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Zora Neale Hurston
  Cheryl R. Hopson/ 9781789147957/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
This book explores the creativity and life of Zora Neale Hurston (1891¡V1960), the most published African American woman writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Her life spanned a period of rapid technological change and advancement, and one of entrenched racial stratification. A Barnard-educated anthropologist, folklorist and novelist, Hurston was a modern woman on the move, and, as Cheryl R. Hopson relates, this movement is reflected in her work as a collector of folklore. Hopson also foregrounds how the Jim Crow legal system in the United States formed the material backdrop to Hurston¡¦s life and work, and explores Hurston¡¦s signature novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as her lesser-known works. This biography is an insightful and illuminating look at a remarkable figure, and chronicles the rediscovery of Hurston years after her death.
   
J.-K. Huysmans
  Ruth Antosh/ 9781789148725/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
J.-K. Huysmans (1848¡V1907) now stands firmly recognized as a significant and influential writer, often hailed as a pioneer of modernism. While his novel A rebours(Against Nature) remains infamous for its reclusive protagonist retreating into a realm of artifice and dreams, Huysmans¡¦ literary contributions are far-reaching. Ruth Antosh explores Huysmans¡¦ life and work, illustrating how it reflects France¡¦s era of profound social and artistic change. In this context, Huysmans¡¦ lesser-known writings, such as his correspondence, early fiction, art criticism and the esteemed mid-career novel En rade (Stranded), cherished by the Surrealists, demand greater critical attention. This biography compellingly argues that Huysmans¡¦ life was an unwavering quest for spiritual and aesthetic fulfilment, evident through his meaningful friendships and prolific writings.
   
Olivier Messiaen: A Critical Biography
  / 9781789148657/ Price:GBP 25.00
 
This groundbreaking biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas and music of French twentieth-century composer, organist and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing on previously unexplored sketches and archival material, Robert Sholl seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen¡¦s work. This book examines the profound impact of Messiaen¡¦s devout Catholicism, which found expression through his work as a church organist, his engagement with birdsong, his interaction with Surrealism and his influence on major musical figures of the latter twentieth century. Unlike previous biographies, this book also considers the perspectives of Messiaen¡¦s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy.
   
Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard
  ³Ç¥±¨½¡P³ì­î (§@®a)/ 9781789148633/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
This is a new account of the life and accomplishments of medieval England¡¦s most famous poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though in more recent years the lively and often risque style of his best-known work, The Canterbury Tales, has made his name synonymous with bawdy humour. Nevertheless, beyond his poetic achievements, Chaucer assumed various roles, including those of royal attendant, soldier, customs officer and Justice of the Peace. Mary Flannery chronicles Chaucer¡¦s journey during one of the most turbulent periods of English history, illuminating how he came to be known as not only the ¡¥father of English poetry¡¦, but England¡¦s ¡¥merry bard¡¦.
   
Tangled Paths: A Life of Aby Warburg
  Hans C. Hones/ 9781789148510/ Price:GBP 25.00
 
Tangled Paths tells the life story of Aby Warburg, one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of a man who, throughout his life, struggled to assert his place in the world. Charting Warburg¡¦s many projects and identities ¡V ground-breaking historian, public intellectual, ethnographer, shrewd academic administrator and founder of a library ¡V Hans C. Hones explores not only the vagaries of an academic career but the personal demons of a man who relentlessly sought to live up to his own expectations. This biography ¡V the first in English for over fifty years ¡V presents an evocative and richly detailed portrait of Warburg¡¦s personality and career, and of his attempts to make sense of the tangled paths of his life.
   
Antoni Gaudi
  Michael Eaude/ 9781789148374/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
The celebrated art nouveau architect Antoni Gaudi was a contradictory figure: deeply religious and politically right-wing, he nevertheless created revolutionary, lyrical buildings. This book explores Gaudi¡¦s life, work and influences, from Catalan nationalism to the Industrial Revolution. Michael Eaude expertly guides readers through Gaudi¡¦s great works ¡V including the Sagrada Familia, which attracts millions of tourists to Barcelona each year ¡V and examines his monumental life, from the architect¡¦s provincial upbringing in Reus to his time in Barcelona, where he became a dandy whose only attempt at marriage was rejected. Gaudi later suffered a nervous breakdown, became obsessively religious, and fused Gothic, Baroque and Orientalist architecture into his unique style.
   
SA41-513 Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front
  Serhiy Zhadan/ 9780300270860/ Price:US$ 26.00
 
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SA41-513 My What If Year: A Memoir.
  Alisha Fernandez Miranda/ 9781958506097/ Price:US$ 16.99
 
   
Frantz Fanon
  James S. Williams/ 9781789148312/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Doctor, militant, political essayist, ambassador, teacher, journalist, pan-Africanist: Frantz Fanon represented a new model of engaged intellectual who sought to decolonize mid-twentieth-century thought, society and culture and move beyond the ideology of race. Born Black in colonial Martinique, he fought for France during the Second World War but later renounced his native land and aspired to be Algerian during the Algerian War of Independence. Emphasizing Fanon¡¦s gift for self-invention and performance, Frantz Fanon charts the key turning points in his short, extraordinary life and explores how his pioneering work in psychiatry influenced his revolutionary philosophy. It is essential reading for those who wish to know more about this unique, visionary figure.
   
Bede and the Theory of Everything
  Michelle P. Brown/ 9781789147889/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover This book investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673¡V735), foremost scholar of the early Middle Ages and ¡¥the father of English history¡¦. It examines his notable feats, including calculating the first tide-tables; playing a role in the creation of the Ceolfrith Bibles and the Lindisfarne Gospels; writing the earliest extant Old English poetry and the earliest translation of part of the Bible into English; and composing his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People, with its single dating system. Despite never leaving Northumbria, Bede also wrote a guide to the Holy Land. Michelle P. Brown, an authority on the period, describes new discoveries regarding Bede¡¦s handwriting, his research programme and his previously lost Old English translation of St John¡¦s Gospel, dictated on his deathbed.
   
Dante's New Lives: Biography and Autobiography
  Elisa Brilli/ 9781789147810/ Price:GBP 30.00
 
Book Cover Numerous books have attempted to chronicle the life of Dante Alighieri, yet essential questions remain unanswered. How did this self-taught Florentine become the celebrated author of the Divine Comedy? Was his exile from Florence so extraordinary? How did Dante make himself the main protagonist in his works, in a literary context that advised against it? And why has his life interested so many readers? In Dante¡¦s New Lives, eminent scholars Elisa Brilli and Giuliano Milani answer these questions and many more. Their account reappraises Dante¡¦s life and work by assessing archival and literary evidence and examining the most recent scholarship. The book is a model of interdisciplinary biography, as fascinating as it is rigorous.
   
Richard Owen
  Patrick Armstrong/ 9781789147629/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Brilliant, hard-working, immensely productive and influential, the naturalist Richard Owen was a great promoter of science, and played a large role in shaping London¡¦s Natural History Museum. An often difficult and arrogant individual, he was accused of plagiarism and bullying, and is the only man whom Charles Darwin claimed to hate. Although strongly opposed to Darwin and Thomas Huxley¡¦s theories of evolution through natural selection, there is evidence that a few of Owen¡¦s ideas were not so very distant from theirs. This biography gives an account of Owen¡¦s life and work, providing possible psychological and social reasons for his more controversial characteristics and his sometimes rather strained relations with various scientific contemporaries.
   
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
  Lara Vetter/ 9781789147599/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886¡V1961) was one of the first writers of free verse in English, best known for her sparse Imagist poems. For over forty years she wrote poetry that resurrected forgotten ancient goddesses, and autobiographical prose that explored her trauma, her desires and the unique struggles of a twentieth-century woman writer. She was also a scholar of religion, mythology and history, a translator of ancient Greek, and worked in early avant-garde film. Dubbed the ¡¥perfect bi-¡¦ by Sigmund Freud, she placed issues of sexuality and gender at the centre of her writings. This new biography explores the fascinating life and work of this important modernist figure, once written out of literary history but now receiving the attention she deserves.
   
Francis of Assisi: His Life, Vision and Companions
  Michael F. Cusato/ 9781789147834/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover This is an original and historically informed account of Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans and one of the most venerated figures in Christianity. The book explores how Francis ¡V along with his earliest brothers ¡V embraced a life of poverty, in solidarity with the lowest ranks of society, preaching a message of justice and dignity for all. It examines how and why his vision then expanded to embrace non-Christians, and Muslims in particular, following Francis¡¦s celebrated encounter with the Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil in 1219. This new work also considers the clash between Francis and newer members of his order, the stimulus for his reception of the stigmata, and his final years spent trying to keep his brothers faithful to their original vision, while living as an exemplar of the gospel life.
   
John Ashbery
  Jess Cotton/ 9781789143911/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Mysterious, esoteric, baffling ¡V John Ashbery is notorious for the seeming difficulty of his work. But Ashbery is also entertaining, humorous and charming, and responsive to his shifting social and political contexts. This biography charts his emergence from a minor avant-garde figure to the most important poet of his generation. In this entertaining account, Jess Cotton provides a legible and accessible map of Ashbery¡¦s work that draws connections between the poetry, the New York art and literary world and the political climate of the middle decades of the twentieth century. It makes the case for a more approachable, enjoyable and engaged Ashbery and will appeal to both students and the general reader, as well as anyone interested in American poetry, queer lives and twentieth-century history.
   
Ulisse Aldrovandi: Naturalist and Collector
  Peter Mason/ 9781789147179/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
The Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was a prolific writer, polymath and prodigious collector who amassed the largest collection of naturalia in sixteenth-century Europe, as well as hundreds of coloured drawings detailing them. Many of these drawings found their way into his illustrated publications, most of which were published posthumously. This book provides a concise yet comprehensive portrait of Aldrovandi, paying particular attention to two aspects: the role that the newly discovered continent of America played in his research interests, and his study of abnormalities of physiological development in organisms. Peter Mason gives insight into Aldrovandi¡¦s fascinating life, his early work on antiquities, his natural history and other collecting activities, his network of correspondents and patrons, and the influence and legacy of his collection and publications.
   
Ford Madox Ford
  Max Saunders/ 9781789147018/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Ford Madox Ford had a fascinating life, spent among several of the most important groups of artists and writers of his time. Friends with Henry James, H. G. Wells and above all Joseph Conrad, Ford was a leading figure of the avant-garde in pre-First World War London, publishing Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and D. H. Lawrence in The English Review. After the warhe founded The Transatlantic Review in Paris, helping to launch Hemingway and Jean Rhys. A prolific writer in his own right, Ford¡¦s best-known books are the modernist tour de force The Good Soldier (1915) and the Parade¡¦s End tetralogy (1924¡V8). Drawing on recently discovered correspondence and photographs, this cogent new critical biography demonstrates Ford¡¦s vital contribution to modern fiction, poetry and criticism.
   
Byron
  David Ellis/ 9781789146820/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
In this new book, David Ellis traces Byron¡¦s life from rented lodgings in Aberdeen to the crumbling splendours of Newstead Abbey and then on to his grand tour of the East. Describing his exile from England after a disastrous marriage, and subsequent travels in Italy and Greece, he shows how completely Byron¡¦s experiences coloured his writings, drawing out the tension between the ¡¥serious¡¦ works (Childe Harold, The Corsair) and his more comic writings. Although the former brought him early fame and fortune, it is the latter which now seem most worthwhile. Byron is a fresh, concise and clear-eyed account of the flamboyant poet¡¦s life and work.
   
Thomas Nashe and Late Elizabethan Writing
  Andrew Hadfield/ 9781789146875/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
This book provides an overview of the life and work of the scandalous Renaissance writer Thomas Nashe (1567¡Vc. 1600), perhaps the only English author whose work led to the closure of theatres and the widespread banning of printed books. Nashe was famous for writing the scurrilous novel The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), but as Andrew Hadfield shows, there was much more to his career than this brilliant work. Nashe played a vital role in establishing English Renaissance theatre, collaborating with Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. He was involved in religious controversies; wrote pornographic poetry; reflected on the terrifying impact of the plague on London; and wrote intricate sentences that saw him celebrated as one of the finest prose stylists of the age.
   
Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy
  Steven Nadler/ 9781789146837/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
Often called ¡¥the father of modern philosophy¡¦, Rene Descartes¡¦ contributions to philosophy, mathematics and natural science set the intellectual agenda for the seventeenth century. In this biography and assessment of his works, based on the most up-to-date research, Steven Nadler follows Descartes from his early years and education in France to the Dutch Republic, where he lived most of his adult life, to his final months as tutor to Queen Christina of Sweden. Nadler shows how Descartes¡¦ ¡¥renewal¡¦ of philosophy involved a transformation in both the way in which philosophy is done and the fundamental understanding of the cosmos, the natural world and human nature. His work was a springboard for many of the metaphysical and epistemological problems that continue to engage philosophers today.
   
SA41-513 Memoir as Medicine: The Healing Power of Writing Your Messy, Imperfect, Unruly (But Gorgeously Yours) Life Story
  Nancy Slonim Aronie/ 9781608688074/ Price:US$ 17.95
 
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Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature
  Irven M. Resnick/ 9781789145137/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover As well as being an important medieval theologian, Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great) also made significant contributions to the study of astronomy, geography and natural philosophy, and his studies of the natural world led Pope Pius XII to declare Albertus the patron saint of the natural sciences. Dante Alighieri acknowledged a substantial debt to Albertus¡¦ work, and in The Divine Comedy placed him equal with his celebrated student and brother Dominican Thomas Aquinas. In this, the first full, scholarly biography in English for nearly a century, Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr narrate Albertus¡¦ key contributions to natural philosophy and the history of science, while also revealing the insights into medieval life and customs that his writings provide.
   
Blaise Cendrars: The Invention of Life
  Eric Robertson/ 9781789145205/ Price:GBP 25.00
 
Book Cover In 1912 the young Frederic-Louis Sauser arrived in France, carrying an experimental poem and a new identity: Blaise Cendrars was born. Over the next half-century, Cendrars wrote innovative poems, novels, essays, film scripts and autobiographical prose. His ground-breaking books and collaborations with artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Fernand Leger remain astonishingly modern today. Cendrars¡¦s writings reflect his insatiable curiosity, his vast knowledge, which was largely self-taught, and his love of everyday life. In this new account Eric Robertson examines Cendrars¡¦s work against a turbulent historical background and reassesses his contribution to twentieth-century literature. Cendrars is as relevant today as ever before, and deserves a wider readership in the English-speaking world.
   
Sigmund Freud
  Matt ffytche/ 9781789145793/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover However much his work has been reviled or contested, Sigmund Freud remains one of the most significant thinkers of the last 150 years. He founded psychoanalysis, and his vision of human behaviour and the unconscious mind has provided a compelling paradigm for understanding society for much of the twentieth century. In this gripping new account, Matt ffytche draws on the latest research into Freud¡¦s impact and historical context, making the case for his continuing relevance in analysing the vagaries, resistances and desires of the human mind. Engaging and accessible, Sigmund Freud will appeal to both students and the general reader, as well as anyone engaged with mental health, dreams and the hidden depths of human experience.
   
Mina Loy: Apology of Genius
  Mary Ann Caws/ 9781789145540/ Price:GBP 20.00
 
Book Cover Mina Loy was born in London in 1882, became American, and lived variously in New York, Europe and, finally, Aspen, Colorado, where she died in 1966. Flamboyant and unapologetically avant-garde, she was a poet, painter, novelist, essayist, manifesto writer, actress, and dress and lampshade designer. Her life involved an impossible abundance of artistic friends, performance and spectacular adventures in the worlds of Futurism, Christian Science, feminism, fashion, and everything modern and modernist. This new account by Mary Ann Caws explores Mina Loy¡¦s exceptional life, and features many rare images of Loy and her husband, the Swiss writer, poet, artist, boxer and provocateur Arthur Cravan, who disappeared without trace in 1918.
   
Sergei Rachmaninoff
  Rebecca Mitchell/ 9781789145762/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Unquestionably one of the most popular composers of classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff has not always been so admired by critics. Detractors have long perceived Rachmaninoff as part of an outdated Romantic tradition from a bygone Russian world, aloof from the modernist experimentation of more innovative contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky. In this new assessment Rebecca Mitchell re-situates Rachmaninoff in the context of his time, bringing together the composer and his music within the remarkably dynamic era in which he lived and worked. Both in Russia and later in America, Rachmaninoff and his music were profoundly modern expressions of life in tune with an uncertain world. This concise yet comprehensive biography will interest general readers as well as those more familiar with this giant of Russian classical music.
   
Benjamin Franklin
  Kevin J. Hayes/ 9781789145175/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover All Franklin biographers face a major challenge: they must compete with their subject. In one of the greatest autobiographies in world literature, Benjamin Franklin has already told his own story, and previous biographers have often taken Franklin at his word. In this exciting new account, Kevin J. Hayes takes a different approach. Hayes begins when Franklin is eighteen and stranded in London, describing how the collections of curiosities he viewed there fundamentally shaped Franklin¡¦s intellectual and personal outlook. Subsequent chapters take in Franklin¡¦s career as a printer, his scientific activities, his role as a colonial agent, his participation in the American Revolution, his service as a diplomat and his participation in the Constitutional Convention.
   
JOHN LAW: Money to Burn. A Biographical Novel
  Pat Silver-Lasky/ 9781955835008/ Price:US$ 26.00
 
Book Cover This is the story of John Law, a pied piper who led rich and poor alike across the barriers of reason and plunged them into disaster. Was he a genius, wizard or charlatan? Was France victimized by a gigantic fraud perpetrated by a scheming Scotsman? Sex, Money, and Power are the most powerful forces that drive mankind, and John Law was hell bent on having them all. This handsome Scottish adventurer stepped onto the stage of Europe at the dawn of the 18th century to alter forever the shape of international commerce. Born in Edinburgh in 1671, capable of hypnotizing women, monarchs, and whole populations, he escaped the hangman¡¦s noose in England to travel the capitals of Europe, received by kings and sovereigns. Daredevil and genius, rake and economist, mathematical wizard, gambler par excellence, womanizer¡V¡Vand most of all: original thinker, the paper money in your pocket, stock market reports, banking credit, stocks, shares and investment systems are all the legacy of this charismatic adventurer.
   
THE GENTLEMAN BANKER: Amadeo Peter Giannini. A Biographical Novel
  Giorgio A. Chiarva/ 9798985221404/ Price:US$ 26.00
 
Book Cover This biographical novel recounts the extraordinary intuitions of the Italian-American visionary founder of the world¡¦s largest bank, the Bank of America. Amadeo Peter, or AP for his San Francisco friends, dedicated his life to generate wealth for the people of his home town, in particular for the Italian immigrant¡¦s community. He was an innovator and humanist, who always put the common good ahead of personal gain. He revolutionized the banking system when he financed the reconstruction of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake by making micro-loans to hundreds of Italian immigrants lacking collateral. The other banks, which required collateral in order to make a loan, were unable to put the money into circulation.
   
Machiavelli From: Radical to Reactionary
  Robert Black/ 9781789146158/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
Book Cover ¡¥Machiavellian¡¦ can signify duplicity and amorality in politics, but Machiavelli himself is far more complex than this cliche. A high-ranking Florentine government official and prolific writer of hugely influential political, military and historical works, Machiavelli was also a vernacular poet, first-rank dramatist and religious radical, rejecting not only the contemporary Catholic Church but Christianity itself. From champion of Florentine popular republicanism to political radical to conservative, Robert Black explores the many faces of the man described as the father of modern political philosophy and political science.
   
Under American Skies
  Francesca Andreini/ 9781735937892/ Price:US$ 22.00
 
Book Cover The experiences of the author and her family during their first two years in the USA are narrated in a witty, ironic style¡Xand a brooding attitude. She ponders the meaning of leaving one¡¦s homeland, while dwelling on the daily hurdles and disappointments, but also the discoveries and opportunities that this entails. Her, and her family¡¦s, everyday life is set in the social, economic and political context of the United States in a precise time period (the midterm elections during Obama¡¦s second mandate, the killing of Bin Laden etc.). The resulting observations are however more general, universal, and come from the author¡¦s habit of not taking anything for granted.
   
Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy
  Charlotte Cooper-Davis/ 9781789144420/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover The daughter of a court intellectual, Christine de Pizan dwelled within the heart of late-medieval Paris. In the face of personal tragedy, she learned the tools of the booktrade, writing more than 40 works including poetry, historical and political treatises and defenses of women. In this new biography, the first written for a general audience, Charlotte Cooper-Davis discusses the life and work of a pioneering female thinker and writer. She shows how Christine¡¦s inspiration came from the world around her, situates Christine as an entrepreneur within the context of her times and place, and finally examines Christine¡¦s influence on the most avant-garde of feminist artists, through which she is slowly making a return into mainstream popular culture.
   
Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Spirit of a Scholar
  William Barker/ 9781789144512/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
Book Cover Erasmus of Rotterdam came from an obscure background and through remarkable perseverance, skill, and vision became a powerful intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was known for his vigorous opposition to war, intolerance and hypocrisy, and at the same time for an irony and subtlety that could confuse his friends as well as his opponents. His ideas influenced the rise of the Reformation and had a huge impact on the humanities, and that continues to today. This book shows how an independent textual scholar was able, by the power of the printing press and his own wits, to attain both fame and notoriety. Erasmus of Rotterdam is the first popular biography in English in thirty years and is based on the immense amount of recent scholarship devoted to Erasmus.
   
Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhov's Life and Writings
  Michael C. Finke/ 9781789144307/ Price:GBP 25.00
 
Book Cover Anton Chekhov¡¦s stories and plays endure as outstanding modern literary works, and his life was no less dramatic, rising from poor beginnings to become a writer, physician and philanthropist. In this new biography Michael C. Finke analyses Chekhov¡¦s major stories, plays, and non-fiction in the context of his life, fleshing out the key features of Chekhov¡¦s poetics of prose and drama, and revealing key continuities across genres as well as between the lesser-known early writings and the later works. An excellent resource for readers new to Chekhov, this book also presents much material new to scholarship, and is an accessible, comprehensive overview of one of the greatest writers of short fiction in history.
   
Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life
  Anthony Bale/ 9781789144703/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover This is a new account of the late-fourteenth-century mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had 14 children, travelled all over Europe and recorded a series of unusual events and religious visions in her work The Book of Margery Kempe, which is often called the first autobiography in the English language. Anthony Bale charts her life, and tells her story through the places, relationships, objects and experiences that influenced her. Extensive quotation from Kempe¡¦s Book, and generous illustration, gives fascinating insight into the life of a medieval woman. Margery Kempe is situated within the religious controversies of her time, and her religious visions and later years put in context. Lastly there is the story of the rediscovery, in the 1930s, of the unique manuscript of her autobiography.
   
Jean Sibelius: Life, Music, Silence
  Daniel M. Grimley/ 9781789144659/ Price:GBP 25.00
 
Book Cover Few composers have enjoyed such critical acclaim ¡V or longevity ¡V as Jean Sibelius, who died in 1957 aged 91. Always more than simply a Finnish national figure, an ¡¥apparition from the woods¡¦ as he ironically described himself, Sibelius¡¦s life spanned turbulent and tumultuous events, and his work is central to the story of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music. This book situates Sibelius within a rich interdisciplinary environment, paying attention to his relationship with architecture, literature, politics and the visual arts. Drawing on the latest developments in Sibelius research, it is intended as an accessible and rewarding introduction for the general reader, and also offers a fresh and provocative interpretation for those more familiar with his music.
   
Louis-Ferdinand Celine: Journeys to the Extreme
  Damian Catani/ 9781789144673/ Price:GBP 27.00
 
Book Cover Louis-Ferdinand Celine was one of the most innovative novelists of the twentieth century, and his influence both in his native France and beyond remains huge. This book sheds light on Celine¡¦s groundbreaking novels, which drew extensively on his complex life: he rose from humble beginnings to worldwide literary fame, then dramatically fell from grace only to return, belatedly, to the limelight. Celine¡¦s subversive writing remains fresh and urgent today, despite his abhorrent political views and the inflammatory pamphlets that threatened to ruin his reputation. The first English-language biography of Celine in over two decades, this book explores new material and reminds us why the author belongs in the pantheon of modern greats.
   
Aldous Huxley
  Jake Poller/ 9781789144277/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century¡¦s most prescient thinkers. This new biography is a rich and lucid account that charts the different phases of Huxley¡¦s career: from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s ¡V who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD ¡V to the New Age prophet of Island. While Huxley is still best known as the author of Brave New World, Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception and Island ¡V Huxley¡¦s blueprint for a utopian society ¡V that have had the most cultural impact.
   
Charles Darwin
  J. David Archibald/ 9781789144406/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover In his new biography J. David Archibald describes and analyses Darwin¡¦s prodigious body of work, as well as his equally productive home life ¡V he lived with his wife and seven children in the hectic environs of Down House, south of London. There among his family and friends Darwin continued to experiment and write many more books on orchids, sex, emotions, and earthworms until his death in 1882, when he was honoured with burial at Westminster Abbey. This is a fresh, up-to-date account of the life and work of a most remarkable man.
   
The Invention of Oscar Wilde
  Nicholas Frankel/ 9781789144147/ Price:GBP 18.00
 
Book Cover ¡¥One should either wear a work of art, or be a work of art¡¦, Wilde once declared. In The Invention of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel explores Wilde¡¦s self-creation as a ¡¥work of art¡¦ and a carefully constructed cultural icon. Frankel takes readers on a journey through Wilde¡¦s inventive, provocative life, from his Irish origins ¡V and their public erasure ¡V through his challenges to traditional concepts of masculinity and male sexuality, to his criminal conviction and final years of exile in France. Along the way, Frankel takes a deep look at Wilde¡¦s writings, paradoxical wit and intellectual convictions, as well as his marriage and affairs with a series of attractive young men, including his great love Lord Alfred Douglas. A compelling account of Wilde¡¦s life and influence on both Victorian Britain and twentieth-century culture.
   
Hannah Arendt
  Samantha Rose Hill/ 9781789143799/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Hannah Arendt is one of the most renowned political thinkers of the twentieth century and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. Born in Germany in 1906, Arendt published her first book at the age of 23, before turning away from the world of academic philosophy to reckon with the rise of the Third Reich. After the War, Arendt became one of the most prominent ¡V and controversial ¡V public intellectuals of her time, publishing influential works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem.
   
Jack London
  Kenneth K. Brandt/ 9781789143874/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Jack London (1876¡V1916) by any standards lived a life of excess. London¡¦s exuberant energies propelled him out of the working class to become a world-famous writer by the age of 27, after stints as a child labourer, an oyster pirate, a Pacific seaman and a convict. He wrote extensively about his travels to Japan, the Yukon, the slums of London¡¦s East End, Korea, Hawaii and the South Seas. The author of classics such as The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf emerges in Kenneth K. Brandt¡¦s new biography as a vital and flawed embodiment of conflicting yearnings.
   
John Donne: In the Shadow of Religion
  Andrew Hadfield/ 9781789143935/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
Book Cover John Donne: In the Shadow of Religion explores the life of one of the most significant figures of the English Renaissance. The book not only provides an overview of Donne¡¦s life and work, but connects his writing and thinking to the ideas, institutions and networks that influenced him. The book shows how Donne¡¦s faith underpinned his career, from aspirational courtier to phenomenally successful clergyman and preacher, when he became dean of St. Paul¡¦s Cathedral. Donne emerges as a figure obsessed with himself, tormented by the fear that his transgressions may have condemned him to eternal damnation. This fine new account uses Donne¡¦s correspondence, writing and poetry to give a rounded portrait of a bold, experimental thinker, who was never afraid of taking risks that few others would have countenanced.
   
Joseph Conrad
  Robert Hampson/ 9781789143041/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Joseph Conrad is widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of the early twentieth century. Robert Hampson traces Conrad¡¦s life from his childhood in a Russian penal colony, through his early manhood in Marseille and his years in the British Merchant Navy, to his career as a novelist. It describes how these experiences inspired Conrad¡¦s work, from his early Malay novels to his best-known work, Heart of Darkness. Robert Hampson also discusses Conrad¡¦s important relations with other writers, in particular Ford Madox Ford, as well as his late-life political engagements and his relationships with women. Featuring new interpretations of all of Conrad¡¦s major works, this is an original interpretation of Conrad¡¦s life of writing.
   
Rosa Luxemburg
  Dana Mills/ 9781789143270/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover As an economist and political theorist, Rosa Luxemburg created a body of work that still resonates powerfully today. Born in Poland in 1871, she became a revolutionary leader in Berlin, publishing works including ¡¥Reform or Revolution¡¦ and The Accumulation of Capital. In this account of her short yet extraordinary life, Dana Mills examines Luxemburg¡¦s writings, including her own correspondence, to reveal a woman who was fierce in professional battles and loving in personal relationships. What is her legacy today, a hundred years after her assassination in Berlin in 1919 at the age of 47? Luxemburg¡¦s emphasis on humanity, equality and her insistence on revolution gave coherence, as this compelling biography illustrates, to a fraught life story and a colossal economic and political legacy.
   
Deep Song: The Life and Work of Federico Garc?a Lorca
  Stephen Roberts/ 9781789142372/ Price:GBP 25.00
 
Book Cover Federico Garcia Lorca is Spain¡¦s most famous poet and dramatist, and an icon of its culture. He is the author of a series of innovative works that changed the face of Spanish poetry and drama. In this new biography Stephen Roberts seeks out the roots of the man and his work in the places in which Lorca lived and died: the countryside where he spent his childhood; the Granada and Madrid of the 1910s, ¡¦20s and ¡¦30s where he was educated and first achieved success as a writer; and the mountains outside Granada where his body lies in an undiscovered grave. The book provides a full portrait of a complex and brilliant man, as well as giving new insights into the works that made his name.
   
Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure
  Maria Golia/ 9781789142235/ Price:GBP 16.00
 
Book Cover Ornette Coleman¡¦s career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African American composer and musician was zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues tradition, Ornette and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare of big band swing gave way to bebop, a faster music for a faster, post-war world. At the dawn of the Space Age and New York¡¦s 1960s counterculture, his music gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called ¡¥the new thing¡¦ or ¡¥free jazz¡¦. Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the compelling story of one of America¡¦s most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world.
   
Guy de Maupassant
  Christopher Lloyd/ 9781789141979/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover The most celebrated French storyteller of the nineteenth century, Guy de Maupassant was a master of the modern short story. Offering an intriguing picture of French life, the enduring appeal of his stories derives from understated artistry, extreme craftsmanship and the universality of his characters and their aspirations and misfortunes. In this insightful and compelling biography, the only one in English currently available, Christopher Lloyd situates Maupassant¡¦s life and work in the literary and social context of nineteenth-century France. Lloyd skilfully introduces the reader to Maupassant¡¦s most famous works, such as Boule de suif, Bel-Ami and Pierre et Jean, as well as highlighting the important stages and achievements of his life and legacy.
   
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  Jeremy Adler/ 9781789141986/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The book offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all the major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe¡¦s greatest work, Faust. Alongside these works the incidents of his life are analysed, including his love affairs and his meetings with the great people of the age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Jeremy Adler shows how Goethe¡¦s encyclopedic interest in many fields influenced later thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. This biography shows that Goethe was in fact the first of the moderns ¡V a maker of modernity.
   
Leo Tolstoy
  Andrei Zorin/ 9781789141993/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover When he arrived in Moscow in 1851, a young Leo Tolstoy set himself three immediate aims: to gamble, to marry and to obtain a post. At that time he managed only the first. The writer¡¦s momentous life would be full of forced breaks and abrupt departures, from the death of his beloved parents to an abandonment of the social class into which he had been born. Andrei Zorin skilfully pieces together Tolstoy¡¦s life, offering an account of the novelist¡¦s deepest feelings and motives, and a brilliant interpretation of his major works, including the celebrated novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
   
Langston Hughes
  W. Jason Miller/ 9781789141955/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover As the first black author in America to make his living exclusively by writing, Langston Hughes inspired a generation of writers and activists. One of the pioneers of jazz poetry, Hughes led the Harlem Renaissance, while Martin Luther King invoked his signature metaphor of dreaming in his speeches. In this new biography, W. Jason Miller illuminates Hughes¡¦s status as an international literary figure through a compelling look at the relationship between his extraordinary life and his canonical works. Drawing on unpublished letters and manuscripts, Miller addresses Hughes¡¦s often ignored contributions to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and his complex and well-guarded sexuality, and repositions him as a writer, rather than merely the most beloved African American poet of the twentieth century.
   
TWO LIFETIMES AS ONE: Ele and Me and the Foreign Service
  Irving G. Tragen/ 9781733398060/ Price:US$ 46.00
 
Two Lifetimes as One is an autobiography of Irving Tragen and his late wife, Eleanor "Ele" Dodson. Irving, who suffered a severe hearing loss from the aftereffects of scarlet fever, relives their odyssey from their first meeting at International House at the University of California, Berkeley, through a dozen appointments in the United States Foreign Service and the Organization of American States. Ele and Irving lived in seven Latin American countries. Irving worked in all thirty-three Latin American and Caribbean countries on diplomatic, development, and drug trafficking¡Vcontrol assignments over nearly sixty years. He details each of those assignments and the lessons he learned and makes it very clear that he could not have carried out those assignments without Ele¡¦s support.
   
BRIDGE BETWEEN WORLDS: A Lebanese-Arab-American Woman's Journey
  Hala Lababidi Buck/ 9781732698871/ Price:US$ 32.00
 
In this personal, multifaceted memoir, Hala Buck, a professional artist and integrative therapist, reflects on her mixed Muslim and Christian family, her marriage to an American diplomat, their nomadic life between the Arab World and North America, raising a ¡§Third Culture¡¨ daughter, and navigating cultures. Buck¡¦s story finds her as she embarks on a pilgrimage to her birth country, rediscovering her Lebanese roots. The daughter of a Muslim father and Christian mother, Buck explores her childhood in Lebanon¡V¡Vitself a bridge between East and West. She leaves her country of birth to follow her American husband. Through stories, poetry, and watercolors, as well as art therapy, Hala paints us a picture of her transient life in seven Arab countries, West Africa, and Canada. Along the way she discovers and explores what it means to be a human bridge, crossing between cultures and inviting others to do the same, all the while looking for meaning and purpose. Bridge Between Worlds is both deeply personal and a universal story of searching for a sense of belonging and home. With honesty, creativity, and humor, Hala Buck shares her story with the hope of inspiring and encouraging readers to explore their own stories and discover, as she has, new understanding, perspectives, and gifts on their journey.
   
Rene Magritte
  Patricia Allmer/ 9781789141511/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover The Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte redefined the way we think about art. Famous for his men in bowler hats, Magritte¡¦s witty and provocative work inspired generations of later artists, from Andy Warhol to Jasper Johns. In this illuminating new biography, Patricia Allmer radically repositions Magritte¡¦s work in relation to its historical and cultural circumstances. Allmer explores the significant influence of events and experiences in Magritte¡¦s early childhood and youth, recorded in his letters and essays: his memories of visiting fairs and circuses; of magical shows and performances; of the cinema; and in particular his first encounter with his future partner, Georgette, on a carousel. Allmer¡¦s analyses of these events and their influence on both well-known and less familiar images give new insights into Magritte¡¦s art. The book will appeal to those who wish to know more about Magritte¡¦s life and work, as well as the wide audience for Surrealism.
   
Stendhal
  Francesco Manzini/ 9781789141573/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover This is a book about the life and work of a singular writer, known for his biographies and travel writing but most famous for his novels The Red and the Black and the Charterhouse of Parma. As a child, Stendhal witnessed the unfolding of the French Revolution; as a young man, he served Napoleon first as a soldier and then as an administrator; and, as a middle-aged man, he made it his task not to pursue his career, but instead to take as much paid leave as possible in order to be free and to be happy, and to write. Stendhal¡¦s works often take the form of conversations with his readers ¡V the ¡¥Happy Few¡¦ as he called them ¡V about the things that matter most. He once claimed that he spent the majority of his life ¡¥carefully considering five or six main ideas¡¦. This book shows what those main ideas were, why they mattered to Stendhal, and why they continue to matter to his readers.
   
Dmitry Shostakovich
  Pauline Fairclough/ 9781789141276/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Dmitry Shostakovich was one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century ¡V a musician who adapted as no other to the unique pressures of his age. By turns vilified and feted by Stalin during the Great Purge, Shostakovich twice came close to the whirlwind of political repression and he remained under political surveillance all his life, despite the many privileges and awards heaped upon him in old age. Yet Shostakovich had a remarkable ability to work with, rather than against, prevailing ideological demands, and it was this quality that ensured both his survival and his posterity. Pauline Fairclough¡¦s absorbing new biography offers a vivid portrait that goes well beyond the habitual cliches of repression and suffering. Featuring quotations from previously unpublished letters as well as rarely-seen photographs, Fairclough provides a fresh insight into the music and life of a composer whose legacy, above all, was to have written some of the greatest and most cherished music of the last century.
   
Rabindranath Tagore
  Bashabi Fraser/ 9781789141498/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Polymath Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913. But Tagore was much more than a writer. Through his poems, novels, short stories, poetic songs, dance-dramas and paintings, he transformed Bengali literature and Indian art. He was instrumental in bringing Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and strove to create a less divided society through mutual respect and understanding, like his great contemporary and close friend, Mahatma Gandhi. In this timely reappraisal of Tagore¡¦s life and work, Bashabi Fraser assesses Tagore¡¦s many activities and shows how he embodies the modern consciousness of India. She examines his ties to his upbringing in Bengal, his role in Indian politics and his interests in international relationships, as well as addressing some of the mis-readings of his life and work through a holistic perspective.
   
Thomas Mann
  Eva Wessell/ 9781789140811/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover This concise yet thorough critical biography throws new light on the work of German novelist, short-story writer, essayist, social critic and philanthropist Thomas Mann. The book looks closely at how his brother Heinrich, as well as the work of philosophers, notably Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Goethe, influenced Mann¡¦s work. Mann¡¦s fictional worlds criticized the prevailing bourgeois order, and his first novel Buddenbrooks signalled the need for change. The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice were ground-breaking works that remain significant today. The author also investigates Mann's political views, from his anti-Nazi speeches to his anti-McCarthyist activities. This is an engaging new account of a significant German writer, which illustrates how the context of Mann¡¦s life shaped his achievements. It will appeal to students and scholars of German literature, as well as all with an interest in the history and culture of the twentieth century.
   
Alfred Russel Wallace
  Patrick H. Armstrong/ 9781789140859/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover ometimes referred to as the ¡¥Father of Biogeography¡¦, Alfred Russel Wallace is known as the co-founder of the theory of evolution, and was well-versed in zoology, botany, anthropology, politics, astronomy and psychology. Although notorious for his unpopular and eccentric beliefs, he is still recognized as one of the leading figures in nineteenth-century British science. Patrick Armstrong describes Wallace¡¦s long life, from 1823 to the eve of World War I, and shows him to be, in many ways, a more interesting character than his fellow scientist Charles Darwin. This compact yet comprehensive biography takes a psychological approach to give insight into a man who was plagued with misfortune: legal issues, obtaining full-time employment, and relationship troubles all vexed him. The book unlocks the life of a restless traveller who, although he grew up with an ¡¥ordinary¡¦ education, became one of the most influential scientists of his time.
   
Arnold Schoenberg
  Mark Berry/ 9781789140873/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover The most radical and divisive composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg remains a hero to many, and a villain to many others. Born in the Jewish quarter of his beloved Vienna, Schoenberg¡¦s early career took him to Berlin, as a leading light of Weimar culture, before he fled in the dead of night from Hitler¡¦s Third Reich. He found himself in the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where he would inspire composers from George Gershwin to John Cage. Schoenberg¡¦s revolutionary approach to musical composition incorporated Wagnerian late Romanticism and the brave new worlds of atonality and serialism, and it changed the history of music forever. In this refreshingly balanced biography, Mark Berry tells the story of Schoenberg¡¦s life and work within the wider context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. He also introduces all of Schoenberg¡¦s major musical works, from his very first compositions such as String Quartet in D Major to his invention of the 12-tone method. This book is essential reading for all those with an interest in the music and history of the twentieth century
   
Victor Hugo
  Bradley Stephens/ 9781789140842/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Victor Hugo (1802-85) is an icon of French culture. He achieved immense success as a poet, dramatist and novelist, and he was also elected to both Houses of the French Parliament. Leading the Romantic campaign against artistic tradition and defying the Second Empire in exile, he became synonymous with the progressive ideals of the French Revolution. His State funeral in Paris made headlines across the world and his breadth of appeal remains evident today, not least thanks to the popularity of his bestseller, Les Miserables. This biography, the first in English for over twenty years, provides a concise but comprehensive study of Hugo¡¦s monumental body of work within the context of his dramatic life. Hugo wrestled with family tragedy and personal misgivings while being pulled into the turmoil of the nineteenth century, from the fall of Napoleon¡¦s Empire to the rise of France¡¦s Third Republic. Throughout these twists of fate, he sensed a natural order of collapse and renewal. This unending cycle of creation shaped his ideas about freedom and roused his imagination, which he channelled into his prolific writing and other outlets like drawing. Such vigour also suggests, as Bradley Stephens argues, that Hugo was too restless to sit comfortably on the pedestal of literary greatness.
   
Pierre Loti
  Richard M. Berrong/ 9781780239958/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Few authors have led lives as interesting as the French novelist and travel writer Pierre Loti (1850¡V1923) ¡V nor have they worked harder to make it appear even more romantic than it already was. As a career officer in the French navy, Loti participated in expeditions that took him to places that even today seem exotic to Westerners. For four decades he published a series of novels, travelogues and autobiographical narratives, some of which went through hundreds of editions in France and were translated into dozens of languages around the world. With financial and artistic success came notoriety, which Loti delighted in enhancing by staging elaborate costume balls ¡V to which he invited the photographic press. He was also sought out by some of the artistically inclined royalty of the day, including Princess Alice of Monaco and Queen Elizabeth of Romania, and the beloved actress Sarah Bernhardt had him write plays for her. The parties and titled nobility hurt his standing as a serious author in his last years, but they take nothing away from the best work of an artist whom Henry James hailed as a ¡¥remarkable genius¡¦. Willa Cather confessed that she ¡¥would swoon with joy if anyone saw traces of Loti in her work¡¦. The extravagances of his often very public private life make his biography as astonishing as his art.
   
William Faulkner
  Kirk Curnutt/ 9781780239989/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover At various stages of his life, the celebrated American writer William Faulkner (1897¡V 1962) presented himself as a literary dandy, a shabby bohemian, a wounded war veteran, a humble farmer, a courtly lover, and a genteel but aloof Southerner. In private and public, he was masterful at making people wonder who he really was. As Kirk Curnutt acknowledges, Faulkner was first and foremost a storyteller. Faulkner¡¦s experiments in style and form radically challenged conceptions of the American South, race and the experience of time in narrative. Beginning with the 1929 publication of The Sound and the Fury (his fourth novel), Faulkner produced a dazzling series of masterpieces ¡V novels and stories that alternately exhilarated and exacerbated critics and left readers gasping to keep pace with his storytelling innovations. As prolific as he was, his career was neither easy nor carefree. Faulkner was perpetually strapped for cash, burdened with supporting a large extended family, ambivalent towards a marriage in which he felt honour-bound to remain, and vulnerable to alcoholism. This book examines how he strained to balance these pressures to pursue his artistic vision with single-minded determination. As generations of readers have struggled to appreciate, understanding the relationship of Faulkner¡¦s life to his art is not a matter of discovering the ¡¥man behind the myth¡¦; it is of learning how the man created the myth.
   
Arthur Rimbaud
  Seth Whidden/ 9781780239804/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Before he had turned 21, Arthur Rimbaud (1854¡V1891) upended the house of French poetry and left it in shambles. What makes Rimbaud¡¦s poetry important, argues Seth Whidden, is part of what makes his life so compelling: rebellion, audacity, creativity and exploration. Almost all of Rimbaud¡¦s poems were written between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Against the backdrop of the crumbling Second Empire and the tumultuous Paris Commune, the poet took centuries-old traditions of French versification and picked them apart with an unmatched knowledge of how they fitted together. Combining sensuality with pastoral, parody, political satire, fable, eroticism and mystery, Rimbaud¡¦s works range from traditional verse forms to prose-poetry and include the two first free-verse poems written in French. By situating Rimbaud¡¦s writing in Africa as part of a continuum that spans his entire life, this book offers a corrective to the traditional split between his life as a poet and his life afterwards. Written for general readers and students of literature alike, Arthur Rimbaud presents the original damned poet who continues to captivate readers, artists and writers all over the world.
   
Mark Twain
  Kevin J. Hayes/ 9781780239743/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born on 30 November 1835 in Monroe County, Missouri, was never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Twain freely adapted the incidents of his life and the stories he heard as a youth to embellish his fiction, as well as his travel writing and autobiography. However, this presents a problem to the modern biographer: in accounts of Twain¡¦s life, how does one tell what is true and what is just a colourful yarn? In this new account of a gifted, charismatic character, Kevin J. Hayes reviews Twain¡¦s life, from his early journalism to his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, from the travelogue Life on the Mississippi to his final work, the sprawling, episodic Mark Twain¡¦s Autobiography, and the public-speaking engagements that took him around the world. Synthesizing new information and sifting through the evidence, Mark Twain is a fresh, clear-sighted account of a crucial American writer.
   
Leonard Bernstein
  Paul R. Laird/ 9781780239101/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Leonard Bernstein was one of twentieth-century music¡¦s most successful and recognizable figures. In a career spanning five decades he conducted many of the world¡¦s leading orchestras, and composed scores for landmark musicals such as Candide and West Side Story. Published to tie in with the 100th anniversary of Bernstein¡¦s birth, this engaging new biography provides a concise overview of the life and work of this prodigiously talented, fascinating and controversial musician. Drawing on over thirty years of study, leading scholar Paul R. Laird describes Bernstein¡¦s work as a conductor, composer, music educator and commentator, evaluating all his major compositions. Laird explores the impact of his complicated personal life on his professional work, including his homosexuality and many affairs with men, and his strong yet difficult marriage. The author also describes Bernstein¡¦s iron self-belief, which enabled him to negotiate risky and challenging musical situations that resulted in passionate, if sometimes mixed, reviews. Featuring original insights into Bernstein¡¦s life, including the author¡¦s interview with Bernstein in 1982, this is an ideal introduction to Bernstein¡¦s eclectic musical style, showing where it fits in the larger world of twentieth-century music.
   
Gunter Grass
  Julian Preece/ 9781780239019/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Gunter Grass (1927¡V2015) was Germany¡¦s foremost writer for more than half a century, and his books were and remain bestsellers across the world. The Tin Drum was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1979 and the memoir Peeling the Onion in 2006 astounded readers by revealing that Grass had been drafted into the most criminal component of the Nazi war machine, the Waffen SS, in the closing months of the Second World War. He wrote memorably about the student movement, feminism and German reunification, and was a key influence on magic realist authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, as well as the popular novelist John Irving. Grass redefined the role of ¡¥literary commitment¡¦, campaigning as a citizen for the German Social Democrats and helping the anti-Nazi Willy Brandt become Chancellor in 1969. Gunter Grass is the first biographical study in English of this Nobel Prize-winning writer. Julian Preece introduces Grass¡¦s key works and chronicles his interaction with major figures from literary and public life, including Chancellor Helmut Kohl and co-founder of the Red Army Faction Ulrike Meinhof, and places his fiction and public campaigning in the context of Cold War European politics and post-unification Germany.
   
Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy
  Niccolo Guicciardini/ 9781780239064/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover Isaac Newton is generally regarded as one of the greatest scientists in history, yet the spectrum of his interests was much broader than that of a contemporary scientist. He was deeply involved in alchemical, religious and biblical studies, and in the later part of his life he played a prominent role in British politics, economics and the promotion of scientific research. Newton¡¦s pivotal work Philosophia naturalis principia mathematica, which sets out his laws of universal gravitation and motion, is regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science. Niccolo Guicciardini¡¦s enlightening biography offers an accessible introduction to Newton¡¦s celebrated work in mathematics, optics and astronomy and to how Newton viewed these scientific fields in relation to his quest for the deepest secrets of the universe, matter theory and religion. Guicciardini sets Newton the natural philosopher in the troubled context of the religious and political debates that took place during Newton¡¦s life, which spanned from the years of the Civil War to the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian succession. Taking into account the latest Newtonian scholarship, this fast-paced biography will appeal to all those with an interest in this iconic figure and the great scientific revolution of the early modern period.
   
Soren Kierkegaard
  Alistair Hannay/ 9781780239231/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover The Danish philosopher, theologian and author Soren Kierkegaard (1813¡V1855) is widely considered to be one of the most important religious thinkers of the modern age. He is known as the ¡¥father of existentialism¡¦, but his work was also influential on theories of modernism, theology, Western culture, church politics and the Christian faith. His wit, imagination and humour have inspired a generation of followers from Franz Kafka to Woody Allen. But how did this inattentive schoolboy rise to critique the work of great thinkers such as Hegel and the German Romantics? Who was the unusual person writing behind the many pseudonyms? And in what way are Kierkegaard¡¦s concepts still relevant today? In this absorbing new biography Alastair Hannay unravels the mystery of Soren Kierkegaard¡¦s short but momentous career. Kierkegaard¡¦s key concepts and major works are described alongside the major incidents in his private and public life, from his longing for selfhood expressed at the age of 22, to a verbal assault on the Church in the months prior to his early death at the age of 42. Soren Kierkegaard is a story of a man destined to become a thorn in the side of society.
   
Gustave Flaubert
  Anne Green/ 9781780238203/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Gustave Flaubert (1821¡V1880) is widely regarded as one of the world¡¦s greatest novelists, whose work continues to influence and inspire writers, artists and musicians to this day. Determined from a young age to become a writer, Flaubert found sudden fame in 1857 when his first published novel, Madame Bovary, resulted in an unsuccessful prosecution for obscenity. In his subsequent work, Flaubert continued to reflect on the human condition and on the rapidly changing society of his time, while constantly striving for new forms of literary and stylistic perfection. Drawing on Flaubert¡¦s voluminous correspondence and unpublished manuscript material, Anne Green reveals the extent to which his writing was haunted by traumatic early experiences. She weaves discussion of Flaubert¡¦s work into an intimate account of his life and volatile character, as she follows him from his upbringing in a Rouen hospital, through his days in Paris as a reluctant student, his extensive travels in North Africa and the Middle East and his experiences of the 1848 revolution and of the imperial court of Napoleon III. This concise and informative biography is required reading for lovers of literature everywhere.
   
Herman Melville
  Kevin J. Hayes/ 9781780238074/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover American novelist and poet Herman Melville is considered by many to be the finest author his nation has produced. Born in New York in 1819, he achieved recognition as a leader of world literature with his daring stylistic innovations, and his masterpiece Moby-Dick continues to capture the attention of readers around the globe. This fast-paced biography surveys Melville¡¦s major works and tells the compelling story of his unpredictable professional and personal life.
   
Jean-Francois Lyotard
  Kiff Bamford/ 9781780238081/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Jean-Francois Lyotard is one of the most important, and complex, French thinkers of the twentieth century. Best known in the English-speaking world for his book The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard produced a multi-faceted work that has often been obscured by its sometimes problematic association with the postmodern. His life refuses to follow the clear trajectory common to academics in France: it stalls and hesitates, with Lyotard¡¦s first ¡¥career¡¦ consisting of fifteen years of militant Marxist political engagement.
   
Michelangelo and the Viewer in His Time
  Bernadine Barnes/ 9781780237404/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Book Cover Today Michelangelo¡¦s painting and sculpture is seen most often in museums, while his archi-tectural designs have been left incomplete or modified by others so that some are barely recognizable. But his art was made to be viewed in churches, homes and political settings, by people who brought their own needs and expectations to his work. Paintings and sculptures were rarely seen in isolation; instead they were seen as part of rituals and ceremonies. Viewers of Michelangelo¡¦s time would experience the work under specific lighting conditions and from particular positions. They would move through spaces and past sculpture, and they might make comparisons to other objects nearby. In this engaging book, Bernadine Barnes brings together new research to show how Michelangelo¡¦s art was seen in its own time. The original setting is reconstructed for works that have been moved, modified or left incomplete. Michelangelo¡¦s consideration of his audience changed throughout his career: sometimes he produced work for conventional religious settings, and at other times he was given unprecedented freedom by open-minded patrons. This book brings the viewer back into the development of Michelangelo¡¦s work, and gives emphasis to the differences between viewers in specific settings. Michelangelo lived in a time when the development of prints and published art criticism changed the nature of the viewing public in ways that foreshadow our own media culture. This book encourages today¡¦s viewers to take a fresh look at Michelangelo's work.
   
Joseph Beuys
  Claudia Mesch/ 9781780237350/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Joseph Beuys is arguably the most important and most controversial German artist of the late twentieth century, not least because his persona is interwoven with Germany¡¦s fascist past. This book illuminates two defining threads in Beuys¡¦s life and art: the centrality of trauma, and his sustained investigation of the very notion of art itself. In addition to the materials of fat and felt that Beuys used widely in his oeuvre, numerous Beuys artworks are autobiogra-ph-ical in content. His self-woven legend of rescue and redemption still strikes many as a highly inappropriate fantasy, or even an outright lie, located as it is in the harrowing context of the Second World War as it was lived by a German soldier or ¡¥Nazi¡¦. Nevertheless, Beuys¡¦s self-mythology confronted the post-traumatic, foregrounding his struggle for psychic recovery. Perhaps most importantly, this led to his major efforts to expand Western art, freeing artists after him to work in a thoroughly interdisciplinary way and to embrace anthropological conclusions about art and culture. Beuys¡¦s lived experience determined a consistent commitment to peaceful change and positive transformation not only through his work, but in the discussions and institutions he initiated. His notion of activism-as-art has not only become a widespread practice, but is predominant in contemporary art of the twenty-first century. Exploring Beuys¡¦s expansive conception of art and following him into the realms of science, politics and spirituality, this book, in contrast to many other accounts of Beuys¡¦s life, attributes extraordinary importance to his own myth-making as a positive force in the post-war confrontation of Germany¡¦s past.
   
Arthur Koestler
  Edward Saunders/ 9781780237169/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Born in Budapest in 1905, Arthur Koestler was a pivotal European writer and intellectual who inspired, provoked and intrigued in equal measure. Koestler wrote enduring works of reportage and memoir but he is most famous for his political novel Darkness at Noon, which received widespread international acclaim. This book offers a fresh and unbiased account of the life and work of an enigmatic, challenging writer who continues to polarize opinion today. Edward Saunders describes Koestler as a leading documentarist of some of the key moments in twentieth-century European history, paying attention to the writer¡¦s self-staging as a witness to them. He describes Koestler¡¦s struggle with his Jewish identity and also outlines the author¡¦s later ideas on the theory of science with an open mind, illustrating how he tried to imagine the future of science and humankind. Engaging directly with the controversial claims of sexual violence that emerged in the years after Koestler¡¦s suicide, Saunders differentiates between the life Koestler led, the story he wanted to tell about it, and the disintegration of Koestler¡¦s public reputation after his death. The book will appeal to those who are already familiar with Koestler, as well as readers seeking to learn more about a key European writer and thinker.
   
Mikhail Bulgakov
  J. A. E. Curtis/ 9781780237411/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Book Cover Mikhail Bulgakov (1891¡V1940) has become the most popular Russian writer of the twentieth century, even though his works were banned for decades after his death due to the repressive Soviet censorship of literature. His great novel, The Master and Margarita (published only in 1973), was written in complete secrecy during the 1930s for fear of the writer being arrested and shot. In her revelatory new biography J.A.E. Curtis provides a fresh account of Bulgakov¡¦s idyllic childhood and youth in Kiev, which was swept away in the turmoil of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Early biographies of Bulgakov were limited in scope by the difficulty of gaining access to archives in the ussr in the 1970s and ¡¦80s. Since that time archives have become more accessible, and Curtis makes use of new historical documents, tracing Bulgakov¡¦s absolute determination to establish himself as a writer in Bolshevik Moscow, his three marriages and his triumphs as a dramatist in the 1920s. They also reveal how he struggled to defend his art and preserve his integrity in Russia, and the intensely close interest Stalin took in Bulgakov¡¦s work, personally weighing up each time whether his plays should be permitted or banned. Based upon many years of research, and taking in previously unpublished family papers and Soviet Politburo discussions, this is an absorbing account of the life and work of one of Russia¡¦s most inventive and exuberant novelists and playwrights.
   
Ernest Hemingway.
  Kale, Verna/ 9781780235783/ Price:GBP 11.00
 
Book Cover rnest Hemingway enjoyed a life of literary triumph set against a backdrop of some of the grandest landscapes in the world. This narrative portrait of Hemingway challenges some of the long-held assumptions about his life and craft, and re-examines the writer, sportsman and celebrity through the stages of his long and varied career. The book traces Hemingway¡¦s adventures as a Red Cross volunteer in the First World War, his apprenticeship as an expatriate poet in 1920s Paris, his navigation of the burgeoning middlebrow ?ction market, his fraught relationships with his four wives ¡V and with his own celebrity ¡V and his decades-long, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to write a masterwork that would explode the boundaries of the American novel.
   
Adam Smith.
  Jonathan Conlin/ 9781780235684/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover This introduction to Smith¡¦s thought sews the ¡¥invisible hand¡¦ back onto the body of Smithian ethics. Smith rooted our trading instinct in human psychology and advanced a system of ethics founded on sympathy. In life as in books such as the renowned The Wealth of Nations he drew much from the contrasts afforded by the industrializing Scottish Lowlands and the clan-based pastoralism of the Highlands, as well as between contem-poraries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, a close friend. Weaving together his life and ideas, this book highlights the ways in which Smith anticipated recent developments in behavioural economics and virtue ethics as well as debates over inequality. It argues that Smith can equip us to face tomorrow¡¦s challenges and, more importantly, make us better as well as happier humans.
   
Antonin Artaud.
  Shafer, David A./ 9781780235707/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover Poet. Actor. Matinee idol. Playwright. Theatre theoretician. Artist. Orientalist. Surrealist. Asylum inmate. Drug addict. Electroshock recipient. Antonin Artaud. In this biography of one of the twentieth century¡¦s most enigmatic personalities and idiosyncratic thinkers, David A. Shafer takes readers on a voyage through Artaud¡¦s life. Yet as Artaud navigated through the ?rst half of the century in the company of many of France¡¦s most in?uential cultural ?gures, his own journey was a lonely and largely isolated one, an existential ellipsis.
   
Virginia Woolf
  Ira Nadel/ 9781780236667/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover Drawing on her letters, journals, diaries, essays and fiction, the book reveals Woolf¡¦s response to her dwellings and surroundings, from the enclosed space of Hyde Park Gate to the open and free-spirited Bloomsbury of Gordon Square. Throughout the book Ira Nadel gives consideration to her technique as a novelist, the skills she learned from reading others, the experimental nature of her fiction and her concern with history, narrative, art and friendship. He discusses her role in the famous Bloomsbury group, her relationship with a series of other fascinating figures including Vita Sackville-West and Lady Ottoline Morrel, her attitude towards sex and marriage, her uncertain social and political views, and the toll of writing upon her state of mind: Woolf suffered from mental illness and breakdowns from a very young age, which eventually led her to commit suicide in 1941 at the age of 59. Accessible, concise yet comprehensive, Virginia Woolf will appeal to the many admirers of this highly influential yet troubled figure.
   
The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley
  Ted Harrison/ 9781780236377/ Price:GBP 16.00
 
Book Cover The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley tells the story of Elvis after Elvis. It shows how his estate, which was pillaged by his manager, was saved through the business acumen and financial vision of his ex-wife Priscilla Presley. It explores a spiritual dimension to the Elvis revival, where fans create a fantasy quasi-religion through which they blend and confuse Elvis and Jesus. In the growing myth of Elvis, Harrison identifies a vibrant synthesis between money and faith, unique to the modern age, but reminiscent of the early centuries of Christianity. Underpinning the whole story is Elvis¡¦s extraordinary charisma, thousands of fans simply having a lot of fun and ultimately some great, enduring music. This is a must-read for the many millions of loyal followers, as well as those who are more critical of the King.
   
Orwell's Nose: A Pathological Biography
  John Sutherland/ 9781780236483/ Price:GBP 15.00
 
Book Cover In 2012 John Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. At about the same time he embarked on a re-reading of George Orwell¡¦s works, and his lack of olfactory sense cast an entirely new light on the re-evaluation. What he now noticed was just how acutely attuned to scent Orwell was: rich descriptions of odours, fetors and reeks occur throughout his works, from Winston Smith¡¦s apartment building in Nineteen Eighty-Four: ¡¥The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats¡¦, to John Flory¡¦s concubine Ma Hla May in Burmese Days: ¡¥A mingled scent of sandalwood, garlic, coconut oil and the jasmine in her hair floated from her.¡¦ Orwell¡¦s Nose is an original and imaginative account of the life and work of George Orwell, exploring the ¡¥scent narratives¡¦ that abound in Orwell¡¦s fiction and non-fiction. Along the way the author elucidates questions that remain unanswered in previous biographies, and addresses gaps in the evidence of the writer¡¦s life and legacy. Orwell covered his tracks well; this illuminating and irreverent book provides a new understanding of one of our most iconic and influential writers.
   
Tennessee Williams
  Paul Ibell/ 9781780236629/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover During his long career Thomas Lanier ¡¥Tennessee¡¦ Williams iii (26 March 1911 ¡V 25 February 1983) created several of the most iconic characters in American theatre. Though his greatest roles were for women Williams also brought gay relationships into the spotlight ¡V his art, as so often is the case, reflecting his life. Williams mined his dysfunctional family for inspiration, particularly his sister, Rose, whose tragic mental instability influenced the plots of many of his plays. These often bordered (and sometimes plunged into) melodrama, for he wrote with an almost operatic intensity of feeling, but the defining characteristic of his work is the poetry of his language. In this gripping new biography Paul Ibell discusses Williams as a poet as well as a playwright, at the same time revealing the crises of doomed relationships, promiscuous sex, alcohol and prescription drug abuse that gave the writer the raw material for his plays, but which ultimately destroyed him. Ibell champions the playwright¡¦s later work, whose regular and, he argues, unjustified maulings by critics drove Williams further into decline. Ibell also emphasises the importance of Europe in the imagination of a writer who is best-known for plays set in America¡¦s Southern states; Williams¡¦s love of Italy gleaned from many holidays in the company of his friend Gore Vidal produced a novel, The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, which shares with his plays the recurring themes of the power of sexual attraction and the tragedy of its loss when beauties (of both sexes) grow old. Essential reading for playgoers, students of literature or the general reader alike, this is an excellent introduction to Williams¡¦s life and work.
   
Vaclav Havel
  Kieran Williams/ 9781780236650/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover Vaclav Havel claimed to want a quiet life dedicated to writing, but he lived exactly the opposite: as the most famous dissident in Czechoslovakia under Communist rule, he spent many years in jail as a political prisoner and, after leading a revolutionary movement in 1989, thirteen years as president and twenty as one of the most respected intellectuals on the world stage. Throughout this eventful story ran themes that Havel himself established as a young man composing poetry in the 1950s. This biography is the first to pay close attention to Havel¡¦s poetry and to place his later work as a writer of plays, essays, prison letters and presidential speeches in the context of his poetic beginnings, his formative stylistic and philosophical influences, and his lifelong rivalry with slightly older poets who turned, as he did, to other genres. Kieran Williams connects the plays for which Havel is best known to his contemporaneous development as a writer of profound essays on the arts, on his country¡¦s social and political predicament and on the modern condition. The plays are also viewed in the context of Havel¡¦s sometimes dramatic private life and his ambivalence about being the scion of a Prague family that valued public service, patriotism and cosmopolitan tastes. Through a reading of Havel¡¦s complete works in Czech, including first drafts of his plays and his voluminous correspondence, Williams produces a rounded picture of a man of courage and paradoxes.
   
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
  Philip Ross Bullock/ 9781780236544/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky died of cholera in 1893, he was Russia¡¦s most celebrated composer. Drawing extensively on Tchaikovsky¡¦s uncensored letters and diaries, this richly documented biography explores the composer¡¦s life in the artistic culture of nineteenth-century Russian society, revealing how he became a figure of international renown. Tchaikovsky was gifted with a prodigious work ethic and a commitment to writing music that was as scrupulously crafted as it was artistically inspired. His music struck audiences as supremely communicative and appealed to wealthy and influential patrons, such as Nadezhda von Meck and Tsar Alexander iii, as well as Russia¡¦s growing audiences for serious classical music. He became the nation¡¦s leading musical celebrity, performing at the opening of New York¡¦s Carnegie Hall in 1891 and receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge in the summer before his death. Yet such success came at a price, and Tchaikovsky found the social obligations that his fame entailed burdensome. Setting aside cliches of the composer as a tortured homosexual and naively confessional artist, this engaging biography paints a new and vivid picture of Tchaikovsky that weaves together insights into his music with a sensitive evocation of his inner emotional life. It contains accessible introductions to his key compositions, as well as suggesting less familiar works for readers to explore, making it essential reading for all those who enjoy classical music.
   
Kissed by Angels: The Biography of Lorraine Butler.
  Lee, Janet/ 9781785384851/ Price:GBP 6.99
 
   
Seems Like a Nice Boy: The story of Larry Grayson's rise to stardom.
  Malyon, Mike/ 9781785384738/ Price:GBP 9.99
 
   
Working With Children and Animals: The Autobiography of Liza Goddard.
  Goddard, Liza/ 9781785384950/ Price:GBP 10.99
 
   
You Can Have Chips!: The Autobiography of Steve Wignall.
  Wignall, Steve/ 9781785385278/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
   
SA41-465 Not Fade Away.
  Alexander, Rebecca/ 9781592409419/ Price:US$ 17.00
 
   
Roland Barthes.
  Stafford, Andy/ 9781780234953/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover Roland Barthes (1915¡V1980) is one of France¡¦s most important writers and theorists of the second half of the twentieth century. His volumes of essays have been translated into many languages. His work is hugely influential in the fields of semiotics, structuralism and numerous areas of the humanities. Yet Barthes¡¦ career, hampered by illness in early adulthood, was beset by a large number of false starts. After the Second World War, he started a career in the French Diplomatic Corps, tried to become a sociologist and lexicologist and worked briefly as a popular theatre activist; he was also a keen amateur musician, painter, reluctant Marxist, dilettante philosopher and editor. Yet none of these activities defines Barthes; even his academic career was highly unorthodox and he has not always been taken seriously. So how do we classify him?
   
Igor Stravinsky
  Cross, Jonathan/ 9781780234946/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover Igor Stravinsky (1882¡V1971) was perhaps the twentieth century¡¦s most feted composer, a leading light of modernism and a restlessly creative artist. This book traces the story of Stravinsky¡¦s life and work, setting him in the context of the turbulent times in which he lived. Born in Russia, Stravinsky spent most of his life in exile ¡V and while he swiftly became a cosmopolitan figure, the discomfort of estrangement nonetheless left its mark both on the man and on his work, in the form of an ever-present sense of loss and nostalgia.
   
Albert Camus.
  Hughes, Edward J./ 9781780234939/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover In Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes analyses the life of an author whose work and stance were the subject of both intense interest and scrutiny. ¡¥I do not guide anyone¡¦ Camus was to plead in his last interview, thereby reinforcing the paradox of a leading figure who in private wrestled with the challenge of pursuing his craft as a writer in an age of pressing ideological conflict.
   
John Ruskin.
  Ballantyne, Andrew/ 9781780234298/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover John Ruskin understood beauty and wonder to be the solution to the miseries of the urban poor and the key to living a worthwhile life. The most prominent critic of art and architecture of the nineteenth century, his books, pamphlets and open letters to the press influenced all classes of society, from labourers to lords. Currently he is perhaps almost as well known for his failed marriage (to Effie Gray, who left him for the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais) as he is for his art writings, but there is far more to Ruskin than is suggested by movies that portray him as a desk-bound effigy, a humourless Victorian prude.
   
Georgia O'Keeffe.
  Scott, Nancy J./ 9781780234281/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover Georgia O¡¦Keeffe (1887¡V1986), the most famous woman artist of American modernism in the twentieth century and a pioneer in shaping abstract art, created an unprecedented, fiercely independent and intense world, focused as much on the grandeur of the high desert mesas and cliffs as on the smallest flower. A world has formed around O¡¦Keeffe as well, incorporating the photographic nude studies of her by Alfred Stieglitz, a gallery impresario and leading advocate of photography as a fine art as well as O¡¦Keeffe's mentor and later husband, and the photographs of O¡¦Keeffe in her later years.
   
Leon Trotsky.
  Le Blanc, Paul/ 9781780234304/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Book Cover In this book, Paul Le Blanc delves deep into Trotsky¡¦s life and his social, sexual and political relationships to both criticize and defend the distinctive actions and opinions this complex character generated. He shows how the hero leader of the Red Army in the Revolution found himself in a losing struggle in the 1920s in his efforts to revitalize the revolutionary wing of the labour movement. Gradually marginalized by ideological opponents within the Soviet bureaucracy, notably Stalin, Trotsky was exiled to Central Asia in 1928. The following year he was banished from the USSR. What followed was a series of makeshift homes with his family circle, first on an island near Istanbul, then in France, then Norway until in 1937 Trotsky, his family and his close supporters settled in Mexico, where he was murdered by a Stalinist agent three years later.
   
Henry Miller.
  Calonne, David S./ 9781780233444/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
This new critical biography takes an innovative look at the life and work of the notorious American author (1891¡V1980). It examines Miller¡¦s intense immersion in esoteric and theosophical interests, charting the cultivation of these ideas from his boyhood and adolescence to late in his career and evaluating the way in which his writings and lifestyle were influenced by his spiritual quests. From astrology and Gnosticism to Nostradamus and the great thinkers of the East, Miller remained deeply engaged with a variety of distinct philosophies throughout his career. David Stephen Calonne explores the effects this had on the author¡¦s work in addition to Miller¡¦s own complex and volatile life, from his marriages and love affairs with Beatrice Wickens, June Mansfield and Anais Nin to his years in Paris, the journey to Greece which resulted in what Miller himself considered his greatest book ¡V the travelogue The Colossus of Maroussi ¡V and his subsequent residence in Big Sur and Pacific Palisades, California.
   
Akira Kurosawa.
  Wild, Peter/ 9781780233437/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
This book both evaluates Kurosawa¡¦s films and offers a view of the man behind the camera, covering his family life and his legendary place on the global film-making stage. Throughout Kurosawa¡¦s career there were repeated criticisms both from within his own country and abroad: he was too influenced by Western cinema; he was not authentically ¡¥Japanese¡¦; he was too sentimental, naive, arrogant or out of touch. This new study helps us to understand Kurosawa ¡V the man and his films ¡V in his contemporary context.
   
Yukio Mishima.
  Flanagan, Damian/ 9781780233451/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
This book untangles the frequent distortions in the writer¡¦s memoirs, which have often been taken at face value, and traces the evolution of Mishima¡¦s attempts to master and transform both his sexuality and artistic persona. Though often perceived as a solitary protest figure, this book shows how Mishima was very much in tune with post-war culture: taking up bodybuilding and becoming a model and actor in the 1950s; adopting the themes of contemporary political scandals in his work; courting English translators and even becoming influenced by the student protests and hippy subculture of the late 1960s. Yet while being in thrall to the modern world, the flip side of Mishima¡¦s personality ¡V his hidden neuroses and the traumas of his youth ¡V continually pushed him towards a firm rejection of modern Japan and his explosive final act of self-annihilation.
   
James Watt: Making the World Anew.
  Russell, Ben/ 9781780233758/ Price:GBP 17.95
 
This book explores Watt¡¦s early years and interests, as well as his highly successful 25-year partnership with the industrialist Matthew Boulton. But while traditional biographies of Watt concentrate on the steam engine, James Watt: Making the World Anew tells a richer story: it explores the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts, and places Watt within the context of Britain¡¦s early industrial transformation. Watt¡¦s work is emblematic of a wider culture of multifaceted artisanship, and this book probes the widely held motivation for making things, looking not only at what was produced but also why. It draws on a rich range of resources ¡V from archival material and biographies on Watt to objects themselves, and sources from fields as diverse as ceramics, antique systems of proportion, sculpture and machine making.
   
Marcel Proust.
  Watt, Adam/ 9781780230948/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent fourteen years creating A` la recherche du temps perdu (¡¥In Search of Lost Time¡¦), his seven-volume magnum opus. He died when only half was in print, unable to see it become one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. More than 80 years later, the work still garners extraordinary levels of critical attention, and Proust¡¦s habits, health and sexual preferences keep commentators and fans occupied to this day. In this concise biography, Adam Watt explores the life of a writer whose every experience was stored, dissected and redeployed within a vast fictional work.
   
Fidel Castro.
  Caistor, Nick/ 9781780230900/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
he Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro is one of the most written-about men in the world today. Most approaches to his life are either glowing hagiographies, or critical rants in which he is portrayed as a dictator who has kept the island of Cuba under his heel. By contrast, Nick Caistor brings together personal details and a discussion of the ideas driving Castro throughout his life; his ultimate aim is to give readers the opportunity to judge for themselves whether or not, as Castro himself once said, ¡¥history will absolve me¡¦.
   
GA41-33 Biographies and Notes: Chinese Music 20th Century and Beyond.
  Li Lanqing/ 9789814384575/ Price:US$ 150.00
 
Book Cover In Biographies and Notes: Chinese Music 20th Century and Beyond, Li Lanqing retells, in an easy-to-understand language, the Chinese music renaissance that took place more than 100 years ago through a set of chronologically arranged biographies, a style similar to that of Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (ca. 145¡V or 135¡V86 BC) of the Former Han dynasty. The book presents 18 modern Chinese composers who were born no later than 1912, active in the first half of the 20th century, and are no longer around today. Some, like Nie Er, Xian Xinghai and He Luting, are household names whose songs and music are still being sung and played today; the others, including Shen Xingong, Zeng Zhimin and Huang Zi, may have been closely studied by music scholars and students but remain largely obscure to ordinary Chinese music lovers even though all of them were prominent figures in the Chinese music scene during the first five decades of the 20th century. By retracing the life trajectories of these music pioneers, the book offers a loosely structured yet highly fascinating historical account of the modern Chinese music. Benefits: *Chronologically arranged biographies supplemented with author's notes to provide additional background information *Numerous photos that have been thoughtfully inserted to facilitate reading and transpose readers back into time *Presented in a simple, easy-to-understand language *Provides a highly fascinating historical account of 18 modern Chinese composers who were prominent figures in the Chinese music scene during the first five decades of the 20th centurys
   
Allen Ginsberg.
  Finbow, Steve/ 9781780230177/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Allen Ginsberg charts the influences of the poet and activist¡¦s childhood ¡V his poet father and schizophrenic mother ¡V and how he met with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs in New York in the late 1940s. We follow him to Mexico and India, and back to America, where he played a significant role in the counterculture movement of the 1960s and New York¡¦s 1970s punk scene, exploring his obsessive need to travel and his experiments in writing, altered states of consciousness and sexuality. Later Ginsberg was slowly absorbed into academia while remaining an iconoclast and champion of the disenfranchised. With appearances by Peter Orlovsky, Kerouac, Burroughs and other leading figures of twentieth-century literature, art, filmmaking and politics, Allen Ginsberg brims with insight into the poetry and politics of this vital cultural figure.
   
Fyodor Dostoevsky.
  Robert Bird/ 9781861899002/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Set in the troubled political and social world of nineteenth-century Russia, this book describes how Dostoevsky¡¦s craving for social justice spurred his quest for innovative literary form. Robert Bird traces Dostoevsky¡¦s path from being his impoverished family¡¦s brightest hope to political rebellion and, finally, to becoming a writer who fought his battles through the printed word. Bird considers the period Dostoevsky spent in prison after his arrest and near-execution in 1849 and his subsequent exile with hard labour in Siberia, demonstrating how these gruelling experiences contributed to the writing of such unclassifiable fiction as Notes from Underground. This new critical interpretation of Dostoevsky¡¦s work and biography will pique the interest of any lover of literature and Russian history.
   
John Berger.
  Merrifield, Andy/ 9781861899040/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
In this account of Berger¡¦s work and way of life in the French Savoy countryside, Andy Merrifield sheds light on Berger the man, the artist and the concerned citizen. Berger is a figure who strives constantly to open up new possibilities while also infusing even his most intellectual work with deep feeling. Berger sees reality like the irrationalist Rousseau, yet is also a meticulous realist, probing objects as critically and rationally as Spinoza. Stitching together art, literature and politics, this book is a freewheeling narrative that offers fascinating insights into one of the most respected thinkers of our time.
   
John Cage.
  Haskins, Rob/ 9781861899057/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
In his new biography Rob Haskins considers John Cage¡¦s life, art, ideas and work, evaluating the twin pillars of Cage¡¦s creative output and the ideas that lie behind it. Demystifying the artist¡¦s use of chance, and his relationship to Zen Buddhism, the book explores Cage¡¦s belief that everyday life and art are one and the same. John Cage will appeal to musicians and artists, as well as general readers interested in the art, music and ideas of the twentieth century.
   
The Life and Work of Professor J. W. Gregory FRS (1864-1932): Geologist, Writer and Explorer.
  Leake, B E/ 9781862393233/ Price:GBP 75.00
 
   
SIXTY YEARS A QUE.
  Morgan, Gordon D./ 9780983245148/ Price:US$ 22.00
 
   
Mind Your Language Please!: The Autobiography of Francoise Pascal.
  Pascal, Francoise/ 9781906358877/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
   
A Touch From God.
  Newman, Del/ 9781906358792/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
A Touch From God gives a fascinating insight into the working life of one of the great orchestral arrangers, Del Newman. During his 35-year career as a back-room boy, Del has worked on albums by Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Elton John, 10cc, Cat Stevens, Neil Sedaka, Art Garfunkel and many more artists representing wide-ranging musical genres, who have been gifted with "The Touch", from the truly humble to the egomaniacs. Del gives the reader a bird's eye view of every aspect of his work as both as an orchestral arranger and conductor, sharing his personal observations about the popular music industry and its highs and lows, from musicians' touring schedules, different cultural influences, studio sessions, stage shows, television advertising and technological advances to dubious management practices, stars' insecurities, and dealing with confrontation and relationship difficulties. This book is a great read for anyone with an interest in the music business and the characters that populate it, from classical musicians and singer-songwriters to the people behind the scenes, all working together and using their unique talents to weave the rich tapestry of their musical endeavours.
   
Respect and Reputation.
  Barratt, Robin/ 9781906358815/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
In this increasingly violent and troubled world, people demand to be respected. But what is exactly is respect? Is it learned or earned? How do you go from being a 'nobody' to a 'somebody'? How do you respect others and equally how can you get other people to respect you? Can you only be truly respected if you have a reputation? There is probably no one more qualified to talk about respect and reputation in prison than Charles Bronson. Tagged one of the most violent prisoners in the UK, Charlie has spent over thirty years in solitary confinement, is respected by both prisoners and wardens alike and has a fearsome and frightening reputation. In complete contrast, although he has spent much of his life surrounded by violence, former bouncer and bodyguard Robin Barratt would now prefer to take a passive path away from any conflict. In this fascinating book, Barratt and Bronson examine in detail respect and reputation including how to behave in prison, how to treat other prisoners, how to be a great door supervisor, when to show respect, how to gain the respect of others and ultimately how to develop an awesome reputation both in prison, on the doors and in life generally. With lots of real life anecdotes as well as contributions from many other hard men (and a few women), this gripping book takes its reader into the psychology of a world rarely explored.
   
Bushell on The Rampage: The Autobiography of Gary Bushell.
  Bushell, Garry/ 9781906358808/ Price:GBP 15.99
 
Most people will have heard of Garry Bushell; music journalist, controversial columnist, TV critic, author, singer and friend to the stars, but very few know much about the private man behind his outspoken public image. This book provides a fascinating insight into the life of someone who is equally at home in the company of celebrities and villains and is not afraid to ¡¥dish the dirt¡¦ on either, but it is also an honest and moving account of the personal tragedy and pain that has made Garry who he is. Perhaps best known for his award-winning column Bushell on the Box, during his long and colourful career Garry has been hailed as "the Godfather of Oi", toured America with his punk band, appeared on over 2,000 television shows, penned a novel and even appeared in a gangster film. On a personal note he has dated page 3 girls, been fed heroin by Hanoi Rocks, befriended Benny Hill and Barbara Windsor, been investigated by M15, stalked by an obsessive fan, had knives thrown at him by Freddie Star and his eye-brows shaved off by Ozzy Osborne. He has also fathered six children and found happiness with country singer Leah McCaffrey. Garry¡¦s autobiography tells it as it is including all the highs and lows that have shaped his life to date. The book, which is full of anecdotes and humour, also provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at the world of print and television media ¡V you simply won¡¦t be able to put it down.
   
Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson.
  Rosenthal, Elizabeth J./ 9781599219622/ Price:US$ 14.95
 
   
Trouble.
  Paciaffi, Tom/ 9780984134205/ Price:US$ 19.95
 
Not since James Dean brought Jim Stark to life on the big screen has a manuscript such as "Trouble" been penned. Reminiscent of the stirring '50's when "Rebel Without a Cause", "The Wild One" and "Blackboard Jungle" sprang the rebellious teenager phenomenon on the unsuspecting public, "Trouble" brings another anti-hero to life. Unlike Dean, Brando or Morrow, Paciaffi is no actor and the events in his shocking manuscript are not movie scenes, but are real life, complete with real people and replete with real action.
   
The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt.
  Wagenknecht, Edward/ 9781599219615/ Price:US$ 14.95
 
   
A Hunt for Justice: The True Story of an Undercover Wildlife Agent.
  Schroeder, Lucinda D./ 9781599218946/ Price:US$ 16.95
 
   
100 of the Most Influential Gay Entertainers.
  Baines, Jenettha J./ 9780984619559/ Price:US$ 24.95
 
Original couture fashion design. Flawless makeup. Perfectly executed performances. Attention-commanding stage presence. This is only the beginning of what makes an entertainer engaging and truly memorable. Welcome to a backstage pass into the intimate details of the lives of some of the world's most influential gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and inter-sexed entertainers. These are their stories. Discover their fears and motivations. Experience the joy, excitement and fascination of working in the entertainment business. These entertainers are locally appreciated, nationally known, and world traveled. They have performed everywhere from small smoke-filled clubs to Las Vegas stages. Their impact on the GLBTQI (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, inter-sexed) communities in the United States and around the world is immeasurable. Entertainers such as RuPaul's Drag Race contestants Nina Flowers, Ongina, and Rebecca Glasscock; legendary performers Mr. Charlie Brown from the infamous Backstreets of Atlanta; Tommie Ross and Hawaiian Goddess Dina Jacobs; celebrity impersonators Hot Chocklate as Tina Turner, Coti Collins as Reba McIntyre, Leigh Shannon as Bette Miller, and Andy "6-Pak" Citino as Kid Rock; Queen of Hawaii Tiana Anderson, Queen of Bermuda Sybil Barrington; the many faces of Tasha Long; the mother of Atlanta Niesha Dupree; female-to-male illusionists Romance St. James and Gage Gatlyn; the multi-talented actress and star of "The Dred Love Experience", MilDred "DRED" Gerestant; the beautiful and talented Raquell Lord, Erica Andrews and Stasha Sanchez; "at large" Kelexis Davenport, Chelsea Pearl and former Alvin Ally student and house music diva Ebonee Excell; New York actress and comedian Harmonica Sunbeam and her sidekick Sugga Pie Koko, and the greatest femme and stud promoters of all time, Miss Theresa from New Jersey, Regina Franklin from Atlanta, Madison from New York, and many, many more entertainers across the United States and beyond!
   
SA41-502 Diaries of an Egyptian Princess
  Nevine Abbas Halim/ 9789775864239/ Price:GBP 24.95
 
Book Cover
   
SA41-385 Simone de Beauvoir.
  Tidd, Ursula/ 9781861894342/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Simone de Beauvoir (1908¡V86) lived through some of the most dramatic and harrowing events of the twentieth century, a time of huge change for women across the world, and her life was marked by many opposing tensions: living and writing, the Self and the Other, the individual and the collective, the person and the myth. Ursula Tidd illuminates these and many other facets of a complex personality: her relentless autobiographical drive, living life as a continuously unfolding narrative; her personal and intellectual relationships, essentially lived as a series of dialogues with a variety of interlocutors, including Jean-Paul Sartre; her active involvement in political struggles; and how Beauvoir the woman become Beauvoir the myth. Simone de Beauvoir will benefit students interested in a condensed critical account of Beauvoir¡¦s life and works, and will also appeal to general readers due to the high level of interest in Beauvoir, fuelled by the centenary, in 2008, of her birth.
   
SA41-382 Left Hooks and Dangerous Crooks.
  Currie, Tel/ 9781906358587/ Price:GBP 15.99
 
Left Hooks and Dangerous Crooks is an explosive book that takes the reader on a thrilling journey from the birth of bare knuckle and unlicensed boxing to the present day and blows the whistle on the many myths and misrepresentations about the sport that have existed in the past. As the criminal underworld has well known connections with the world of unlicensed boxing, the book also documents the close relationship between boxing and the hidden world of the gangland 'faces' and draws you into their violent, frightening and blood thirsty heart. Author Tel Currie started out as fighter himself and has worked as a boxing promoter. He also moves amongst, and associates with, well known gangland names. Having so many villains and infamous characters as trusted friends means that he has first hand information available at his fingertips and is able to really tell it as it is. No one understands the dark side of boxing better than Tel Currie as this gritty account proves. In this world, not only is fact stranger than fiction, it is often a lot more brutal!
   
SA41-382 Ronnie Biggs: The Inside Story.
  Gray, Mike/ 9781906358594/ Price:GBP 9.99
 
Ronnie Biggs: The Inside Story, written by two of Ronnie Biggs's closest friends and most ardent supporters, delivers exactly what it says on the label, giving a very personal, unique and yet disturbing insight into the mind and subsequent treatment by the judicial and penal systems of the man that became a legendary household name for his role in one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the Great Train Robbery of 1963, and his subsequent life on the run upon his escape from prison in 1965. Raising pointed questions and dispelling many myths, the story makes one wonder who is the greater criminal: the carpenter that played a bit part in an unarmed robbery 45 years ago, who has remained incarcerated since his return to the UK in 2001 despite the fact that he is now a frail, wheelchair-bound 79-year-old grandfather who is no threat to society, is fed via a tube to his stomach and can only communicate by pointing to letters on a laminated sheet; or the justice and prison systems that have allowed him to rot in jail for so long. One thing's for sure, although Ronnie Biggs's body is letting him down after a series of strokes and other illnesses, his legal team, campaign supporters, underworld friends and devoted family certainly aren't, and neither is his own fighting spirit or his humanity in the face of inhumanity. All he wants now is to be able to die a free man rather than suffer "a slow crucifixion on the Home Office cross", and once all the facts have been digested one can only be moved to ask: "How could anyone deny him that?"
   
SA41-382 Life as a Chelsea Headhunter: It's Only a Game.
  Marriner, Jason/ 9781906358624/ Price:GBP 15.99
 
Optical illusions are the stuff of magic - harmless entertainment conjured up to both enthral and amaze, aren't they? Well, maybe not, as it's not quite so amusing if the 'stunt' takes the form of an episode of the BBC's 'groundbreaking' documentary series MacIntyre Undercover on organised football hooliganism, the wizardry is conducted by unscrupulous investigative journalists posing as big-time drug dealers, and as a result the unwitting participant in the trick, avid Chelsea supporter Jason Marriner, is charged with conspiracy to commit violent disorder and affray, together with his friend Andy Frain, and Jason ends up with a six-year jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit. This is Jason's chance to put the record straight, present the facts from his own perspective and challenge the reader, who may well have been one of the 7.4 million documentary viewers, to decide whether the programme actually revealed the 'ugly face of football violence', or indeed showed him plotting or committing any violence whatsoever, or whether the original 344 hours' worth of footage, secretly filmed over a period of 18 months, were distorted beyond recognition by cutting, editing and stitching together clips from the original sequences to achieve the programme's aim at any cost. Jason would be the first to admit that in the past he had been a 'nuisance' on the terraces, but this was the late 1990s and, with a wife, children and his own business, he had done a lot of growing up and moving on. Fortunately, he had also developed the strength of character needed to survive in prison with humour, dignity and determination, and he shares his insights of life behind bars as he tried to work with the system, despite the knock-backs, in order to make it work for him in return. 'Good will always follow bad' is Jason's admirable philosophy about his experiences, but this shocking real-life story serves as a warning to all: this could so easily happen to you.
   
GA41-5-21 Newsmakers 2009, 4-Vols/Set.
  / 9781414406824/ Price:US$ 494.00
 
   
Edgar Allan Poe.
  Hayes, Kevin J./ 9781861895158/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
he career of Edgar Allan Poe (1809¡V49) is the quintessential writer¡¦s biography ¡V great works arising from a life of despair, poverty, alcoholism, and a mysterious, solitary death. It may seem like a cliche' now, but it was Poe who helped shape this idea in the popular imagination. Despite, or inspired by, his many hardships, Poe wrote some of the most well-known poems and intricately crafted stories in American literature. In Edgar Allan Poe, Kevin J. Hayes argues that Poe¡¦s work anticipated many of the directions Western thought would take in the century to come, and he identifies links between Poe and writers and artists such as Walter Benjamin, Salvador Dali', Sergei Eisenstein and Jean Cocteau.
   
Gertrude Stein
  Daniel, Lucy/ 9781861895165/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
With detailed reference to her works, to the many notable portraits and readings, and to Stein¡¦s own entertaining anecdotes, Lucy Daniel discusses how the legend of ¡¥Gertrude Stein¡¦ was created, both by herself and her admirers. The book tracks Stein's work, from early efforts in automatic writing to late experiments in the art of autobiography, via her combination of continual stylistic rejuvenation and extraordinary personal charisma. It also takes in her involvement with turn-of-the-century feminism and psychology, her 40-year relationship with Alice B. Toklas, the cultural impact of her salon in the Parisian ex-pat scene, her many famous friendships, and the controversy surrounding her life in occupied France during the Second World War. A fresh and readable presentation of one of the major Anglo-American Modernists, Gertrude Stein will appeal to readers of Gertrude Stein and her circle, as well as specialists in the fields of literature, art, gender studies, Modernism and cultural studies.
   
Pablo Neruda.
  Dominic Moran/ 9781861895141/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
ablo Neruda (1904¡V73) is one of Latin America's best known poets, adored by readers for the sumptuous love lyrics written during his early years in his native Chile, and respected by critics for the dark, hypnotic verses he composed during his later, solitary years as a diplomat based in the Far East. As Dominic Moran shows in his concise biography, rarely have the life and works of a writer been so intimately and dramatically bound up as they are in Neruda. In Pablo Neruda, Moran takes a detailed and often critical look at this relationship, focusing as much on what the poetry sometimes strategically hides about Neruda the poet, the lover and the political proselytizer, as what it reveals. Moran examines a life that was marked by an increasingly militant communism, the seeds of which can be traced to Neruda¡¦s experiences in Spain during the early months of the Spanish Civil War. Throughout the 1950s and ¡¦60s, Neruda became a literary torchbearer for the International Left, and he spent his final years campaigning to bring socialism to his beloved Chile. He lived just long enough to see his hero Salvador Allende killed during Augusto Pinochet¡¦s bloody coup.
   
Samuel Beckett.
  Gibson, Andrew/ 9781861895172/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
The life of Samuel Beckett (1906¡V1989) has been the subject of exhaustive scholarship, yet by contrast Beckett himself was a spare, minimalist writer who deeply distrusted the techniques of biography. In this new, concise, critical account of Beckett¡¦s life and work, Andrew Gibson seeks to remain faithful to the writer¡¦s artistic aims, staying close to Beckett¡¦s style of thought and work in his analysis of this supremely modern figure. Beckett¡¦s Rockaby ends with a resounding ¡¥fuck life¡¦: Samuel Beckett takes as its touchstone the formidable Beckettian drive to give up on the world. Gibson locates the logic of Beckett¡¦s drive through an analysis of his responses to modern history, showing how Beckett came to have an unusually profound feeling for the Zeitgeist, and a power of conveying it unrivalled by any other contemporary artist. This book tracks Beckett¡¦s painful progress through the historical situations that defined his experience: Ireland after independence, Paris and the E'cole Normale Supe'rieure in the late twenties, London in the thirties, Nazi Germany, Vichy France, the early years of the Fourth Republic, the Cold War and the triumph of Capital in the 1980s. It also analyses the (often muted and oblique) traces of and responses to these situations in a range of Beckett¡¦s works.
   
You Can Have Chips!: The Autobiography of Steve Wignall.
  Wignall, Steve/ 9781904444961/ Price:GBP 16.99
 
From childhood kick-abouts on knee-scraping surfaces to junior football in shirts that reached your ankles to greet your socks, like many youngsters Steve Wignall dreamed of wearing a hallowed red shirt and becoming a professional footballer. Following his apprenticeship at Doncaster Rovers that dream came true and he embarked on a 20-year playing career that took him from Donny to Colchester, Brentford and Aldershot. When age and injury held up the red card, he went into coaching, scouting and management, returning to both Colchester and Doncaster Rovers as manager. Giving a fascinating, behind the scenes insight into life as a player and as a manager, and peppered with wonderful anecdotes that reflect his cheeky Scouse humour, Steve gives an honest account of his long journey of highs and lows in both his professional and personal life, from back-stabbing, rivalries and budget juggling to family upheavals and traumas. Throughout his long career, Steve's high expectations of himself, his loyalty, his tenacity and his vision as a player were mirrored in his management ethic and team training, at whatever level of football, and his skills and determination are what enabled him to survive and succeed in the tough, demanding and ever-changing world of football.
   
BROKEN FRAME: Memoirs of a Turkish Immigrant.
  Andic, Fuat M/ 9780982386767/ Price:US$ 20.00
 
   
Favorite Wife: Escape from Polygamy.
  Schmidt, Susan Ray/ 9781599214948/ Price:US$ 16.95
 
   
Tales from a Dog Catcher.
  Duffy-Korpics, Lisa/ 9781599214986/ Price:US$ 16.95
 
   
Matthew A. Henson's Historic Arctic Journey: The Classic Account of One of the World's Greatest Black Explorers.
  Henson, Matthew A./ 9781599213088/ Price:US$ 19.95
 
   
Morning Sun: A Story of Hope, Purpose, and the Power of Family.
  Alpert, Merrick/ 9781599219295/ Price:US$ 16.95
 
   
SA41-382 A Man and a Pram.
  Cundy, Mark/ 9781906358044/ Price:GBP 7.99
 
People travel from London to New York every day - nothing unusual about that, but if your journey took you 14 months, you might rightly wish to seek compensation from the airline! However, Mark Cundy's journey was different; his was a walking odyssey of immense proportions, covering 5,500 miles between October 2004 and December 2005 across three continents, in aid of Cancer Research UK and its overseas equivalents. Facing a lonely, often gruelling trek, Mark encountered many setbacks and obstacles en route: limited resources, accommodation problems, language barriers, extremes of climate, red tape, cultural differences and health issues, and met plenty of 'angels' and a few 'devils' as his journey pressed on through Europe, across Russia and on to Australia and finally the USA. There were many times he stopped to wonder, "What am I doing?" But in true Forrest Gump style, he just kept on walking. This is an extraordinary story, told with immense humour, of true grit and determination against the odds to fulfil a dream that had been many years in the making, one that took the 'World Walker' through every gamut of emotion, from fear to triumph and desperation to sheer joy. It was a defining achievement. And to what does the 'pram' in the title refer? He didn't really take a baby with him, did he? Well, you'll just have to read it and see!
   
SA41-382 The Loose Screw: The Shocking Truth about Our Prison System.
  Dawkins, Jim/ 9781904444619/ Price:GBP 10.00
 
Jim Dawkins left home at the age of sixteen to pursue his dream of joining the army, and subsequently served with the Royal Green Jackets, including tours of Canada and Northern Ireland. During that time he learnt many important lessons in the 'University of Life' that would serve him well in the future, such as discipline, respect, pride and honour, but which, at the same time, would lead to insufferable stress as he constantly battled with his conscience and struggled to swim against the tide. Once back in Civvy Street, and with a new house and a baby to support, Jim decided to join the Prison Service. But what faced him in this new career, which centred on Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubs and Belmarsh prisons, shocked him to the core. For this ex-squaddie, who believed in establishing good working relationships with inmates, including notorious long-termer, Charles Bronson, the cancerous environment of staff bully-boy tactics and prisoner victimization was sickening. Jim tells his story, which, although peppered with humorous anecdotes of often lager-induced incidents from both his army and prison days, bears witness to the stark reality of what actually goes on behind prison doors, and exposes both the glaring flaws in the prison system and the atrocities perpetrated in the name of justice, which ultimately forced his decision to leave the Prison Service seven years later.
   
SA41-382 My Angel Tree: A True Experience.
  Bilski, Kirsty/ 9781906358105/ Price:GBP 9.99
 
In April 2000, Kirsty Bilski's life couldn't have been happier. It was a time of celebration and the start of a new life and brighter future for her and her new husband, Jerzy, together with her three children from her previous marriage, Jessica, Gemma and Stewart. Six months later, however, her family's world was shaken to its very core when Jessica, at the tender age of ten, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of liver cancer. This is the heart-rending story of Jessica's courageous journey through her illness, told through the eyes of her mother, who travelled alongside her daughter every step of the way, refusing to give up hope and guiding her with an incredible honesty that allowed Jessica to make important decisions about her own care, the most harrowing of all coming with the acceptance that she was going to die and that pursuing further treatment was not going to save her. There are highs, such as family holidays and meeting Myleene Klass, who dedicated her debut album to Jessica's memory, and there are extreme lows as Jessica, in February 2002, finally loses her fight for life in the beautiful and supportive surroundings of Little Bridge House Children's Hospice. Jessica was an inspirational child who touched the hearts of many during her short lifetime, and she will continue to do so through this moving tribute.
   
SA41-382 Loonyology: In My Own Words.
  Bronson, Charles/ 9781906358112/ Price:GBP 18.99
 
Lifer Charlie Bronson's reputation precedes him - 'Britain's most violent prisoner' - or does it? Do we really know the true Charlie, or are our impressions the result of media hype? Well, what is in no doubt is that Loonyology is 200% Bronson and will transport the reader on the dizziest no-holds-barred roller-coaster ride of their lives, from suspense and shock to laughter and tears, and from Bronson the 'Solitary King' to Bronson the Philosopher, the Poet, the Artist, the Author, the Joker, the Walking Scar and the Freedom Fighter. Now 55 years old, and having spent most of his last 34 years as a maximum security 'Bronco Zoo' inmate, he's a much wiser man as he looks back on his crazy journey of unpredictable behaviour, his ever-alert mind darting from reminiscences of his teenage years to memories of fellow-cons, the screws, the cranks, letters and news reports, prison life and procedures, and the overall madness ('loonyology') of the legal and penal systems, peppering his stories with diary entries, true gems of information, sound advice and hilarious one-liners. Together with his many supporters and with the aid of a top lawyer, Charlie is campaigning for the parole board to finally allow him his freedom, but begging is not his style: he calls a spade a spade and is determined to win with dignity, fighting with his pen and his brain to achieve his aim of a life outside 'the cage'. In his words: "I chose to be a villain. I'm not proud of it, nor am I ashamed of it. I have paid my debt to society and it's time to go home."
   
SA41-382 Life Starts Now.
  Lawson, Maria/ 9781906358549/ Price:GBP 15.99
 
Maria Lawson rose to fame on the hit TV show The X Factor in 2005 but had already enjoyed some success as a singer/songwriter prior to this, having secured a recording and publishing contract through her own efforts and determination to break into the music industry. Life Starts Now follows Maria's journey from hopeful unknown, through the audition process and beyond to her appearance on a major national television show, taking the reader behind the scenes to find out what really goes on inside the hit show. This fascinating autobiography documents Maria's early life and explains how this ambitious young girl from a humble background fulfilled her dream of TV stardom and recording success. In this honest and heart warming account, Maria explains how she coped with the transition from obscurity to a life in the limelight only to come close to losing everything she worked so hard to achieve. More recently, Maria has emerged stronger than ever, having overcome past setbacks to release an exciting second album Emotional Rollercoaster and has secured a record deal with a new label. The birth of her son has meant that she now has to fit her busy schedule around her most important role as a mother. This book is not only an inspirational story, proving that it is possible for anyone to achieve their dreams, it is also a practical self help guide offering pregnancy and life skills advice based on Maria's own experiences as an artist, businesswoman and new mum.
   
Living With BDD.
  Walker, Lea/ 9781906358068/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
Lea Walker first caught the public eye when she appeared on Channel 4's Big Brother programme in 2006. Her outgoing personality, surgery enhanced figure and outspoken manner kept audiences glued to their screens but behind the smiles she was hiding a long history of eating disorders, abusive relationships and unhappiness. As well as trying to come to terms with a history of violence, a failed marriage and life as a single parent, Lea has faced a continuous battle with her distorted body image. It is only recently, that she has managed to emerge triumphant from the trauma of the past and find the inner strength to finally lay her demons to rest. Living with BDD is more than a biography. It is a touching and honest account of one woman's struggle to come to terms with the crushing low self esteem and dysfunctional body image that have dominated her life. By telling her story, Lea hopes that she may be able to help others to face up to their own personal nightmares. She is living proof that there is no problem so great that it cannot be overcome.
   
From Rags to Gags: The Memoirs of a Comedy Writer.
  Powell, Vince/ 9781906358075/ Price:GBP 12.99
 
During the early 70's, often referred to as The Golden Years of Television Comedy, many television situation comedies, all written by Vince Powell and his late partner Harry Driver, appeared regularly in the top ten TV ratings and were watched by up to 16 million or more viewers - shows such as George & the Dragon, Never mind the Quality Feel the Width, Bless This House, Nearest & Dearest, For the Love of Ada and Spring & Autumn. Harry Driver had been struck down by polio at the start of their writing partnership and spent most of his life in a wheelchair. After his death in 1973 Vince carried on writing alone to write more successful TV programmes including Surprise Surprise, Blind Date, Mind Your Language, A Sharp Intake of Breath, Never the Twain and Young at Heart. During his long career Vince met, and became friends with many of the stars he worked with including Sid James, Arthur Lowe, Tommy Cooper, David Niven, Michael Aspel, Sir David Jason, Morecambe & Wise, Bruce Forsyth, Cilla Black, Sir Donald Sinden and Sir John Mills, all of whom you will meet within the pages of his autobiography.
   
Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson.
  Rosenthal, Elizabeth J./ 9781599212944/ Price:US$ 29.95
 
   
Chasing the Dragon: A Veteran Journalist's Firsthand Account of the 1946-9 Chinese Revolution.
  Rowan, Roy/ 9781599214771/ Price:US$ 16.95
 
   
Cohn-Head: A No-Holds-Barred Account of Breaking Into the Boys' Club.
  Cohn, Linda/ 9781599211138/ Price:US$ 24.95
 
   
The Quotable John Adams.
  Howe, Randy/ 9781599214092/ Price:US$ 14.95
 
   
Sergei Eisenstein.
  O'Mahony, Mike/ 9781861893673/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Few individuals have made as much of an impact upon a single medium as has Sergei Eisenstein upon cinema. His ground-breaking movies, such as Battleship Potemkin, October and Aleksandr Nevskii make regular appearances upon 'all-time best movie' lists, whilst classic sequences from these movies, such as the baby in the pram on the Odessa steps (Battleship Potemkin), and the battle on the ice (Aleksandr Nevskii), have entered the public consciousness and are referenced constantly by artists and film-makers alike, from Fellini, Hitchcock and Godard, to Martin Scorsese. Sergei Eisenstein analyses the complex life and works of Eisenstein as film-maker, artist and writer. Drawing heavily upon Eisenstein's extensive writings, both published and unpublished, Mike O'Mahony explores the major pathways and stages within his career. Unlike previous studies the author evaluates the life and work against the context of the social and historical circumstances of the first three decades of Soviet rule. He considers the director's major film releases alongside his other works, including his uncompleted film projects and his copious writings and drawings, to bring to light the singular personality of the subject and the unique circumstances in which his work was produced and received.
   
Erik Satie.
  Davis, Mary E./ 9781861893215/ Price:GBP 16.95
 
Satie redefined the boundaries of the composer¡¦s art, devising new methods of artistic expression that melded ordinary elements and rarefied genres of words, visual art and music. Davis argues that Satie¡¦s modernist aesthetic was grounded in the contradictions apparent in his life ¡V such as enrolling in the conservative Schola Cantorum after working as a cabaret performer ¡V and is reflected in his irreverent essays, drawings and music. Erik Satie explores how the composer was embraced by both the avant-garde and Parisian elite, an experience that immersed him in the worlds of high fashion and cutting-edge modernist art, and subsequently gave him the aesthetic impetus to create the new musical style of Neoclassicism. Satie also crucially employed the power of the image through his infamous fashion statements, Davis contends, to establish his place in the art world, and in this connection between couture and culture, Satie was at the heart of a nascent celebrity culture. A fascinating and informative portrait, with numerous illustrations that include art by Satie himself, Erik Satie reassesses the accepted history of modernist music and restores the composer to his rightful pioneering status.
   
Octavio Paz.
  / 9781861893031/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
Nicholas Caistor examines how Paz, born during the Mexican Revolution, participated in the attempts to bring a utopian revolution to his country, which was emerging into the modern world after decades of repressive rule. At the same time, he was wary of ideology imposing itself on art and always sought an independent position. Later, Paz lived in the usa, Europe and, as a member of the Mexican diplomatic service, in India, returning to his home country in 1968 where he became an influential critic of the regime in power. As well as examining Paz¡¦s intellectual adventures, Caistor relates his fascinating private life ¡V his marriages and friendships with leading figures of Mexican and Latin American cultural life, as well as with important literary figures in France, Britain, the United States and Italy. Caistor reveals how Paz¡¦s poetry and other writing were always intimately related to the circumstances of his life, and shows how his ideas and poetic expression were inspired by the events in which he was involved.
   
GA41-5-18 Newsmakers Edition 2006, 4-Vols/Set.
  / 9780787680824/ Price:US$ 494.00
 
   
SA41-311 Jean Genet.
  Barber, Stephen/ 9781861891785/ Price:GBP 11.99
 
This new short biography and critical work cuts directly to the essence of Genet¡¦s life, a life of extraordinary spectacle that was always profoundly entangled with his work. Stephen Barber emphasises those elements that made his life particularly inspirational in the 1960s and which continue to make it vital for readers today. Genet¡¦s work is a distillation of preoccupations and reinventions of crucial matters ¡V sex, desire, death and revolution ¡V all of which became mediated in the form of his own travels, imprisonments, sexual and emotional relationships, political engagements and protests. The book focuses directly on moments in Genet¡¦s life in which those preoccupations are vividly projected for the reader. Genet¡¦s novels, theatre works and film projects have been hugely influential for a vast array of writers, film-makers, choreographers and theatre directors, especially at moments of social crisis. Genet has also been an ambivalent icon for the gay movement, for transvestite cultures and for creative and revolutionary individuals internationally. This book will appeal to a wide range of readers: those engaged with sexual, gender, political and revolutionary issues, all of which are illuminated by Genet¡¦s life and work. It will also appeal to extensive readerships of students, of history, literature, theatre, film and visual media.
   
Raised on Elvis! Elvis! Elvis!
  Sandi Haynes Pichon/ 9781904444237/ Price:GBP 19.99
 
Like millions of first-generation Rock & Roll teens, Sandi Haynes Pichon, Author, Columnist & President of TCB ELVIS STYLE Fan Club in Louisiana, was Raised on ELVIS! ELVIS! ELVIS! In between the time she sat with him on his motorcycle at his Audubon Drive home until the day she stood weeping by his coffin inside Graceland, Sandi was front row and center for ELVIS concerts all over the country. As a pre-teen in Memphis, she was there to witness a regional attraction which become a national obsession; she devoted years of her adult life to being part of his global audience, and has since dedicated herself to charities that pay homage to his iconic memory. Through several chance meetings with ELVIS himself and friendships with his inner circle Sandi was close enough to feel for the wonderful man that was living in the shadow of his awesome reputation. They exchanged gifts and kisses across the footlights and she was invited to the parties after the shows and even to Graceland Mansion. "I was so fortunate to have been able to have such meaningful contact with the most beloved entertainer ever," Sandi relates. "I always knew that I was there for the millions who wished they were, so this story belongs to all the fans, who have loved him, turned their rooms into shrines to him, and stood by him for all these years." So now enjoy this pictorial novella of a time and place where a man changed the world one heart at a time.
   
SA41-203 Blake in the Nineties.
  Clark, S./ 9780333681602/ Price:GBP 50.00
 
   
GA41-32 Giants of Science: Isaac Newton.
  White, Michael/ 9781567113266/ Price:US$ 24.95
 
   
SA41-203 Ronald Ross: Malariologist and Polymath: A Biography.
  Gibson, M. E./ 9780312162962/ Price:US$ 69.95
 
   
SA41-326 T'an Ssu-t'ung, 1865-1898: Life and Thought of a Reformer.
  Kwong, Luke S. K./ 9789004104716/ Price:EUR 145.00
 
   
SA41-387 I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.
  Bass, Ellen/ 9780060965730/ Price:US$ 14.99
 
   
 

 

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