Although long out-of-print, it remains one of the most extraordinarily inventive and beautifully told of all autobiographies. The text is accompanied by twenty plates which Chagall prepared especially to illustrate his life story. Together, the words and pictures paint an incomparable portrait of one of the greatest painters of this century, and of the now vanished milieu which inspired him.

    Compiled from a private journal, only published after its author's death, these recollections are an invaluable record of Mahler's personal, professional and creative life during the last decade of the nineteenth century. A large part of the book recounts, at first hand, conversations with Mahler concerning his works and his ideas about performance (both in the opera-house and on the concert platform).Natalie Bauer-Lechner (1858-1921) was herself a musician (a viola player) and a close and devoted friend of the composer until his marriage to Alma Schindler in 1902. She visited Mahler in Hamburg and frequented his circle in Vienna, also accompanying him and his family on a number of the summer vacations during which the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies came into being, together with many of the Wunderhorn songs.Dr Peter Franklin is a Lecturer in Music at the University of Leeds.Front jacket illustration: The villa built by Mahler in 1899 beside the Worther See in Carinthia, southern Austria. In a summer-house high in the woods behind the villa he completed his Fourth Symphony. His Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Symphonies and the later songs were also composed here.

    His friends unanimously testify that his character was one of gentleness, purity, generosity and strong affection. As a poet, he stands in the front rank and in some of his shorter poems he is unsurpassed. During his short life of 30 years, he was not the object of much severe judgment and his poetic power was recognized by only a few.

    L. Moody better than R. A. Torrey. Torrey was Moody's closest associate evangelist and the first leader of his Bible Institute. Torrey shares seven of the reasons why Moody was such a successful preacher--and successful he was. Moody preached to 100 million people before the invention of public address systems and modern media. Among the secrets are Moody's humility, his absence of any love for money and his passion for souls. Christian Life Books has enhanced the book by adding a short biography of Moody and two of his great sermons. This book is a must read for anyone longing for the kind of power with God that Moody possessed.