Нэнси Принсенталь0.0 Over the course of a career that spanned fifty years, Agnes Martin s austere, serene work anticipated and helped to define Minimalism, even as she battled psychological crises and carved out a solitary existence in the American Southwest. Martin identified with the Abstract Expressionists but her commitment to linear geometry caused her to be associated in turn with Minimalist, feminist, and even outsider artists. She moved through some of the liveliest art communities of her time while maintaining a legendary reserve. I paint with my back to the world, she says both at the beginning and at the conclusion of a documentary filmed when she was in her late eighties. When she died at ninety-two, in Taos, New Mexico, it is said she had not read a newspaper in half a century. No substantial critical monograph exists on this acclaimed artist the recipient of two career retrospectives as well as the National Medal of the Arts who was championed by critics as diverse in their approaches as Lucy Lippard, Lawrence Alloway, and Rosalind Krauss. Furthermore, no attempt has been made to describe her extraordinary life. The whole engrossing story, told here for the first time, Agnes Martin is essential reading for anyone interested in abstract art or the history of women artists in America."
Deborah Lutz0.0 The story of the Brontes is told through the things they wore, stitched, wrote on and inscribed at the parsonage in Haworth. From Charlotte's writing desk and the manuscripts it contained to the brass collar worn by Emily's dog, Keeper, each object opens a window onto the sisters' world, their fiction and the Victorian era. By unfolding the histories of the things they used, the chapters form a chronological biography of the family. A walking stick evokes Emily's solitary hikes on the moors and the stormy heath-itself a character in Wuthering Heights. Charlotte's bracelet containing Anne and Emily's intertwined hair gives voice to her grief over their deaths. These possessions pull us into their daily lives: the imaginary kingdoms of their childhood writing, their time as governesses and their stubborn efforts to make a mark on the world.
Адам Сисман0.0 John le Carré is still at the top, more than half a century after The Spy Who Came in from the Cold became a worldwide bestseller. From his bleak childhood - the departure of his mother when he was five was followed by 'sixteen hugless years' in the dubious care of his father, a serial-seducer and con-man - through recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, to his emergence as the master of the espionage novel, le Carré has repeatedly quarried his life for his fiction. Millions of readers are hungry to know the truth about him.
Written with exclusive access to le Carré himself, to his private archive and to many of the people closest to him, this is a major biography of one of the most important novelists alive today.
Peter Slevin0.0 Born January 17, 1964 - less than six months after Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington - Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama was raised on the South Side of Chicago, where her father (who would later succumb to MS) was a city water-plant worker and her mother, a secretary for Spiegel catalog. Through dogged reporting and with a deft touch, Peter Slevin brilliantly traces Michelle's life: from the conventionalities and intricacies of her family to her high school years; from her graduation from Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the charged racial atmosphere of the late 1970s and early '80s engendered by affirmative action to her stint as a corporate lawyer at Sidley & Austin in Chicago where she met Barack; from her attempts to balance life as a mother, wife, and professional woman to her grudging support of Barack's run for the presidency during which she played a crucial role in his election. Of course, the drama of the two presidential campaigns and of the White House years are all here, even as Michelle carved out for herself a role as denouncer of inequalities, supporter of military families, fighter against obesity, and, yes, adviser to her beleaguered husband.
Розмари Салливан4.6 История Аллилуевой Светланы Иосифовны, невозвращенки, прожившая всю жизнь в тени своего отца - Иосифа Сталина. Юные годы она провела в стенах Кремля. После смерти отца, она не могла больше молчать и удивила весь мир - попросив убежища у США и отказавшись от гражданства СССР, оставив двух детей и всех друзей.
James Kaplan0.0 Just in time for the Chairman’s centennial, the endlessly absorbing sequel to James Kaplan’s bestselling Frank: The Voice—which completes the definitive biography that Frank Sinatra, justly termed the “Entertainer of the Century,” deserves and requires. Like Peter Guralnick on Elvis, Kaplan goes behind the legend to give us the man in full, in his many guises and aspects: peerless singer, (sometimes) accomplished actor, business mogul, tireless lover, and associate of the powerful and infamous.
In 2010’s Frank: The Voice, James Kaplan, in rich, distinctive, compulsively readable prose, told the story of Frank Sinatra’s meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. The story of “Ol’ Blue Eyes” continues with Sinatra: The Chairman, picking up the day after he claimed his Academy Award in 1954 and had reestablished himself as the top recording artist. Sinatra’s life post-Oscar was astonishing in scope and achievement and, occasionally, scandal, including immortal recordings almost too numerous to count, affairs ditto, many memorable films (and more than a few stinkers), Rat Pack hijinks that mesmerized the world with their air of masculine privilege, and an intimate involvement at the intersection of politics and organized crime that continues to shock and astound with its hubris. James Kaplan has orchestrated the wildly disparate aspects of Frank Sinatra’s life and character into an American epic—a towering achievement in biography of a stature befitting its subject.
