Yet the Republic of Venice—and the Venier family’s fortune—began to wane and the project was abandoned, with only one story completed. Luisa Casati. Doris Castlerosse. Peggy Guggenheim. These three women  inhabited the Palazzo at different periods, from the start of the twentieth century to the 1960s. Each came from a different country—an Italian, a Brit, and an American—but they had a surprising amount in common, above and beyond their ownership of the same extraordinary building. Amongst other things, all of them had scandalous lives, a passionate interest in art (although in the case of Luisa Casati, the subject had almost invariably to be herself), a fascination with sex, and a deep love of Venice. And, all surrounded themselves with an amazing supporting cast at so many glamorous parties, from D’Annunzio and Nijinsky, via Noel Coward and Cecil Beaton, to Yoko Ono amongst the Picassos. Mackrell weaves an intricate history of the Unfinished Palazzo, bringing it—and its legendary inhabitants—to life.

    -- and embellishes it with his own ironic humor, brilliant insights, and piercing observations. We meet a vast array of historical figures in a staggering novel of love, war, philosophy, and adventure . . . "There isn't a page of CREATION that doesn't inform and very few pages that do not delight."-- John Leonard, The New York Times

    It is retold alternately through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy who provided kusa grass for the Buddha's enlightenment cushion, and the Buddha himself.

    A crucial figure in the creation of our national parks system and a far-seeing prophet of environmental awareness who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, he was also a master of natural description who evoked with unique power and intimacy the untrammeled landscapes of the American West. The Library of America’s Nature Writings collects his most significant and best-loved works in a single volume.The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913) is Muir’s memoir of growing up by the sea in Scotland, of coming to America with his family at age eleven, and of his early fascination with the natural world. My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) is his famous account of the spiritual awakening he experienced when, in 1869, he first encountered the mountains and valleys of central California, of which he wrote: “Bathed in such beauty, watching the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and winds and birds, would be endless pleasure…. No other place has ever so overwhelmingly attracted me as this hospitable, Godful wilderness.”The natural history classic The Mountains of California (1894) draws on half a lifetime of exploration of the High Sierra country to celebrate and evoke the region’s lakes, forests, flowers, and animals, its glaciers, storms, floods, and geological formations, in a masterpiece of observation and poetic description: “After ten years spent in the heart of it … it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.”Stickeen (1909), Muir’s most popular book, is the affectionate story of his adventure with a dog in Alaska. Rounding out the volume is a rich selection of essays—including “Yosemite Glaciers,” “God’s First Temples,” “Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta,” “The American Forests,” and the late appeal “Save the Redwoods”—highlighting various aspects of his career: his exploration of the Grand Canyon and of what became Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, his successful crusades to preserve the wilderness, his early walking tour to Florida, and the Alaska journey of 1879.

    He would have succeeded except for three American friends who refused to give in to fear.On August 21, 2015, Ayoub El-Khazzani boarded train #9364 in Brussels, bound for Paris. There could be no doubt about his mission: he had an AK-47, a pistol, a box cutter, and enough ammunition to obliterate every passenger on board. Slipping into the bathroom in secret, he armed his weapons. Another major ISIS attack was about to begin.Khazzani wasn't expecting Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone. Stone was a martial arts enthusiast and airman first class in the US Air Force, Skarlatos was a member of the Oregon National Guard, and all three were fearless. But their decision-to charge the gunman, then overpower him even as he turned first his gun, then his knife, on Stone-depended on a lifetime of loyalty, support, and faith.Their friendship was forged as they came of age together in California: going to church, playing paintball, teaching each other to swear, and sticking together when they got in trouble at school. Years later, that friendship would give all of them the courage to stand in the path of one of the world's deadliest terrorist organizations.The 15:17 to Paris is an amazing true story of friendship and bravery, of near tragedy averted by three young men who found the heroic unity and strength inside themselves at the moment when they, and 500 other innocent travelers, needed it most.

    And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient religion and philosophy. Yet the clarity and ease of the work's style are deceptive. Pierre Hadot, eminent historian of ancient thought, uncovers new levels of meaning and expands our understanding of its underlying philosophy. Written by the Roman emperor for his own private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations set forth principles for living a good and just life. Hadot probes Marcus Aurelius's guidelines and convictions and discerns the hitherto unperceived conceptual system that grounds them. Abundantly quoting the Meditations to illustrate his analysis, the author allows Marcus Aurelius to speak directly to the reader. And Hadot unfolds for us the philosophical context of the Meditations, commenting on the philosophers Marcus Aurelius read and giving special attention to the teachings of Epictetus, whose disciple he was. The soul, the guiding principle within us, is in Marcus Aurelius's Stoic philosophy an inviolable stronghold of freedom, the "inner citadel." This spirited and engaging study of his thought offers a fresh picture of the fascinating philosopher-emperor, a fuller understanding of the tradition and doctrines of Stoicism, and rich insight on the culture of the Roman empire in the second century. Pierre Hadot has been working on Marcus Aurelius for more than twenty years; in this book he distills his analysis and conclusions with extraordinary lucidity for the general reader.

    P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the twenties and directing the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the lost generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby's pastimes until 1929, when he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.Black Sun is novelist and master biographer Geoffrey Wolff's subtle and striking picture of a man who killed himself to make his life a work of art.

    In Reckless Daughter, the music critic David Yaffe tells the remarkable, heart-wrenching story of how the blond girl with the guitar became a superstar of folk music in the 1960s, a key figure in the Laurel Canyon music scene of the 1970s, and the songwriter who spoke resonantly to, and for, audiences across the country.A Canadian prairie girl, a free-spirited artist, Mitchell never wanted to be a pop star. She was nothing more than “a painter derailed by circumstances," she would explain. And yet, she went on to become a talented self-taught musician and a brilliant bandleader, releasing album after album, each distinctly experimental, challenging, and revealing. Her lyrics captivated listeners with their perceptive language and naked emotion, born out of Mitchell's life, loves, complaints, and prophecies. As an artist whose work deftly balances narrative and musical complexity, she has been admired by such legendary lyricists as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and beloved by such groundbreaking jazz musicians as Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock. Her hits—from “Big Yellow Taxi" to “Both Sides, Now" to “A Case of You"—endure as timeless favorites, and her influence on the generations of singer-songwriters who would follow her, from her devoted fan Prince to Björk, is undeniable.In this intimate biography, drawing on dozens of unprecedented in-person interviews with Mitchell, her childhood friends, and a cast of famous characters, Yaffe reveals the backstory behind the famous songs—from Mitchell's youth in Canada, her bout with polio at age nine, and her early marriage and the child she gave up for adoption, through the love affairs that inspired masterpieces, and up to the present—and shows us why Mitchell has so enthralled her listeners, her lovers, and her friends. Reckless Daughter is the story of an artist and an era that have left an indelible mark on American music.

    In the midst of shock and denial, and the enduring question, 'Isn't it old people who get arthritis?', Alice had to learn to live with what quickly turned from the odd ache and pain to a very aggressive form of the illness, and rediscover a new path in life. "Another Alice" is at times utterly heart-breaking, and at others laugh-out-loud. Here is her story of how, armed with humour and courage, she left behind a world she loved to overcome the pain of a degenerative illness. Told with wit, charm and frankness, "Another Alice" is also a story of friendship, family, growing up and the desire to be 'normal'. But, above all, it celebrates the power of the human spirit.

    The story’s focus is not on drama but on a bitter truth: both armies want nothing more than to stop fighting and go home. Achilles—the electrifying hero who is Homer’s brilliant creation—quarrels with his commander, Agamemnon, but eventually returns to the field to avenge a comrade’s death. Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer’s Achilles.Homer’s Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age. Is a warrior ever justified in challenging his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else’s cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? Can death ever be compensated by glory? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start—and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, Caroline Alexander has taken apart a story we think we know and put it back together in a way that reveals what Homer really meant us to glean from his masterpiece. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization.

    The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February 1943 at Trinity College, Dublin. Schrödinger's lecture focused on one important question: "how can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?" In the book, Schrödinger introduced the idea of an "aperiodic crystal" that contained genetic information in its configuration of covalent chemical bonds. In the 1950s, this idea stimulated enthusiasm for discovering the genetic molecule and would give both Francis Crick and James Watson initial inspiration in their research.

    CONTENTS Some Old Friends The Difficult Art of Getting The Standard Oil Company Some Experiences in the Oil Business Other Business Experiences and Business Principles The Difficult Art of Giving The Benevolent Trust -- The Value of the Cooperative Principle in Giving

    In these vivid memoirs, Lee takes a profoundly personal look back at the events that led to Singapore's independence and shaped its struggle for success. And, as always, he lets the chips fall where they may.In intimate detail, Lee recounts Singapore's unforgettable history. You'll be with Lee as he leads striking unionists against the colonial government; shares tea and rounds of golf with key players in Britain and Malaya; and drinks warm Anchor beer with leaders of the communist underground at secret midnight meetings. From British colonial rule through Japanese occupation in World War II, Communist insurrection, riots, independence -- and the struggles that followed -- few political memoirs anywhere have been this blunt, or this fascinating.Anyone interested in the political history of Singapore, Asia, and the modern world.

    Yet the struggles they each faced rang with eerie similarity. These courageous women from across the globe-Pakistan, India, Romania, Former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Nepal, Indonesia-shared similar experiences of hardship, subjugation, and persecution, all because of their faith in Christ. Yet all of these women have emerged from adversity as leaders and heroines.The eight modern-day pilgrims featured in "Hearts of Fire" are the hidden jewels in the church universal. They are worthy role models of faith and passion, and women of every age will gain new strength and hope for their own times of crisis and trial as they read these inspiring stories. Each story concludes with thoughtful self-reflection questions for the reader.

    These three volumes, now available together for the first time in paperback, include all entries made from the time when Camus was still completely unknown in Europe, until he was killed in an automobile accident in 1960, at the height of his creative powers. In 1957 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A spiritual and intellectual auto biography, Camus' Notebooks are invariably more concerned with what he felt than with what he did. It is intriguing for the reader to watch him seize and develop certain themes and ideas, discard others that at first seemed promising, and explore different types of experience.