's closest confidante as well as her own battle for survival: her broken-off first engagement on the basis of her "mad blood"; her 54-year marriage to the volatile, unfaithful Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, who left his fortune to a former servant; the death in adulthood of two of her sons; a third son she nursed back from a six-month coma following a horrific motorcycle accident. Through it all, Anne has carried on, traveling the world with the royal family, including visiting the White House, and developing the Caribbean island of Mustique as a safe harbor for the rich and famous-hosting Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Raquel Welch, and many other politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities. With unprecedented insight into the royal family, Lady in Waiting is a witty, candid, dramatic, at times heart-breaking personal story capturing life in a golden cage for a woman with no inheritance. New York Times Bestseller USA Today Bestseller The Sunday Times Bestseller The Globe and Mail Bestseller ABA Indie Bestseller The Times (UK) Memoir of the Year One of Newsweek's Most Anticipated Books of 2020

The Dream Colony

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1632865297
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (328 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dream Colony by : Walter Hopps

Download or read book The Dream Colony written by Walter Hopps and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art Forum’s Best of the Year List A panoramic look at art in America in the second half of the twentieth century, through the eyes of the visionary curator who helped shape it. An innovative, iconoclastic curator of contemporary art, Walter Hopps founded his first gallery in L.A. at the age of twenty-one. At twenty-four, he opened the Ferus Gallery with then-unknown artist Edward Kienholz, where he turned the spotlight on a new generation of West Coast artists. Ferus was also the first gallery ever to show Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans and was shut down by the L.A. vice squad for a show of Wallace Berman’s edgy art. At the Pasadena Art Museum in the sixties, Hopps mounted the first museum retrospectives of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell and the first museum exhibition of Pop Art--before it was even known as Pop Art. In 1967, when Hopps became the director of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery of Art at age thirty-four, the New York Times hailed him as "the most gifted museum man on the West Coast (and, in the field of contemporary art, possibly in the nation)." He was also arguably the most unpredictable, an eccentric genius who was chronically late. (His staff at the Corcoran had a button made that said WALTER HOPPS WILL BE HERE IN TWENTY MINUTES.) Erratic in his work habits, he was never erratic in his commitment to art. Hopps died in 2005, after decades at the Menil Collection of art in Houston for which he was the founding director. A few years before that, he began work on this book. With an introduction by legendary Pop artist Ed Ruscha, The Dream Colony is a vivid, personal, surprising, irreverent, and enlightening account of his life and of some of the greatest artistic minds of the twentieth century.

Ghost Cities of China

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1783602201
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (836 download)

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Book Synopsis Ghost Cities of China by : Wade Shepard

Download or read book Ghost Cities of China written by Wade Shepard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring everything from sports stadiums to shopping malls, hundreds of new cities in China stand empty, with hundreds more set to be built by 2030. Between now and then, the country's urban population will leap to over one billion, as the central government kicks its urbanization initiative into overdrive. In the process, traditional social structures are being torn apart, and a rootless, semi-displaced, consumption orientated culture rapidly taking their place. Ghost Cities of China is an enthralling dialogue driven, on-location search for an understanding of China's new cities and the reasons why many currently stand empty.

Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous

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Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1627793070
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous by : Christopher Bonanos

Download or read book Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous written by Christopher Bonanos and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive biography of Weegee—photographer, “psychic,” ultimate New Yorker—from Christopher Bonanos, author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid. Arthur Fellig’s ability to arrive at a crime scene just as the cops did was so uncanny that he renamed himself “Weegee,” claiming that he functioned as a human Ouija board. Weegee documented better than any other photographer the crime, grit, and complex humanity of midcentury New York City. In Flash, we get a portrait not only of the man (both flawed and deeply talented, with generous appetites for publicity, women, and hot pastrami) but also of the fascinating time and place that he occupied. From self-taught immigrant kid to newshound to art-world darling to latter-day caricature—moving from the dangerous streets of New York City to the celebrity culture of Los Angeles and then to Europe for a quixotic late phase of experimental photography and filmmaking—Weegee lived a life just as worthy of documentation as the scenes he captured. With Flash, we have an unprecedented and ultimately moving view of the man now regarded as an innovator and a pioneer, an artist as well as a newsman, whose photographs are among most powerful images of urban existence ever made.

Menzies at War

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Author :
Publisher : NewSouth
ISBN 13 : 1742241794
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Menzies at War by : Anne Henderson

Download or read book Menzies at War written by Anne Henderson and published by NewSouth. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the months following his resignation as PM in late August 1941, Menzies swayed between relief at his release from the burdens of office as PM and despair that his life at the top had come to so little. Many followers of Australian political history, including Liberal party supporters, forget that Robert Menzies had many years in the political wilderness not knowing he would end up being Australia’s longest-serving prime minister. This book focuses on the period between 1941, when Menzies lost the prime-ministership, to 1949, when he regained it. In the interim he travelled around the world, spending an extended time in Britain during World War II, set up the Liberal Party and, the author argues, developed the leadership qualities that made him so successful. Anne Henderson refers to this time as his real political blooding.

Improvement

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Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1640091130
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Improvement by : Joan Silber

Download or read book Improvement written by Joan Silber and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them from one of America's most gifted writers of fiction, "our own country's Alice Munro" (The Washington Post). Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three–month stint at Rikers Island, their bond grows tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a journey that took her to Turkey and around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that the otherwise honorable Boyd is pulling Reyna into a cigarette smuggling scheme, across state lines, where he could risk violating probation. When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four–year–old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them. A novel that examines conviction, connection, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us. The Boston Globe says of Joan Silber: "No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power." Improvement is Silber’s most shining achievement yet. "Without fuss or flourishes, Joan Silber weaves a remarkably patterned tapestry connecting strangers from around the world to a central tragic car accident. The writing here is funny and down–to–earth, the characters are recognizably fallible, and the message is quietly profound: We are not ever really alone, however lonely we feel." —The Wall Street Journal