After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

    1927) is a sophisticated literary artist with broad popularity. His masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. In 1982, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.Conversations with Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez starts with the years of his early phenomenal success and continues through his most recent, turn-of-the-century exchanges. He speaks of his impoverished childhood, his life as an indifferent student, his apprenticeship as a journalist, the inspiration that led to the writing of his most renowned novel, the difficulties brought by fame, and his leftist opinions. Works such as The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, and News of a Kidnapping are discussed in detail.When interviewed by Hispanic journalists, Garc�a M�rquez chats spontaneously and frankly about all sorts of topics, including himself. Those conversations, translated into English for the first time, offer a fascinating glimpse of the Colombian genius at his most down-to-earth, informal, and relaxed. Taken together with seminal pieces from the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Book Review, and other English-language periodicals, Conversations with Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez offers a nuanced, multi-faceted view of one of contemporary literature's greatest masters.Gene H. Bell-Villada of Williamstown, Massachusetts, is chair of the Department of Romance Languages at Williams College and the author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Art for Art's Sake & Literary Life: How Politics & Markets Helped Shape the Ideology and Culture of Aestheticism, 1790-1990, and Overseas American: Growing Up Gringo in the Tropics (University Press of Mississippi).

    The remarkable best-seller -- a long-lost, 300-year-old book of wisdom on how to live successfully yet responsibly in a society governed by self-interest -- as acute as Machiavelli yet as humanistic and scrupulously moral as Marcus Aurelius.

    Flaubert was inspired to turn Emma Bovary into “a knight in skirts.” Freud studied Quixote’s psyche. Mark Twain was fascinated by it, as were Kafka, Picasso, Nabokov, Borges, and Orson Welles. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. Spain uses it as a sort of constitution and travel guide; and the Americas were conquered, then sought their independence, with the knight as a role model.In Quixote, Ilan Stavans, one of today’s preeminent cultural commentators, explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.

    

    The text covers the full range of his oeuvre, describing early assignments in the 1870s as a draftsman for leading architects in Barcelona, the innovative buildings he created for the Güell Palace and Estate, daring new structural solutions at Bellesguard, architecture inspired by nature at the Casa Calvet and in the Park Güell, and the construction of his unfinished masterpiece, the Church of the Sagrada Familia, which occupied him until his death. The author traces all the influences that led to his definitive style, from his fascination with the Orient and neogothicism to his affinity for naturalism and specific geometric forms.Brilliantly illustrated, this incisive overview of Gaudí's visionary work is ideal for those who delight in his architecture as well as those who look forward to traveling to Spain to see his monumental legacy.

    . .there are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned. . . ." The duende is portrayed by Lorca as a demonic earth spirit containing irrationality, earthiness, and a heightened awareness of death. In Search of Duende gathers Lorca's writings about the duende and about three art forms most susceptible to it: dance, music, and the bullfight. A full bilingual sampling of Lorca's poetry is also included, with special attention to poems arising from traditional Spanish verse forms. The result is an excellent introduction to Lorca's poetry and prose for American readers.

    Continuously in print since 1932, Ortega's vision of Western culture as sinking to its lowest common denominator and drifting toward chaos brought its author international fame and has remained one of the influential books of the 20th century.

    This brilliantly ironic novel about literature and writing, in Vila-Matas’s trademark witty and erudite style, is told in the form of a lecture delivered by a novelist clearly a version of the author himself. The “lecturer” tells of his two-year stint living in Marguerite Duras’s garret during the seventies, spending time with writers, intellectuals, and eccentrics, and trying to make it as a creator of literature: “I went to Paris and was very poor and very unhappy.” Encountering such luminaries as Duras, Roland Barthes, Georges Perec, Sergio Pitol, Samuel Beckett, and Juan Marsé, our narrator embarks on a novel whose text will “kill” its readers and put him on a footing with his beloved Hemingway. (Never Any End to Paris takes its title from a refrain in A Moveable Feast.) What emerges is a fabulous portrait of intellectual life in Paris that, with humor and penetrating insight, investigates the part literature plays in our lives.

    David Frum urges a Republican party that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible - a party that can meet the challenges of the Obama years and lead a diverse America to a new age of freedom and prosperity.

    It also relates the extraordinary history of the museum's collection, a collection that has enabled the Van Gogh Museum to evolve into a world-renowned centre of knowledge about Van Gogh's work and the art of his time.

    G. Wells' The Time Machine. A lavish feast of exotica brought vividly to life with art commissioned specifically for this volume, The Book of Imaginary Beings will delight readers of classic fantasy as well as Borges' many admirers.

    Bach, surpassing all expectations, creates an aria containing thirty variations that became known as the Goldberg Variations, in honour of its first performer, put in charge of playing the piece night after night until the count fell asleep. With this story, Luis Sagasti opens a hypnotic tale full of counterpoints that, just like the Variations, sets out to follow the turns of a melody so as to arrive at the final aria­—where­ everything begins again.Like Goldberg repeating melodies over and over for the Count to rest, Sagasti narrates for us a thousand and one stories that take the reader from Bach to Gould, from Gould to the Beatles, from Sergeant Pepper to the music that was played in Nazi concentration camps, and from there to 4’33’’ by John Cage, to The Who and so on, ad infinitum. But when do we end a story? When do we decide to sing the final lullaby? For Sagasti, undoubtedly, the cosmic order is a musical one.

    In this Annual Gandhi Lecture for the International Association of Gandhian Studies, Mark Shepard tackles some persistently wrong-headed views of Gandhi, offering us a more accurate picture of the man and his nonviolence.///////////////////////////////////////////////// Mark Shepard is the author of "Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths," "The Community of the Ark," and "Gandhi Today," called by the American Library Association's Booklist "a masterpiece of committed reporting." His writings on social alternatives have appeared in over 30 publications in the United States, Canada, England, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, and India. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// SAMPLE I suspect that most of the myths and misconceptions surrounding Gandhi have to do with nonviolence. For instance, it's surprising how many people still have the idea that nonviolent action is passive. It's important for us to be clear about this: There is nothing passive about Gandhian nonviolent action. I'm afraid Gandhi himself helped create this confusion by referring to his method at first as "passive resistance," because it was in some ways like techniques bearing that label. But he soon changed his mind and rejected the term. Gandhi's nonviolent action was not an evasive strategy nor a defensive one. Gandhi was always on the offensive. He believed in confronting his opponents aggressively, in such a way that they could not avoid dealing with him. But wasn't Gandhi's nonviolent action designed to avoid violence? Yes and no. Gandhi steadfastly avoided violence toward his opponents. He did not avoid violence toward himself or his followers. Gandhi said that the nonviolent activist, like any soldier, had to be ready to die for the cause. And in fact, during India's struggle for independence, hundreds of Indians were killed by the British. The difference was that the nonviolent activist, while willing to die, was never willing to kill. Gandhi pointed out three possible responses to oppression and injustice. One he described as the coward's way: to accept the wrong or run away from it.

    He is the author of numerous books on Latin American history and is currently the executive secretary of the Association of Latin American and Caribbean Historians.Oscar Loyola-Vega is a professor of history at the University of Havana.