Джон Гарднер3.8 ""Гедонистические семидесятые"" — под суровым взором престарелого провинциала, в образе жизни которого воплощаются патриархальные идеалы ""одноэтажной Америки"", и его сестры, уже поддавшейся очарованию ""новых времен"". Столкновение не просто двух идеологий, но и двух равно сильных характеров. Яростный идеализм – против радостного конформизма. Действительно ли воинственность есть закон человеческой природы или она извращает самую суть человеческой души? Джон Гарднер не дает на эти вопросы прямого ответа, предлагая читателю самому поразмыслить о явном – и глубинном…
Ричард Йейтс3.4 Впервые на русском - "самый тонкий и проникновенный", по выражению критиков, роман современного американского классика Ричарда Йейтса, автора прославленной "Дороги перемен" - романа, который послужил основой прогремевшего под занавес 2008 года фильма Сэма Мендеса с Леонардо Ди Каприо и Кейт Уинслет в главных ролях (впервые вместе после "Титаника"!). "Пасхальный парад" повествует о сестрах Эмили и Саре Граймз, и действие романа охватывает без малого полвека. В этом своего рода мини-эпосе старшая сестра, мамина любимица и первая школьная красавица, сразу после школы выходит замуж и обзаводится детьми, а младшая заканчивает колледж, пытается делать карьеру и переживает роман за романом. Обе сестры воображают себе радужное будущее, но обеих цепко держит прошлое...
Vladimir Nabokov0.0 Details of a sunset --
Bad day --
Orache --
Return of Chorb --
Passenger --
Letter that never reached Russia --
Guide to Berlin --
Doorbell --
Thunderstorm --
Reunion --
Slice of life --
Christmas --
Busy man.
Рената Адлер4.0 One of the most acclaimed novels of the late 20th century is back.
When members of the National Book Critics Circle were polled to see which book they would most like to see republished, they chose Speedboat—“by far.” This story of a young female newspaper reporter coming of age in New York City was originally published serially in the New Yorker; it is made out of seemingly unrelated vignettes—tart observations distilled through relentless intellect—which add up to an analysis of our brittle, urban existence. It remains as fresh as when it was first published.
Maxine Hong Kingston4.2 The Woman Warrior is a pungent, bitter, but beautifully written memoir of growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California. Maxine Hong Kingston (China Men) distills the dire lessons of her mother's mesmerizing "talk-story" tales of a China where girls are worthless, tradition is exalted and only a strong, wily woman can scratch her way upward. The author's America is a landscape of confounding white "ghosts"--the policeman ghost, the social worker ghost--with equally rigid, but very different rules. Like the woman warrior of the title, Kingston carries the crimes against her family carved into her back by her parents in testimony to and defiance of the pain. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Ричард Клугер0.0 Simple Justice is generally regarded as the classic account of the U.S. Supreme Court’s epochal decision outlawing racial segregation and the centerpiece of African-Americans’ ongoing crusade for equal justice under law.
The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education brought centuries of legal segregation in this country to an end. It was and remains, beyond question, one of the truly significant events in American history, “probably the most important American government act of any kind since the Emancipation Proclamation,” in the view of constitutional scholar Louis H. Pollak. The Brown decision climaxed a long, torturous battle for black equality in education, making hard law out of vague principles and opening the way for the broad civil rights upheavals of the 1960s and beyond.
Simple Justice is the story of that battle. Richard Kluger traces the background of the epochal decision, from its remote legal and cultural roots to the complex personalities of those who brought about its realization. The result is a landmark work of popular history, graceful and fascinatingly detailed, the panoramic account of a struggle for human dignity in process since the birth of the nation.
Here is the human drama, told in all its dimensions, of the many plaintiffs, men, women, and children, variously scared or defiant but always determined, who made the hard decision to proceed – bucking the white power structure in Topeka, Kansas; braving night riders in rural South Carolina; rallying fellow high school students in strictly segregated Prince Edward County, Virginia – and at a dozen other times and places showing their refusal to accept defeat.
Here, too, is the extraordinary tale, told for the first time, of the black legal establishment, forced literally to invent itself before it could join the fight, then patiently assembling, in courtroom after courtroom, a body of law that would serve to free its people from thralldom to unjust laws. Heroes abound, some obscure, like Charles Houston (who built Howard Law School into a rigorous academy for black lawyers) and the Reverend J.A. DeLaine (the minister-teacher who, despite bitter opposition, organized and led the first crucial fight for educational equality in the Jim Crow South), others like Thurgood Marshall, justly famous – but all of whose passionate devotion proved intense enough to match their mission.
Reading Simple Justice, we see how black Americans’ groundswell urge for fair treatment collides with the intransigence of white supremacists in a grinding legal campaign that inevitably found its way to the halls and chambers of the Supreme Court for a final showdown. Kluger searches out and analyzes what went on there during the months of hearings and deliberations, often behind closed doors, laying bare the doubts, disagreements, and often deeply held convictions of the nine Justices. He shows above all how Chief Justice Earl Warren, new to the Court but old in the ways of politics, achieved the impossible – a unanimous decision to reverse the 58-year-old false doctrine of “separate but equal” education for blacks. Impeccably researched and elegantly written, this may be the most revealing report ever published of America’s highest court at work.
Based on extensive interviews and both published and unpublished documentary sources, Simple Justice has the lineaments of an epic. It will stand as the classic study of a turning point in our history.
Elizabeth Bishop0.0 Geography III, Bishop's final book of poems, first appeared in 1976. It contains such masterpieces as "In the Waiting Room," "The Moose," and "One Art."
Чарльз Розен0.0 In this lucid, revealing book, award-winning pianist and scholar Charles Rosen sheds light on the elusive music of Arnold Schoenberg and his challenge to conventional musical forms. Rosen argues that Schoenberg's music, with its atonality and dissonance, possesses a rare balance of form and emotion, making it, according to Rosen, "the most expressive music ever written." Concise and accessible, this book will appeal to fans, non-fans, and scholars of Schoenberg, and to those who have yet to be introduced to the works of one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century.
"Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most brilliant monographs ever to be published on any composer, let alone the most difficult master of the present age. . . . Indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the crucial musical ideas of the first three decades."—Robert Craft, New York Review of Books
"What Mr. Rosen does far better than one could reasonably expect in so concise a book is not only elucidate Schoenberg's composing techniques and artistic philosophy but to place them in history."—Donal Henahan, New York Times Book Review
"For the novice and the knowledgeable, Mr. Rosen's book is very important reading, either as an introduction to the master or as a stimulus to rethinking our opinions of him. Mr. Rosen's accomplishment is enviable."—Joel Sachs, Musical Quarterly
Ада Луиз Хакстейбл0.0 Ada Louis Huxtable brings clarity as well as passion to her consideration of the problems and pleasures of architecture and urban planning.
E. B. White0.0 "Congratulations on your manly attempt to make me into a literary character," E. B. White wrote in a letter to his biographer. "It isn't going to work, but it makes great reading. I was in stitches much of the way, recalling my Early Ineptitude, my Early Sorrows, my Immaculate Romancing. What a mess I was! No wonder my father worried about me." After the biography was published (in 1984), White offered this insider's review: "I wish you the joy of the book and am only sorry my life wasn't crowded with exciting, bawdy, violent events. I know how hard it is to write about a fellow who spends most of his time crouched over a typewriter. That was my fate, too." Letters of E. B. White touches on these and other subjects, including the New Yorker editor who became his wife; their dachshund, Fred, with his "look of fake respectability"; and White's literary colleagues, from Harold Ross and James Thurber to Groucho Marx and John Updike and, later, Senator Edmund S. Muskie and Garrison Keillor. Now updated with newly released letters from 1976 to 1985, additional photographs, and a new foreword by John Updike, this unparalleled collection of letters from one of America's favorite essayists, poets, and storytellers now spans nearly a century, from 1908 to 1985.
