Book picks similar to
Soul of the Desert by Stephen D. Hopper


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Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma's Fabulous Flaming Lips


Jim DeRogatis - 2006
    The album sold a million copies worldwide, introduced the Flaming Lips to a mass audience, and made them one of the best-known cult bands in rock history.Staring at Sound is the tale of the Flaming Lips's fascinating career (which, in reality, began in 1983) and the many colorful personalities in their orbit, especially Wayne Coyne, their charismatic and visionary founder. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, it follows the Flaming Lips through the thriving indie-rock underground of the 1980s and the alternative-rock movement of the early '90s, during which they found fans in such rock legends as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, and Devo, and respected peers in such acts as the White Stripes, Radiohead, and Beck. It concludes with exclusive coverage of the creation of the group's latest album, At War with the Mystics.

Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality Among a Saharan People: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara


Rebecca Popenoe - 2003
    Feeding Desire analyses this beauty ideal in the context of Islam, conceptions of health, and notions of desire Full description

Dress Code: The Naked Truth About Fashion


Mari Grinde Arntzen - 2014
    In this book, Mari Grinde Arntzen asks how and why this is—how can fashion simultaneously attract us to its glamour and repel us with its superficiality and how being called “fashionable” can be at once a compliment and an insult. Arntzen guides us through the major figures and brands of today’s fashion industry, showing how they shape us and in turn why we love to be shaped by them. She examines both everyday, affordable “fast fashion” brands, as well as the luxury market, to show how fashion commands a powerful influence on every socioeconomic level of our society. Stepping into our closets with us, she thinks about what happens when we get dressed: why fashion can make us feel powerful, beautiful, and original at the same time that it forces us into conformity. Stripping off the layers of the world’s fifth largest industry, garment by garment, she holds fashion up as a phenomenon, business, and art, exploring the questions it forces us to ask about the body, image, celebrity, and self-obsession. Ultimately, Arntzen asks the most direct question: what is fashion? How has it taken such a powerful hold on the world, forever propelling us toward its concepts of beauty?

The Shifting Light


Alice Campion - 2017
    She’s transformed her rundown outback property, The Springs, into a successful artists’ retreat; she’s won a distinguished art prize, and she’s living with her soulmate, trail-blazing grazier Heath Blackett.But the chance discovery of a portrait of her father, renowned artist Jim Larkin, makes her question everything. How could it have been drawn just weeks ago when Jim has been dead for years . . . Or so she thought.Could her father still be alive? Can she track down the man in the picture? And is this connected to the missing gold buried by her ancestor over a century ago?Her search for answers will draw Nina into a maze of family secrets – just as the man who stepped out of a portrait arrives at her door . . .Alice Campion is the pseudonym for four members of a Sydney book club. Their first novel, The Painted Sky, also features Nina, Heath and the captivating landscape of outback Wangalla.

Brothers: From Childhood To Oasis: The Real Story


Paul Gallagher - 1996
    Paul Gallagher, the elder brother of Noel and Liam, discusses their childhood, their father, their musical beginnings and their rise to fame, as well as considering their future.

Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, And 5 Generations Of American Experimental Composers


William Duckworth - 1995
    Herein, John Cage recalls the turning point in his career; Ben Johnston criticizes the operas of his teacher Harry Partch; La Monte Young attributes his creative discipline to a Morman childhood; and much more. The results are revelatory conversations with some of America's most radical musical innovators.

Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir


Ezra Pound - 1916
    An enlarged edition, including thirty pages of illustrations (sculpture and drawings) as well as Pound's later pieces on Gaudier, was brought out in 1970, and is now re-issued as an ND Paperbook. The memoir is valuable both for the history of modern art and for what it shows us of Pound himself, his ability to recognize genius in others and then to publicize it effectively. Would there today be a Salle Gaudier-Brzeska in the Musée de L'Art Moderne in Paris if Pound had not championed him? Gaudier's talent was impressive and his Vorticist aesthetic important as theory, but he was killed in World War I at the age of twenty-three, leaving only a small body of work. Pound knew Gaudier in London, where the young artist had come with his companion, the Polish-born Sophie Brzeska. whose name he added to his own. They were living in poverty when Pound bought Gaudier the stone from which the famous "hieratic head" of the poet was made. Pound arranged exhibitions and for the publication of Gaudier's manifestoes in Blast and The Egoist. And he wrote and sent packages to him in the trenches, where Gaudier––a sculptor to the last––carved a madonna and child from the butt of a captured German rifle, just two days before he died.

The Crow: The Story Behind the Film


Bridget Baiss - 2000
    Now, ten years after the original film’s release, the full story of this seemingly cursed production can finally be told...  In The Crow’s last days of filming, its star Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee) was killed in a strange on-set accident, while filming his character’s death scene. Bridget Baiss describes the chain of events which led from O’Barr’s creation of the graphic novel, up to this fateful day, and beyond, to the film’s final, triumphant release. The definitive account of The Crow’s production and the phenomenon it became, packed with scores of interviews with the film’s cast and crew.

Venom: Vendettas, Betrayals and the Price of Power


David Crowe - 2019
    They plotted. They schemed. They unleashed chaos.Australia lost two prime ministers in three years in a period of political bloodshed that took the nation's government to the brink of collapse - until an extraordinary election changed everything.Venom is the secret history of the brutal power play to lead the government. It sheds new light on the fall of Tony Abbott, the rise of Malcolm Turnbull and the electrifying leadership spill that brought parliament to a halt in August 2018. In a day-by-day account, it reveals the strategy Scott Morrison used to defeat his opponents and claim ultimate authority.David Crowe reported these events for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as they unfolded. Using more than one hundred interviews with the participants, he tells an epic story of revenge, hatred and the ruthless pursuit of power. And he asks whether the future holds any peace when the past is so full of poison.PRAISE'David Crowe is both wise guide and sage interpreter in this gripping journey through the angry years of Australian politics' Chris Uhlmann'David Crowe writes with precision and clarity - dissecting the characters, deep rivalries and ideological wars that churned through three Liberal Prime Ministers' Patricia Karvelas'A compelling read about a time of Liberal madness' Michelle Grattan'Crowe's book is as good a piece of modern political history as you'll find. It has some failings' Dennis Atkins, The Australian'... a 21st-century contribution to the [revenge tragedy] genre' Jeff Sparrow, Sydney Morning Herald / The Age

Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon


B. Kliban - 1982
    Brilliantly drawn and bitterly funny, these cartoons thoroughly demonstrate better living through plywood, reaffirm that what's good for business is good for America-even if Your Government in Action has taken to the streets-the Madonna is out of order and Yoga has been made silly. 122,000 copies in print.

Some of Me


Isabella Rossellini - 1997
    The model and actress describes life with her famed parents, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, her acting and modeling careers, the men in her life, and other personal relationships.

Over There: War Scenes on the Western Front (Collected Works of Arnold Bennett)


Arnold Bennett - 1915
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Visions Before Midnight


Clive James - 1977
    It needs flannel in lengthy widths, and it's here that Harry and Alan come through like a whole warehouse full of pyjamas) to the 1976 Olympics ('Jenkins has a lot to do' was a new way of saying that our man, of whom we had such high hopes, was not going to pull out the big one). In between we have 'War and Peace' (Tolstoy makes television history), the Royal Wedding (Dimbling suavely, Tom Fleming introduced the scene), the Winter Olympics (unintelligibuhl), the Eurovision Song Contest (The Hook of their song lasted a long time in the mind, like a kick in the knee. You could practically hear the Koreans singing it. 'Waterloo . . .' ), and much more.

The Roaring Silence: John Cage: A Life


David Revill - 1992
    His work and ideas - about silence, indeterminacy, nonintention, art's role in bringing the everyday object to our attention, the singularity of performance - have had influence not only in the world of music but also in dance, painting, printmaking, video art, and poetry. As an exponent of Zen Buddhism since the early fifties, he has had an important role in introducing Zen spirituality to the American artworld and general culture. Among his friends and collaborators have been longtime associate Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Duchamp, Morton Feldman, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Those who have acknowledged his influence in their work range from minimalist composer Philip Glass to rock musicians David Byrne and Brian Eno. The Roaring Silence is the first full-length biography of John Cage. Written with Cage's full cooperation, it documents his life in unrivaled detail, interweaving a close account of the evolution of his work with an exploration of his aesthetic and philosophical ideas. David Revill never assumes specialist knowledge on the part of the reader, but sets Cage's work in the context of his personal development and contemporary culture. He draws on numerous interviews with Cage and his associates. Paying due attention to Cage's inventions, such as the prepared piano, and his pioneering use of indeterminate notation and chance operations in composition (utilizing the I Ching), Revill also illuminates Cage the performer, printmaker, watercolorist, expert amateur mycologist, game show celebrity, and political anarchist, and discusses his pronouncements on social and environmental issues. The biography includes comprehensive chronologies of his musical and visual works. Arnold Schoenberg once called Cage, his former student, "not a composer but an inventor - of genius." David Revill shows how this multifacete

First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting: 24 Projects for Fearless Stitching


Christina Cameli - 2013
    With a refreshingly new approach to free-motion stitching, First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting encourages you to make something beautiful while improving your free-motion quilting skills. You'll find 24 projects and quilts that are light on assembly so you can spend most of your time stitching. A handy troubleshooting guide ensures success every step of the way.