My Secret Sister


Helen Edwards - 2013
    But they could not protect her from her neglectful mother and violent father. Jenny was adopted and grew up in Newcastle. Neither woman knew of the other's existence until, in her 50s, Jenny went looking for her birth family and found she had a sister.

Hieronymus Bosch: Complete Works


Stefan Fischer - 2013
    1450–1516) was more than an anomaly. Bosch’s paintings are populated with grotesque scenes of fantastical creatures succumbing to all manner of human desire, fantasy, and angst. One of his greatest inventions was to take the figural and scenic representations known as drolleries, which use the monstrous and the grotesque to illustrate sin and evil, and to transfer them from the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts into large-format panel paintings. Alongside traditional hybrids of man and beast, such as centaurs, and mythological creatures such as unicorns, devils, dragons, and griffins, we also encounter countless mixed creatures freely invented by the artist. Many subsidiary scenes illustrate proverbs and figures of speech in common use in Bosch’s day. In his Temptation of St Anthony triptych, for example, the artist shows a messenger devil wearing ice skates, evoking the popular expression that the world was “skating on ice”—meaning it had gone astray. In his pictorial translation of proverbs, in particular, Bosch was very much an innovator. Bosch—whose real name was Jheronimus van Aken—was widely copied and imitated: the number of surviving works by Bosch’s followers exceeds the master’s own production by more than tenfold. Today only 20 paintings and eight drawings are confidently assigned to Bosch’s oeuvre. He continues to be seen as a visionary, a portrayer of dreams and nightmares, and the painter par excellence of hell and its demons. Featuring brand new photography of recently restored paintings, this exhaustive book, published in view of the upcoming 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death, covers the artist’s complete works. Discover Bosch’s pictorial inventions in splendid reproductions with copious details and a huge fold-out spread, over 110 cm (43 in.) long, of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Art historian and acknowledged Bosch expert Stefan Fischer examines just what it was about Bosch and his painting that proved so immensely influential.

Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger


Ken Perenyi - 2012
    Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York was about to expose a scandal in the art world that would have been front-page news in New York and London. After a trail of fake paintings of astonishing quality led federal agents to art dealers, renowned experts, and the major auction houses, the investigation inexplicably ended, despite an abundance of evidence collected. The case was closed and the FBI file was marked “exempt from public disclosure.”Now that the statute of limitations on these crimes has expired and the case appears hermetically sealed shut by the FBI, this book, Caveat Emptor, is Ken Perenyi’s confession. It is the story, in detail, of how he pulled it all off.Glamorous stories of art-world scandal have always captured the public imagination. However, not since Clifford Irving’s 1969 bestselling fake has there been a story at all like this one. Caveat Emptor is unique in that it is the first and only book by and about America’s first and only great art forger. And unlike other forgers, Perenyi produced no paper trail, no fake provenance whatsoever; he let the paintings speak for themselves. And that they did, routinely mesmerizing the experts in mere seconds.In the tradition of Frank Abagnale’s Catch Me If You Can, and certain to be a bombshell for the major international auction houses and galleries, here is the story of America’s greatest art forger.

The Memory Chalet


Tony Judt - 2010
    Each essay charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt s prodigious mind. His youthful love of a particular London bus route evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through the divergent sex politics of Europe, before concluding that his generation was a revolutionary generation, but missed the revolution. A series of road trips across America lead not just to an appreciation of American history, but to an eventual acquisition of citizenship. Foods and trains and long-lost smells all compete for Judt s attention; but for us, he has forged his reflections into an elegant arc of analysis. All as simply and beautifully arranged as a Swiss chalet—a reassuring refuge deep in the mountains of memory.

Prints and Drawings of Käthe Kollwitz


Käthe Kollwitz - 1969
    "Death as a Friend," showing a man greeting his death as an old friend, with a hysterical mixture of joy and terror. "The People," in which a mother shields her offspring from phantoms of hate, poverty, and ignorance — and symbolizes woman as creator, begetter of the human race, link between past and future.These works represent the recurrent themes which most characterize the work of Käthe Kollwitz: social consciousness and a sense of the suffering of mankind, an urge to voice the basic maternal attitude, and a preoccupation with death. She has been called a propagandist, a crusader, yet her art is essentially apolitical. Her concern was not with partisan causes, but rather with universal rights.Fundamentally a dramatic artist, Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) brought to each of her works an uncanny ability to evoke human emotions through subtle gestures and facial expressions. The reactions of her characters were psychologically true primarily because she tested them on herself.The present collection contains 83 of Mrs. Kollwitz's finest works, including the last great print cycles: "The Weavers" of 1898; "The Peasant War" of 1908; "War" of 1925; and "Death" of 1935. These selections provide a full panorama of Mrs. Kollwitz's development as a master of the graphic techniques of etching, woodcutting and lithography. Over 69 of the illustrations have been rephotographed from the original works specially for this edition, and new techniques in photolithography and a larger format have resulted in reproductions that are as close as possible to the prints and drawings themselves.

Egon Schiele


Frank Whitford - 1981
    Rejected by his family, hounded by society for his interest in young girls, he expressed through his art a deep and bewildering loneliness and an obsession with sexuality, death and decay. He was only twenty-eight when he died, yet he left behind him a body of work that sustains a huge public reputation--and a myth. This book sets out to examine both. 151 illus., 20 in color.

Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock


Henry Adams - 2009
    The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, trailblazing Abstract Expressionist, appear to be the polar opposite of Thomas Hart Benton’s highly figurative Americana. Yet the two men had a close and highly charged relationship dating from Pollock’s days as a student under Benton. Pollock’s first and only formal training came from Benton, and the older man soon became a surrogate father to Pollock. In true Oedipal fashion, Pollock even fell in love with Benton’s wife.Pollock later broke away from his mentor artistically, rocketing to superstardom with his stunning drip compositions. But he never lost touch with Benton or his ideas—in fact, his breakthrough abstractions reveal a strong debt to Benton’s teachings. In an epic story that ranges from the cafés and salons of Gertrude Stein’s Paris to the highways of the American West, Henry Adams, acclaimed author of Eakins Revealed, unfolds a poignant personal drama that provides new insights into two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

The journey is the destination : the journals of Dan Eldon


Dan Eldon - 1997
    This sensitive celebration of the remarkable life of Reuters' youngest photographer is filled with 17 journals, replicated collages of writings, drawings and photographs.

The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District


James Rebanks - 2015
    James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the fells.

Uncle Tungsten


Oliver Sacks - 2001
    He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy’s adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind.

Among the Thugs


Bill Buford - 1990
    They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

Bernini


Howard Hibbard - 1966
    He has left his greatest mark on Rome where Papal patronage provided him with enormous architectural commissions.TABLE OF CONTENTSBerniniList of PlatesList of Text FiguresForewordIntroduction1. The Prodigy2. Bernini in Command3. Disaster and Triumph4. Two Churches and St. Peter’s5. Le Cavalier en France6. The Late WorksBibliographical NoteNotes to the TextIndex

A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War


David Boyd Haycock - 2009
    From diverse backgrounds, they met at The Slade in London between 1908 and 1910, in what was later described as the school’s “last crisis of brilliance.” Between 1910 and 1918 they loved, talked, and fought; they admired, conspired, and sometimes disparaged each others’ artistic creations. They created new movements; they frequented the most stylish cafés and restaurants and founded a nightclub; they slept with their models and with prostitutes; and their love affairs descended into obsession, murder, and suicide.

Travelling to Infinity


Jane Hawking - 1999
    In this compelling memoir, his first wife, Jane Hawking, relates the inside story of their extraordinary marriage. As Stephen's academic renown soared, his body was collapsing under the assaults of a motor neuron disease. Jane's candid account of trying to balance his 24-hour care with the needs of their growing family reveals the inner strength of the author, while the self-evident character and achievements of her husband make for an incredible tale presented with unflinching honesty. Jane's candor is no less apparent when the marriage finally ends in a high-profile meltdown, with Stephen leaving Jane for one of his nurses and Jane marrying an old family friend. In this exceptionally open, moving, and often funny memoir, Jane Hawking confronts not only the acutely complicated and painful dilemmas of her first marriage, but also the relationship's fault lines exposed by the pervasive effects of fame and wealth. The result is a book about optimism, love, and change that will resonate with readers everywhere.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman


Sam Wasson - 2010
    Here, for the first time, Sam Wasson presents the woman behind the little black dress that rocked the nation in 1961. The first complete account of the making of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. reveals little-known facts about the cinema classic: Truman Capote desperately wanted Marilyn Monroe for the leading role; director Blake Edwards filmed multiple endings; Hepburn herself felt very conflicted about balancing the roles of mother and movie star. With a colorful cast of characters including Truman Capote, Edith Head, Givenchy, "Moon River" composer Henry Mancini, and, of course, Hepburn herself, Wasson immerses us in the America of the late fifties before Woodstock and birth control, when a not-so-virginal girl by the name of Holly Golightly raised eyebrows across the country, changing fashion, film, and sex for good. Indeed, cultural touchstones like Sex and the City owe a debt of gratitude to Breakfast at Tiffany's.In this meticulously researched gem of a book, Wasson delivers us from the penthouses of the Upper East Side to the pools of Beverly Hills, presenting Breakfast at Tiffany's as we have never seen it before—through the eyes of those who made it. Written with delicious prose and considerable wit, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. shines new light on a beloved film and its incomparable star.