Detailing his life, his lovers, and his ideas on matters high and low, The Japan Journals is a record of both a nation and an evolving expatriate sensibility. As Japan modernizes and as the author ages, the tone grows elegiac, and The Japan Journals—now in paperback after the critically acclaimed hardcover edition—becomes a bittersweet chronicle of a complicated life well lived and captivatingly told.Donald Richie, the eminent film historian, novelist, and essayist, still lives in Tokyo.

    In this new biography, the first since the poet’s death in 1997 and the only one to cover his entire life, Bill Morgan creates the most complete portrait to date of Ginsberg. Drawing on his unparalleled access to Ginsberg’s inner circle as well as on the poet’s journals and correspondence, Morgan offers a revealing portrait of a complicated and flamboyant character. Ginsberg was a tenacious man who was driven by ambition and curiosity; he was plagued by self-doubt and always longed for acceptance and recognition. He also had a genius for living and networking and for expressing himself candidly; his love for freedom and equality was uncompromising. Morgan examines Ginsberg’s life and his tremendous impact on society from many different angles: his political views, his battles with censorship, and his approach to drugs. He also provides a more accurate picture than previously told of Ginsberg’s search for love (including his complex relationship with his lifelong partner, Peter Orlovsky) and of his involvement with Tibetan Buddhism. This definitive and engaging life of Ginsberg also includes a unique feature—it lists the titles of Ginsberg’s poems in the margins so that the reader can see exactly what he was writing at any point in his life.

    He believes Christians should confront society and the church with the powerful impact art can convey. He believes art can faithfully chronicle the lives of ordinary people and equally express the transcendence of God. He believes that Christians should be involved in every level of the art world and in every media. Yet art and artists have not always been held in high esteem by conservative Christians. Art rarely seems to communicate clear propositional truth, rarely deals with certainties and absolutes. And the lifestyles of artists too frequently seem at odds with the gospel. So the arts have often been discouraged among Christians. Throughout this stimulating book, however, Turner builds a compelling case against such a perspective. He shows that if Jesus is Lord of all of life and creation, then art is not out of bounds for Christians. Rather it can and should be a way of expressing faith in creatively, beautifully, truthfully arranged words, sounds and sights. This stirring call is must reading for every Christian who has been drawn to the arts or been influenced by them.

    All his life Don had been too shy, too deeply pained to ask his father or grandparents to tell him the story of the lovely girl named Peggy Snyder--what delighted or troubled her, who her friends were, how she fell in love, what cut short her brief life.But then, nearing his fiftieth birthday and compelled by his father's failing health, Snyder embarked on a quest to find his mother. He traveled many times from his home in Maine down to his mother's small Pennsylvania town to trace her childhood and adolescence. He tracked down Peggy's high school friends, spent time with her teachers, probed the memories of the girls--now elderly women-- who had been her bridesmaids. Detail by detail, Don pieced together the harrowing story of Peggy's final year--her passionate love affair with her husband, the unexpected pregnancy, the sudden illness that consumed her, and the impossible choice she was forced to make.A heartbreaking, overwhelmingly beautiful book, Of Time and Memory is a story of remembering--and reclaiming--the fragile mystery of a beloved life.

    Split Image insightfully and comprehensively documents the life of Anthony Perkins, who was forced to act the part of a sexy ladies' man while privately struggling with his own homosexuality. Years of careful research and more than 300 interviews with prominent Hollywood figures went into this insightful book. of photos.

    Illustrated throughout with behind-the-scenes photos.

    Luminous, witty, and provocative, the essays address such topics as "The Attic of the Brain," "Falsity and Failure," "Altruism," and the effects the federal government's virtual abandonment of support for basic scientific research will have on medicine and science.Profoundly and powerfully, Thomas questions the folly of nuclear weaponry, showing that the brainpower and money spent on this endeavor are needed much more urgently for the basic science we have abandoned--and that even medicine's most advanced procedures would be useless or insufficient in the face of the smallest nuclear detonation. And in the title essay, he addresses himself with terrifying poignancy to the question of what it is like to be young in the nuclear age."If Wordsworth had gone to medical school, he might have produced something very like the essays of Lewis Thomas."--TIME "No one better exemplifies what modern medicine can be than Lewis Thomas."--The New York Times Book Review

    And now Jon Franklin, himself a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and undisputed master of the great American nonfiction short story, shares the secrets of his success. Franklin shows how to make factual pieces come alive by applying the literary techniques of complication/resolution, flashback, foreshadowing, and pace. He illustrates his points with a close analysis and annotation of two of his most acclaimed stories, so that the reader can see, step-by-step, just how they were created. This lively, easy-to-follow guid combines readability and excitement with the best of expository prose and illuminates the techniques that beginning journalists—and more experienced ones, too—will find immensely helpful:Stalking the true short storyDrafting an effective outlineStructuring the rough copyPolishing like a proand the tips, tools, and techniques that will put your stories on the cutting edge

    Isherwood takes the reader from the bohemian sunshine of Southern California to a London finally swinging free of post-war gloom, to the racy cosmopolitanism of New York and to the raw Australian outback. He charts his ongoing quest for spiritual certainty under the guidance of his Hindu guru, and he reveals in reckless detail the emotional drama of his love for the American painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior and struggling to establish his own artistic identity.The diaries are crammed with wicked gossip and probing psychological insights about the cultural icons of the time—Francis Bacon, Richard Burton, Leslie Caron, Marianne Faithfull, David Hockney, Mick Jagger, Hope Lange, W. Somerset Maugham, John Osborne, Vanessa Redgrave, Tony Richardson, David O. Selznick, Igor Stravinsky, Gore Vidal, and many others. But the diaries are most revealing about Isherwood himself—his fiction (including A Single Man and Down There on a Visit), his film writing, his college teaching, and his affairs of the heart. He moves easily from Beckett to Brando, from arthritis to aggression, from Tennessee Williams to foot powder, from the opening of Cabaret on Broadway (which he skipped) to a close analysis of Gide.In the background run references to the political and historical events of the period: the anxieties of the Cold War, Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight, de Gaulle and Algeria, the eruption of violence in America's inner cities, the Vietnam War, the Summer of Love, the moon landing, and the raising and lowering of hemlines. Isherwood is well known for his prophetic portraits of a morally bankrupt Europe on the eve of World War II; in this unparalleled chronicle, The Sixties, he turns his fearless eye on the decade that more than any other has shaped the way we live now.

    Once back in Yorkshire, he writes through the night to his young wife Becka and baby daughter Noor, and tries to explain, in a story full of affection and yearning, what has happened to him -- and why he has a devastating new sense of home. 'What Sahota creates is not an exploration of the psyche of a suicide bomber, but an exploration of a man' Yorkshire Post 'Startling. This book successfully humanizes one of the great demons of contemporary society, and for that, Sunjeev Sahota should be given a high five off the Queen or something' Dazed and Confused, 'Book of the Month' 'Imtiaz's journey to Pakistan, and his sense of belonging, gives the novel much of its eloquence. Great literary promise' Independent 'Excruciatingly well-written' Guardian 'The book's great force lies in its voice: that of a young man straining to express instincts, fears and emotional conflicts, lending his writing a distinctive vibrancy' Observer 'An acute debut. What is most chilling, and most successful, is that it all seems so familiar, so close and so easy' Sunday Times

    Painter, filmmaker, photographer, philosopher, Warhol was both celebrity and celebrant, the man who put the "pop" in art. His studio, The Factory, where his free-spirited cast of "superstars" mingled with the rich and famous, was ground zero for the explosions that rocked American cultural life. And yet for all his fame, Warhol was an enigma: a participant in the excesses of his time who remained a faithful churchgoer, a nearly inarticulate man who was also a great aphorist ("In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes"), an artist whose body of work sizzles with sexuality but whose own body was a source of shame and self-hatred.In his bravura account of Warhol's life and work, scholar and culture critic Wayne Koestenbaum gets past the contradictions and reveals the man beneath the blond wig and dark glasses. Nimbly weaving brilliant and witty analysis into an absorbing narrative, Koestenbaum makes a convincing case for Warhol as a serious artist, one whose importance goes beyond the sixties. Focusing on Warhol's provocative, powerful films (many of which have been out of circulation since their initial release), Koestenbaum shows that Warhol's oeuvre, in its variety of form (films, silkscreens, books, "happenings"), maintains a striking consistency of theme: Warhol discovered in classic American images (Brillo boxes, Campbell soup cans, Marilyn's face) a secret history, the erotic of time and space.

    It also contains reminiscences of some of Cocteau's closet friends, including Nijinsky and Marcel Proust, and provides revealing insights into the creation of such masterpieces as Orphee and Les Enfants Terribles.

     He awoke five days later with to learn of the catastrophic loss of his two friends and both of his legs. Recovering physically presented a great challenge, but the mental recovery was the toughest battle. For three and a half months he never left the hospital because he didn't want people to see his injured body. In One Step at a Time, Bleill shares the story of his own personal redemption and the many life-changing moments he encountered, from his enlistment to active duty in Fallujah, through two years of intensive rehabilitation, and ultimately to his job as the community spokesman for the Indianapolis Colts. Readers will be inspired by his undying enthusiasm, infectious joy, and sense of humor as he shares his message of going forward, one step at a time.

    Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, the Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, Prodigal Summer. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The Bean Trees, first published in 1988, is the first book written by Barbara Kingsolver, followed by a sequel Pigs in Heaven. The protagonist of the novel, Taylor Greer, a native of Kentucky, finds herself in Oklahoma near Cherokee territory. The novel begins with a woman leaving a Cherokee infant with Taylor. The remainder of the novel traces the experiences of Taylor and the child, whom Taylor has named Turtle. Covering Turtle's early childhood, the story includes a colorful cast of characters, including a Guatemalan couple and Mattie, the owner of Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. The novel also makes reference to the issue of Native American parental rights. The Bean Trees opens in rural Kentucky. Taylor goes on to tell the story of how she is scared of tires. Taylor was the one to escape small-town life. She did so by avoiding pregnancy, getting a job working at the hospital, and saving up enough money to buy herself an old Volkswagen bug. About five years after high school graduation, she decides to go on a journey to see what life has to offer her. Her car breaks down in the middle of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. As she sits in her car, getting ready to leave, a woman approaches and puts a baby in the front seat of Taylors car, telling her to take it. She tells Taylor she is the sister of the childs mother and that the baby was born in a Plymouth car. The woman leaves with no further explanation. Taylor is bewildered, but drives off with the child. They go to a hotel, and while bathing the baby, Taylor discovers that the baby, a girl, has been abused and sexually molested. She names the baby Tur...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=138820

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