Book picks similar to
Within the Fairy Castle: Colleen Moore's Doll House at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago by Terry Ann R. Neff
nonfiction
non-fiction
art
photography
Jazz Age Beauties: The Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston
Robert Hudovernik - 2006
While some took their vote and joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement, others, well, took liberties. Compiled here for the first time are more than 200 publicity stills and photos of some of America's first "It" girls—the silent film-era starlets who paved the way for the cacophony of Monroes and Madonnas to follow. Accompanying these iconic images are the stories behind them, including accounts from surviving Ziegfeld Girls, as well as ads featuring them that helped perpetuate the allure of It girl glamour. When rare and striking portraits of these women surfaced on the internet in 1995, author Robert Hudovernik began researching their source. What he discovered was the work of one of the first "star makers" identified most with the Ziegfeld Follies, Alfred Cheney Johnston. Johnston, a member of New York's famous Algonquin Round Table who photographed such celebrities as Mary Pickford, Fanny Brice, the Gish Sisters, and Louise Brooks, fell out of the spotlight with the demise of the revue. A sumptuous snapshot of an era, this book is also a look at the work of this "lost" photographer.
Elly: My True Story of the Holocaust
Elly Berkovits Gross - 2007
On the day they arrived at Auschwitz, a soldier directed Elly to the right; her mother and brother were sent to the left. She never saw her family alive again. Elly later learned that her father also had been killed in a forced-labor camp.
Jazz Day: The Making of a Famous Photograph
Roxane Orgill - 2016
Could he pull it off? In a captivating collection of poems, Roxane Orgill steps into the frame of Harlem 1958, bringing to life the musicians’ mischief and quirks, their memorable style, and the vivacious atmosphere of a Harlem block full of kids on a hot summer’s day. Francis Vallejo’s vibrant, detailed, and wonderfully expressive paintings do loving justice to the larger-than-life quality of jazz musicians of the era. Includes bios of several of the fifty-seven musicians, an author’s note, sources, a bibliography, and a foldout of Art Kane’s famous photograph.
A Death in Belmont
Sebastian Junger - 2006
Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues.On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo—the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimes—is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers' home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide—and ultimately are destroyed—in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.
Chicken with Plums
Marjane Satrapi - 2004
His beloved tar has been broken. But no matter what tar he tries, none of them sound right. Brokenhearted, Nasser Ali Khan decides that life is no longer worth living. He takes to his bed, renouncing the world and all of its pleasures. This is the story of the eight days he spends preparing to surrender his soul.
Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words
George Barris - 1995
No one walked like her. No one talked like her. Sexy yet vulnerable, and unexpectedly talented, she was no ordinary screen goddess. Few really knew her. What others wrote, she called "Lies! Lies! Lies!"Here, at last, is Marilyn Monroe's account, in her own singular voice. It was June 1, 1962, her thirty-sixth birthday. Famed photographer and reporter George Barris had come to see Marilyn on the set of what would be her final, unfinished, film. They had met eight years earlier, became friends, and planned to do a picture book and autobiography. Now the time was right. For the next six weeks Barris photographed and interviewed the actress. "Don't believe anything you read about me except this..." she told Barris. And so she began to confide the truth about herself.Barris last talked to Marilyn on August 3, less than twenty-four hours before she was found dead in her apartment. At their last meeting, she was effervescent and eager to embrace life. "I feel I’m just getting started", she said. Barris firmly believes that murder, not suicide, caused Marilyn's untimely end and he could not bring himself to publish her thoughts or the haunting photos of that summer - until now."Marilyn: Her Life In Her Own Words" is a candid memoir enhanced by 150 black-and-white and color photos, many never before published. A highlight is "The Last Photo Shoot": where Marilyn appears luminous without makeup on the beach at Santa Monica and in a North Hollywood house. This moving book brings Marilyn Monroe back - beautiful, flirtatious, and sweet as a first kiss - for one rare and radiant farewell.
Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics
Dolly Parton - 2020
Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished images from Dolly Parton's personal and business archives.Mining over 60 years of songwriting, Dolly Parton highlights 175 of her songs and brings readers behind the lyrics.• Packed with never-before-seen photographs and classic memorabilia• Explores personal stories, candid insights, and myriad memories behind the songsDolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics reveals the stories and memories that have made Dolly a beloved icon across generations, genders, and social and international boundaries. Containing rare photos and memorabilia from Parton's archives, this book is a show-stopping must-have for every Dolly Parton fan.• Learn the history behind classic Parton songs like "Jolene," "9 to 5," "I Will Always Love You," and more.• The perfect gift for Dolly Parton fans (everyone loves Dolly!) as well as lovers of music history and countryAdd it to the shelf with books like Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, The Beatles Anthology by The Beatles, and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.
Unmasked: A Memoir
Andrew Lloyd Webber - 2018
The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera—Broadway’s longest running show—and most recently, School of Rock. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the revered, award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him.The son of a music professor and a piano teacher, Lloyd Webber reveals his artistic influences, from his idols Rodgers and Hammerstein and the perfection of South Pacific’s “Some Enchanted Evening,” to the pop and rock music of the 1960s and Puccini’s Tosca, to P. G. Wodehouse and T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber recalls his bohemian London youth, reminiscing about the happiest place of his childhood, his homemade Harrington Pavilion—a make-believe world of musical theatre in which he created his earliest entertainments.A record of several exciting and turbulent decades of British and American musical theatre and the transformation of popular music itself, Unmasked is ultimately a chronicle of artistic creation. Lloyd Webber looks back at the development of some of his most famous works and illuminates his collaborations with luminaries such as Tim Rice, Robert Stigwood, Harold Prince, Cameron Mackintosh, and Trevor Nunn. Taking us behind the scenes of his productions, Lloyd Webber reveals fascinating details about each show, including the rich cast of characters involved with making them, and the creative and logistical challenges and artistic political battles that ensued.Lloyd Webber shares his recollections of the works that have become cultural touchstones for generations of fans: writings songs for a school production that would become his first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; finding the coterie of performers for his classic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar; developing his first megahit, Evita, which would win seven Tonys Awards, including Best Musical; staking his reputation and fortune on the groundbreaking Cats; and making history with the dazzling The Phantom of the Opera. Reflecting a life that included many passions (from architecture to Turkish Swimming Cats), full of witty and revealing anecdotes, and featuring cameo appearances by numerous celebrities—Elaine Paige, Sarah Brightman, David Frost, Julie Covington, Judi Dench, Richard Branson, A.R. Rahman, Mandy Patinkin, Patti LuPone, Richard Rodgers, Norman Jewison, Milos Forman, Plácido Domingo, Barbra Streisand, Michael Crawford, Gillian Lynne, Betty Buckley, and more—Unmasked at last reveals the true face of the extraordinary man beneath the storied legend.
I Have Lived a Thousand Years
Livia Bitton-Jackson - 1997
It wasn't long ago that Elli led a normal life; a life rich and full that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet.But these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. First Elli can no longer attend school, have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. Then she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity. Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust somehow, but what Elli doesn't know is that this is only the beginning and the worst is yet to come....A remarkable memoir. I Have Lived a Thousand Years is a story of cruelty and suffering, but at the same time a story of hope, faith, perseverance and love.
The Madeleine Project
Clara Beaudoux - 2017
. . . Words and images, magnified in this book, are woven together in small strokes to create two moving portraits of women." —Lire"A beautiful book that bears witness. An original compilation of traces, thoughts and photos . . . that form the strata of our collective memory." —TéléramaA young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an unsung twentieth-century figure. Along the way, she discovers a Parisian life indelibly marked by European history. This is a graphic novel for the Twitter age, a true story that encapsulates one woman's attempt to live a life of love and meaning together with a contemporary quest to prevent that existence from slipping into oblivion. Through it all, The Madeleine Project movingly chronicles, and allows us to reconstruct, intimate memories of a bygone era.Clara Beaudoux is a Paris-based journalist for the France Info news network. The Madeleine Project has been wildly popular in France. You can follow her on Twitter at @Clarabdx.
The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
Corrie ten Boom - 1971
For the first fifty years of her life nothing at all out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. She was an old-maid watchmaker living contentedly with her spinster sister and their elderly father in the tiny Dutch house over their shop. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, revolved around their abiding love for one another. However, with the Nazi invasion and occupation of Holland, a story did ensue. Corrie ten Boom and her family became leaders in the Dutch Underground, hiding Jewish people in their home in a specially built room and aiding their escape from the Nazis. For their help, all but Corrie found death in a concentration camp. The Hiding Place is their story.
Dust Bowl Diary
Ann Marie Low - 1984
Her diary vividly captures that “gritty nightmare” as it was lived by one rural family—and by millions of other Americans. The books opens in 1927—“the last of the good years”—when Ann Marie is a teenager living with her parents, brother, and sister on a stock farm in southeastern North Dakota. We follow her family and friends, descendants of homesteaders, through the next ten years—a time of searing summer heat and desiccated fields, dying livestock, dust to the tops of fence posts and prices at rock bottom—a time when whole communities lost their homes and livelihoods to mortgages and, hardest of all, to government recovery programs. We also see the coming to maturity of the author in the face of economic hardship, frustrating family circumstances, and the stifling restrictions that society then placed on young women. Ann Marie Low’s diary, supplemented with reminiscences, offers a rich, circumstantial view of rural life a half century ago: planting and threshing before the prevalence of gasoline-powered engines, washing with rain water and ironing with sadirons, hauling coal on sleds over snow-clogged roads, going to end-of-school picnics and country dances, and hoarding the egg and cream money for college. Here, too, is an iconoclastic on-the-scene account of how a federal work project, the construction of a wildlife refuge, actually operated. Many readers will recognize parts of their own past in Ann Marie Low’s story; for others it will serve as a compelling record of the Dust Bowl experience.
Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker
Patricia Hruby Powell - 2013
Louis to the grandest stages in the world. Meticulously researched by both author and artist, Josephine's powerful story of struggle and triumph is an inspiration and a spectacle, just like the legend herself.
The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius
Jan Greenberg - 2013
The world could finally see how unique this artist really was! Born in 1856 in Biloxi, Mississippi, George grew up to the sounds of the civil war and political unrest.When he was 22, his boyhood friend introduced him to the pottery wheel. The lost young man suddenly found his calling. "When I found the potter's wheel I felt it all over like a duck in water." He started creating strangely crafted pots and vases, expressing his creativity and personality through the ceramic sculptures. Eventualy he had thousands at his fingertips. He took them to fairs and art shows, but nobody was buying these odd figures from this bizarre man. Eventually he retired, but not without hiding hundreds of his ceramics. Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, authors of the award winning Ballet for Martha, approach this colorful biography with a gentle and curious hand.
The House of All Sorts
Emily Carr - 1943
But things turned out worse than expected, and in her forties, the gifted artist found herself shoveling coal and cleaning up other people's messes.
The House of All Sorts
is a collection of forty-one stories of those hard-working days and the parade of tenants -- young couples, widows, sad bachelors and rent evaders. Carr is at her most rueful, but filled with energy and an inextinguishable hope.Carr also ran a small kennel and bred bobtails to help out her meagre income. In an additional twenty-five stories, she lovingly describes the mutual bonds of affection and companionship between her and her dogs.Her writing is vital and direct, aware and poignant, and as well regarded today as when
The House of All Sorts
was first published in 1944 to critical and popular acclaim.