Book picks similar to
Bridge of Light by J. Hoberman


non-fiction
religion
big-pile-of-non-fiction
film-history

Auschwitz: The camp of disappearing men.


Scholastic Inc. - 2015
    All these memories are still haunting me and I often get lost in day dreaming about the horrible past.

In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles


Chris Welles Feder - 2009
    Many books have been written about him, detailing his achievements as an artist as well his foibles as a human being. None of them, however, has gotten so close to the real man as does Chris Welles Feder's beautifully realized portrait of her father. In My Father's Shadow is a classic story of a life lived in the public eye, told with affection and the wide-eyed wonder of a daughter who never stopped believing that someday she would truly know and understand her elusive and larger-than-life father. The result is a moving and insightful look at life in the shadow of a legendary figure and an immensely entertaining story of growing up in the unreal reality of Hollywood, enhanced by Welles Feder's collection of many never-before-seen family photographs.

Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950


Mark A. Vieira - 2016
    Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films.Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking readers on a year-by-year tour of the exciting nights when movies like Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Sunset Boulevard were sprung on an unsuspecting public. For the first time, we hear the voices of film noir artists speak from the sets and offices of the studios, explaining the dark genre, even before it had a name. Those voices tell how the genre was born and how it thrived in an industry devoted to sweetness and light.Into the Dark is a ticket to a smoky, glamorous world. You enter a story conference with Raymond Chandler, visit the set of Laura, and watch Detour with a Midwest audience. This volume recreates the environment that spawned film noir. It also displays the wit and warmth of the genre's artists. Hedda Hopper reports on Citizen Kane, calling Orson Welles "Little Orson Annie." Lauren Bacall says she enjoys playing a bad girl in To Have and Have Not. Bosley Crowther calls Joan Crawford in Possessed a "ghost wailing for a demon lover beneath a waning moon." An Indiana exhibitor rates the classic Murder, My Sweet a "passable program picture." Illustrated by hundreds of rare still photographs, Into the Dark conveys the mystery, glamour, and irony that make film noir surpassingly popular.About TCM:Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. It engages, entertains, and enlightens to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.

Tallulah!


Joel Lobenthal - 2004
    In 1917, a fifteen-year-old Bankhead boldly left her established Alabama political family and fled to New York City to sate her relentless need for attention and become a star. Five years later, she crossed the Atlantic, immediately taking her place as a fixture in British society and the most popular actress in London's West End. By the time she returned to America in the 1930s, she was infamous for throwing marathon parties, bedding her favorite costars, and neglecting to keep her escapades a secret from the press. At times, her notoriety distracted her audience from her formidable talent and achievements on stage and dampened the critical re-sponse to her work. As Bankhead herself put it, "they like me to 'Tallulah,' you know -- dance and sing and romp and fluff my hair and play reckless parts." Still, her reputation as a wild, witty, over-the-top leading lady persisted until the end of her life at the age of sixty-six.From her friendships with such entertainment luminaries as Tennessee Williams, Estelle Winwood, Billie Holiday, Noël Coward, and Marlene Dietrich, to the intimate details of her family relationships and her string of doomed romances, Joel Lobenthal has captured the private essence of the most public star during theater's golden age. Larger-than-life as she was, friends saw through Bankhead's veneer of humor and high times to the heart of a woman who often felt second-best in her father's eyes, who longed for the children she was unableto bear, and who forced herself into the spotlight to hide her deep-seated insecurities.Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews, as well as previously untapped information from Scotland Yard and the FBI, this is the essential biography of Tallulah Bankhead. Having spent twenty-five years researching Bankhead's life, Joel Lobenthal tells her unadulterated story, as told to him by her closest friends, enemies, lovers, and employees. Several have broken decadelong silences; many have given Lobenthal their final interviews. The result is the story of a woman more complex, more shocking, and yet more nuanced than her notorious legend suggests.

India an Introduction


Khushwant Singh - 1990
    Khushwant Singh tells the story of the land and its people from the earliest time to the present day. In broad, vivid sweeps he encapsulates the saga of the upheavals of a sub-continent over five millennia, and how their interplay over the centuries has molded the India of today. More, Khushwant Singh offers perceptive insights into everything Indian that may catch one's eye or arouse curiosity: its ethnic diversity, religions, customs, philosophy, art and culture, political currents, and the galaxy of men and women who have helped shape its intricately inlaid mosaic. He is also an enlightening guide to much else: India's extensive and varied architectural splendors, its art and classical literature. Khushwant Singh's own fascination with the subject is contagious, showing through on every page, and in every sidelight that he recounts. India: An Introduction holds strong appeal for just about anyone who has more than a passing interest in the country, Indians as well as those who are drawn to it from farther afield. And for a traveller, it is that rare companion: erudite, intelligent, lively

Five Lectures on Reincarnation


Abhedananda - 1996
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror


W. Scott Poole - 2018
    Scott Poole traces the confluence of history, technology, and art that gave us modern horror films and literatureIn the early twentieth century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of ways. The Great War remade the world’s map, created new global powers, and brought forth some of the biggest problems still facing us today. But it also birthed a new art form: the horror film, made from the fears of a generation ruined by war.From Nosferatu to Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man, from Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, and Albin Grau to Tod Browning and James Whale, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War. Historian W. Scott Poole chronicles these major figures and the many movements they influenced. Wasteland reveals how bloody battlefields, the fear of the corpse, and a growing darkness made their way into the deepest corners of our psyche.On the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the armistice that brought World War I to a close, W. Scott Poole takes us behind the front lines of battle to a no-man’s-land where the legacy of the War to End All Wars lives on.

Ken Burns: The Kindle Singles Interview (Kindle Single)


Tom Roston - 2014
    In this illuminating, in-depth Q & A, “America’s storyteller” lets readers in on his philosophical approach to understanding our nation’s past, as well as a little family secret for overcoming your fears.Tom Roston is a veteran journalist who began his career at The Nation and Vanity Fair magazines, before working at Premiere magazine as a senior editor. He writes a regular blog about nonfiction filmmaking on PBS.org and he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. He lives with his wife and their two daughters in New York City. Cover design by Adil Dara.

Martin Scorsese: A Journey


Mary Pat Kelly - 1991
    - Includes a section on the making of the much-anticipated Gangs of New York starring Leonardo DiCaprio- With an updated chronology, filmography, and index

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, with a Complete Filmography of Their Films Together


Gregory William Mank - 1990
    Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff starred in dozens of black-and-white horror films, and over the years managed to collaborate on and co-star in eight movies. Through dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, this greatly expanded new edition examines the Golden Age of Hollywood, the era in which both stars worked, recreates the shooting of Lugosi and Karloff's mutual films, examines their odd and moving personal relationship and analyzes their ongoing legacies. Features include a fully detailed filmography of the eight Karloff and Lugosi films, full summaries of both men's careers and more than 250 photographs, some in color.

Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause


Lawrence Frascella - 2005
    For the first time, Live Fast, Die Young tells the complete story of the explosive making of Rebel, a film that has rocked every generation since its release. Set against a backdrop of the Atomic Age and an old Hollywood studio system on the verge of collapse, it vividly evokes the cataclysmic, immensely influential meeting of four of Hollywood's most passionate artists. When James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray converged, each was at a crucial point in his or her career. The young actors were grappling with fame, their burgeoning sexuality, and increasingly reckless behavior. As Ray engaged his cast in physical melees and psychosexual seductions of startling intensity, the on- and off-set relationships between his ambitious young actors ignited, sending a shock wave through the film. Through interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel reveal Rebel's true drama -- the director's affair with sixteen-year-old Wood, his tempestuous "spiritual marriage" with Dean, and his role in awakening the latent homosexuality of Mineo, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film. Complete with thirty photographs, including ten never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock, Live Fast, Die Young tells the absorbing inside story of an unforgettable and absolutely essential American film -- a story that is, in many ways, as provocative as the film itself.

Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam: From Before Python to Beyond Fear and Loathing


Bob McCabe - 1999
    Since 1969, when he became the only American among the otherwise all-British Monty Python team. Terry Gilliam's work has won plaudits and acclaim for its originality and imagination. His films are renowned for the quality of performances from some of Hollywood's top acting talent, such as Robert de Niro, Brad Pitt, Robin Williams and Johnny Depp.For the first time, this book traces thirty years of the work and art of Terry Gilliam, from his pre-Python days through to the astounding adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, released in 1998.Using Gilliam's own drawings, storyboard and scripts, this book builds to a complete overview of the director's work, examining in detail his striking visual sense ad labyrinthing stories of Man against bureaucracy (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys), triumphant tales of imagination winning over mediocrity (Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King) and, of course, something completely different (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

Sahir Ludhianvi - The peoples poet


Akshay Manwani - 2013
    So great was his stature as an Urdu poet that he never had to mould his poetry to suit the demands of film songwriting; instead, producers and composers adapted their requirements to his poetry. His songs in films like Pyaasa, Naya Daur and Phir Subah Hogi have attained the status of classics. This exhaustive biography traces the poet’s rich life, from his troubled childhood and his equally troubled love relationships, to his rise as one of the pre-eminent personalities of the Progressive Writers Movement and his journey as lyricist through the golden era of Hindi film music, the 1950s and 1960s.

Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior


Mark Rathbun - 2013
    This autobiographical history of Scientology is told by one of L. Ron Hubbard’s staunchest defenders.

Cary Grant: A Touch of Elegance


Warren G. Harris - 1988
    Cary Grant...Hollywood's ultimate ladies' man...the silver screen's most ardent lover. But beyond his portrayal of the sophisticated romantic hero in movies like "The Philadelphia Story" and "Notorious" was a man haunted by fear and self-doubt which affected his career as well as his personal life.