It is the most famous story about any artist in history. But what really happened on that dark winter night?In Van Gogh's Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals the truth. She takes us on an extraordinary journey from major museums to forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing Van Gogh's world. We meet police inspectors and café patrons, prostitutes and madams, his beloved brother Theo and fellow painter Paul Gauguin.Why did Van Gogh commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious 'Rachel' to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he really remove his entire ear? Murphy answers these important questions with her groundbreaking discoveries, offering a stunning portrait of an artist edging towards madness in his pursuit of excellence.BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKPRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN

    DK commemorates this special anniversary with "Marvel Comics Cover Art," a beautiful, large-scale book featuring some of the most impactful, inspiring, and unusual comic cover art to come out of the Marvel vault.With access to the rarest and most interesting cover art in Marvel's 75-year history, DK brings together an unforgettable gallery spotlighting the most iconic covers along with never-before-seen concept art from all over the world. Featuring the likes of Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The Avengers, as well as the writers and artists who gave them life, including Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, this book brings together the beloved Marvel characters like no other has done before.Spreads feature blown-up versions of the beautiful comic art capturing every detail while captioning facts and information about each cover's artist, storyline, and history. "Marvel Comics Cover Art" is the only book of its kind to span the breadth of Marvel's cover art and is an imperative addition to any collection.

    Hailed by readers and critics across the country, this engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight from her own experiences: her childhood near Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; a devastating accident at age eighteen that left her crippled and unable to bear children; her tempestuous marriage to muralist Diego Rivera and intermittent love affairs with men as diverse as Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky; her association with the Communist Party; her absorption in Mexican folklore and culture; and her dramatic love of spectacle.Here is the tumultuous life of an extraordinary twentieth-century woman -- with illustrations as rich and haunting as her legend.

    The creator of expansive tableaus of fantastic and hellish scenes—where any devil not dancing is too busy eating human souls—he has been as equally misunderstood by history as his paintings have. In this book, Nils Büttner draws on a wealth of historical documents—not to mention Bosch’s paintings—to offer a fresh and insightful look at one of history’s most peculiar artists on the five-hundredth anniversary of his death.             Bosch’s paintings have elicited a number a responses over the centuries. Some have tried to explain them as alchemical symbolism, others as coded messages of a secret cult, and still others have tried to psychoanalyze them. Some have placed Bosch among the Adamites, others among the Cathars, and others among the Brethren of the Free Spirit, seeing in his paintings an occult life of free love, strange rituals, mysterious drugs, and witchcraft. As Büttner shows, Bosch was—if anything—a hardworking painter, commissioned by aristocrats and courtesans, as all painters of his time were. Analyzing his life and paintings against the backdrop of contemporary Dutch culture and society, Büttner offers one of the clearest biographical sketches to date alongside beautiful reproductions of some of Bosch’s most important work. The result is a smart but accessible introduction to a unique artist whose work transcends genre.

    Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

    This is THE cricket biography of 2013. Michael Hussey's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible playing record. Popularly known as Mr Cricket, he made his Test debut against the West Indies in Brisbane in November 2005, and has scored 6,183 Test runs over 78 Tests in his career. But to his fans, it is the way he plays the game rather than simply the sum of his achievements that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation. He is a middle-order maestro with a batting average of 51.52, but he has always played cricket with an integrity and sense of values that is the epitome of what cricket stands for. His autobiography takes you behind the scenes to his world of cricket. From his lengthy struggle to break into the Australian side, through to his masterly achievements in the Australian team, in ODI and Indian Premier League - this book follows his extraordinary cricket career., with plenty of surprisingly frank admissions & behind the scenes dramas.

    Today he is recognized as a highly influential founding father of modern art, who emphasized the use of flat planes and bright, nonnaturalistic color in conjunction with symbolic or primitive subjects. Familiarity with Gauguin the writer is essential for a complete understanding of the artist. The Writings of a Savage collects the very best of his letters, articles, books, and journals, many of which are unavailable elsewhere. In brilliantly lucid discussions of life and art Gauguin paints a triumphant self-portrait of a volcanic artist and the tormented man within.

    With exclusive insights from their friends, families, teammates and managers – including interviews with managers Luiz Felipe Scolari and Vicente del Bosque – Caioli presents a unique insight into what makes a modern player not just successful, but truly great.

    Or do they? This biography conveys the well-known and the lesser-known facts about Orville and Wilbur's lives, and does so by weaving the biographical information into a wonderful story. The evocative illustrations combine with the storytelling prowess of Lewis Helfand to relate the Wright Brothers' joint biography in a way never done before.

    But for all the novelty of the sitcom based on Charles Addams’s groundbreaking New Yorker cartoons, Hollywood’s Addams family paled beside the cartoonist’s. “Not half as evil as my original characters,” sighed Addams.Though the haunted-household cartoons developed a following among New Yorker readers long before the 1960s sitcom, and the Addams and their seedy Victorian mansion soon became recognizable types, the artist with the well-known signature “Chas Addams” remained an enigma. Called “the Bela Lugosi of the cartoonists,” Addams was the cartoonist everyone–even Hitchcock–wanted to meet. He was bedeviled by rumors. People claimed that he slept in a coffin, collected severed fingers sent by fans, and suffered bouts of madness that sent him to the insane asylum.The true Addams was even more fabulous than the wildest stories and cartoons. Here was a sunny, funny urbane man, “a normal American boy,” as he called himself, with a dog who hated children and a taste for crossbows. While producing a unique body of work featuring lovingly drawn homicidal spouses, demonic children, genteel monsters, and an everyday world crosshatched with magic, Addams raced classic sports cars, juggled beautiful women (Joan Fontaine, Jackie Kennedy, and Greta Garbo, to name a few), and charmed everyone. But though his pursuits suggest lighthearted romantic comedy, Addams’s life had its sinister side. Far darker than anything Addams created with a brush was his relationship with a dangerous woman who forever changed his life.In this first biography of the great cartoonist, written with exclusive access to Addams’s intimates and his private papers, we finally meet the man behind the famed cartoons and circling rumors. Here is his surprising childhood in New Jersey, the cartoon that offended the Nazis, the friend whose early death Addams long mourned. Here are his wives, the stories behind his most famous–and some of his most private–cartoons, and the Addams whom even his closest friends didn’t know.With wit, humor, poignancy, and insight–enhanced by rare family photographs, classic and previously unpublished cartoons, and private drawings–Linda H. Davis paints an engaging and endearing portrait of a marvelous American original.One of America’s most gifted biographers, Linda Davis has given us an engrossing, unforgettable portrait of the legendary New Yorker cartoonist. In Davis’s empathetic narrative and in accompanying cartoons, photographs, and drawings, the great artist lives again in all his eccentric brilliance,ghoulish sense of humor, fecund love life, and warm and gentle humanity. Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, Chas Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life deserves to win every literary prize there is for best biography.--Stephen B. Oates, Paul Murray Kendall Professor of Biography and Professor History Emeritus, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst “If you don’t appreciate martinis with eyeballs in them, this is not the book for you. For the rest of us here is an irresistible riot of a read, an exhilarating expertly mixed cocktail of words and images. Charles Addams’s life was crowded with women–famous women, smart women, witty women, garden-variety drop-dead beautiful women–but in Linda Davis he has truly met his match.” --Stacy Schiff, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Vera “Seldom have we found as satisfying a fit of subject and author as this. Linda Davis has distilled years of research, travel and interviews into a rollicking and fascinating review of Addams’s astonishing life as artist, playboy and–from time to time–husband. We can all be grateful that Addams and Davis finally found one another.”--Harrison Kinney,author of James Thurber: His Life and Times

    Welcome to Weezer’s weird world, steered by brainchild Rivers Cuomo — perhaps the world’s most unlikely rock star. Exhaustively researched, Rivers’ Edge documents the rise of the band from Cuomo’s beginnings as a failure on Hollywood’s hair metal scene to his reinvention of himself as the undeniable ruler of Weezer. Luerssen uncovers what really happened during Weezer’s strange hiatus and subsequent re-emergence in 2000, which was one of the most successful comebacks in music history. Through key interviews with friends, associates, members of Weezer, and bandmates in their solo projects, Rivers’ Edge is a must-own for any Weezer fan.

    of color photos.

    The creator of such classics as La Mer and Clair de Lune, of Pelleas et Melisande and his magnificent, delicate piano works, he is the modernist everybody loves, the man who drove French music into entirely new regions of beauty and excitement at a time when old traditions--and the overbearing influence of Wagner--threatened to stifle it. As a central figure at the birth of modernism, Debussy's influence on French culture was profound. Yet at the same time his own life was complicated and often troubled by struggles over money, women, and ill-health. Walsh's engagingly original approach is to enrich a lively account of this life with brilliant analyses of Debussy's music: from his first daring breaks with the rules as a Conservatoire student to his mature achievements as the greatest French composer of his time. The Washington Post called Stephen Walsh's Stravinsky "one of the best books ever written about a composer." Debussy is a worthy successor.

    Concise and original, this engaging book is an antidote to the behemoth art history textbooks from which we were all taught. As he demonstrates so persuasively, there can never be one story of art. Cultures have their own stories - about themselves, about other cultures - and to hear them all is one way to hear the multiple stories that art tells. But each of us also has our own story of art, a kind of private art history made up of the pieces we have seen, and loved or hated, the effects they had on us, and the connections that might be drawn among them.Elkins opens up the questions that traditional art history usually avoids. What about all the art not produced in Western Europe or in the Europeanized Americas? Is it possible to include Asian art and Indian art in 'the story?' What happens when one does? To help us find answers, he uses both Western and non-Western artworks, tables of contents from art histories written in cultures outside the centre of Western European tradition, and strangely wonderful diagrams of how artworks might connect through a single individual. True multiculturalism may be an impossibility, but art lovers can each create a 'story of art' that is right for themselves.

    G. Haghenbeck offers a beautifully written reimagining of Frida Kahlo’s fascinating life and loves.When several notebooks were recently discovered among Frida Kahlo’s belongings at her home in Coyoacán, Mexico City, acclaimed Mexican novelist F. G. Haghenbeck was inspired to write this beautifully wrought fictional account of her life. Haghenbeck imagines that, after Frida nearly died when a streetcar’s iron handrail pierced her abdomen during a traffic accident, she received one of the notebooks as a gift from her lover Tina Modotti. Frida called the notebook “The Hierba Santa Book” (The Sacred Herbs Book) and filled it with memories, ideas, and recipes. Haghenbeck takes readers on a magical ride through Frida’s passionate life: her long and tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera, the development of her art, her complex personality, her hunger for experience, and her ardent feminism. This stunning narrative also details her remarkable relationships with Georgia O’Keeffe, Leon Trotsky, Nelson Rockefeller, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Henry Miller, and Salvador Dalí. Combining rich, luscious prose with recipes from “The Hierba Santa Book,” Haghenbeck tells the extraordinary story of a woman whose life was as stunning a creation as her art.