Wanderer


Sterling Hayden - 1963
    The author was at the peak of his earning power as a movie star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood, walked out of a shattered marriage, defied the courts, broke as an outlaw, set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer--bound for the South Seas. His attempt to escape launched his autobiography. It is the candid, sometimes painfully revealing confession of a man who scrutinized his every self-defeat and self-betrayal in the unblinking light of conscience.

Glued to the Box: Television Criticism from The Observer, 1979–82


Clive James - 1982
    This is a paperback edition of a volume first published by Jonathan Cape in 1983. Clive James' earlier volumes of TV criticism include Visions Before Midnight (1977 & 1981) and The Crystal Bucket (1983). They have been published in a single volume with a new introduction and index as Clive James on Television (1991).

Frances Farmer: Shadowland


William Arnold - 1978
    de Mille as the "screen's outstanding find of 1936" and by Howard Hawks as "the greatest actress I ever worked with"; join the Group Theatre, one of the most important, socially conscious and artistically groundbreaking troupes in U.S. history; and suffer a harrowing, ongoing struggle with mental illness, which kept her in various sanitariums and hospitals from 1943-1950. In 1972, her purported autobiography Will There Really Be a Morning? was published to great critical acclaim. The story might have ended there, but in 1978 Seattle film critic William Arnold published his account of Farmer's life, entitled Shadowland. Arnold claimed to have uncovered previously undisclosed information that Farmer had suffered a transorbital lobotomy at the hands of Dr. Walter Freeman, the man who, with James Watts, had introduced the prefrontal lobotomy to the United States, and who had later "refined" his technique to avoid drilling through the skull, instead resorting to inserting an icepick like device through the eye socket up into the brain to sever the frontal lobes. Arnold's disturbing account, the first time ever anyone had made the lobotomy assertion about Farmer, became the basis for the 1982 feature film Frances starring Jessica Lange.

An Open Book


John Huston - 1980
    Huston shows a master screenwriter's skill in setting a scene and delineating a character with a few words."--New York Times Book ReviewIn An Open Book, this veteran of five marriages, innumerable friendships, practical jokes, horses, love affairs, and intellectual obsessions tells his own story in his own way. It is direct, unadorned, complete-and wonderful reading. Here is Huston on stage for the first time at age three, dressed in an Uncle Sam suit; in the ring at eighteen, boxing for small purses; selling his first short story to H.L. Mencken; down and out in London; acting in Greenwich Village; going to Hollywood to work for Jack Warner as a writer; directing his first picture, The Maltese Falcon; filming dangerous combat scenes in the Aleutians and in Italy; and making over forty years worth of movies, from Key Largo to The Man Who Would Be King. And the stories behind those movies are often as exciting as the movies themselves, featuring such notables as Hemingway, Selznick, Sartre, Hepburn, Monroe, Flynn, Welles, Gable, Bogart, Clift, and Brando. An Open Book is alive with John Huston's presence: his boldness and daring, his candor and style, and the spontaneity with which he followed his dreams to their ultimate destination, the well-deserved acclaim of a world enchanted by his work.

Mondo Macabro: Weird and Wonderful Cinema Around the World


Pete Tombs - 1998
    Fully illustrated, this book includes an Indian song-and-dance version of Dracula; Turkish version of Star Trek and Superman; China's "hopping vampire" films, and much more.

Black Mirror: The Selected Poems


Roger Gilbert-Lecomte - 1996
    The visionary, sardonic, and often outrageous poems in this bilingual edition represent the first presentation of his work in English. With René Daumal he was the founder of the literary movement and magazine "Le Grand Jeu", the essence of which he defined as "the impersonal instant of eternity in emptiness". "The glimpse of eternity in the void", writes Rattray in the Introduction, "was to send Daumal to Hinduism, the study of Yoga philosophy, and Sanskrit. It sent Lecomte on an exploration of what he called a metaphysics of absence". Rattray, a poet acclaimed for his translations of Artaud, keeps intact the power and originality of Gilbert-Lecomte's work.

Alone Beneath the Heaven


Rita Bradshaw - 1998
    A powerful and absorbing saga, moving from Sunderland to London in the 1940s, as Sarah Brown dreams of a better life.

The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde


Norman Spinrad - 1970
    There's not a bad story in the lot." --Bud Webster

Liberty or Love!


Robert Desnos - 1927
    Mystery, the marvellous, a city transmuted by love, Sanglot's pursuit of the siren Louise Lame, such are the essential ingredients of this the last masterpiece of early Surrealism to remain untranslated into English. It was originally published in 1924 to immediate and lasting acclaim - except from the public authorities who immediately censored whole sections (here restored). Impossible to describe a novel of such virtuosity and bravura, and one which consistently refuses to behave as one expects, characters appear and vanish according to whim or desire, they walk underwater, nonchalantly accept astounding coincidences. It's a hymn to the erotic, an adventure story darkly illumined by the shades of Sade, Lautreamont and Jack the Ripper, a dream both violent and tender, an obsession, in fact the perfect embodiment of the Surrealist spirit: at once joyful, despairing, and effortlessly scandalous.

Slow Fade


Rudolph Wurlitzer - 1984
    It is a profound and utterly convincing portrait of a man whose career and life has been devoted to the manipulation of imagesand the story of how, at the age of 71, he tries to divest himself of illusions and make peace with his demons and his past.

The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People


Irving Wallace - 1976
    Each entry describes the subject's fame and achievements, and within this context examines their sexual activities. The entries are preceded by over 50 lists of sexual characteristics in which the subjects of the biographies are listed under such headings as mother-fixated, masochists and sadists, and endurance and staying power. Characters featured include Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, Catherine the Great, Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and Mozart.

Fundamentals of Digital Image Processing


Anil K. Jain - 1988
    Includes a comprehensive chapter on stochastic models for digital image processing. Covers aspects of image representation including luminance, color, spatial and temporal properties of vision, and digitization. Explores various image processing techniques. Discusses algorithm development (software/firmware) for image transforms, enhancement, reconstruction, and image coding.

Sex Pistols: The Inside Story


Fred Vermorel - 1978
    The complete account of the Sex Pistols saga.

Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal


Larry W. Swanson - 2017
      Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) was the father of modern neuroscience and an exceptional artist. He devoted his life to the anatomy of the brain, the body’s most complex and mysterious organ. His superhuman feats of visualization, based on fanatically precise techniques and countless hours at the microscope, resulted in some of the most remarkable illustrations in the history of science. Beautiful Brain presents a selection of his exquisite drawings of brain cells, brain regions, and neural circuits with accessible descriptive commentary.   These drawings are explored from multiple perspectives: Larry W. Swanson describes Cajal’s contributions to neuroscience; Lyndel King and Eric Himmel explore his artistic roots and achievement; Eric A. Newman provides commentary on the drawings; and Janet M. Dubinsky describes contemporary neuroscience imaging techniques. This book is the companion to a traveling exhibition opening at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis in February 2017, marking the first time that many of these works, which are housed at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid, have been seen outside of Spain.  Beautiful Brain showcases Cajal’s contributions to neuroscience, explores his artistic roots and achievement, and looks at his work in relation to contemporary neuroscience imaging, appealing to general readers and professionals alike.

Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci


Stephen Thrower - 1999
    From horror masterpieces like The Beyond and Zombie Flesh-Eaters to erotic thrillers like One On Top of the Other and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; from his earliest days as director of manic Italian comedies to his notoriety as purveyor of extreme violence in the terrifying slasher epic The New York Ripper, his whole career is explored. Supernatural themes and weird logic collide with flesh-ripping gore to breathtaking effect. Bleak horrors are transformed into bloody poetry - Fulci's loving camera technique, and the decayed splendour of his art design, make the films more than just a gross endurance test. Lucio Fulci built up a fanatical following, who at last will have the chance to own this book - five years in the making - which is the ultimate testament to 'The Godfather of Gore'. Featuring a foreword by Fulci's devoted daughter Antonella, and produced with her blessing and full co-operation. This book is quite simply the last word on Fulci. His whole career is studied in obsessive depth. Huge supplementary appendices make this volume essential for all serious students of the Italian horror movie scene. Featuring COMPLETE FILMOGRAPHIES for ALL the major actors and actresses ever to appear in Fulci films, the appendices alone are a unique, breathtakingly detailed reference source in their own right. Without doubt, by far and away the largest collection of Fulci posters, stills, press-books and lobby cards ever seen together in print. We have scoured the Earth to find the most stunning, rare and eye-catching Fulci images. Everything worth seeing is here. This is a truly beautiful book.