Patrick O'Brian's outstanding biography of Picasso is here available in paperback for the first time. It is the most comprehensive yet written, and the only biography fully to appreciate the distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso's character and art.
Everything about Picasso, except his physical stature, was on an enormous scale. No painter of the first rank has been so awe-inspiringly productive. No painter of any rank has made so much money. A few painters have rivaled his life span of ninety years, but none has attracted so avid, so insatiable, a public interest.
Patrick O'Brian knew Picasso sufficiently well to have a strong sense of his personality. The man that emerges from this scholarly, passionate, and brilliantly written biography is one of many contradictions: hard and tender, mean and generous, affectionate and cold, private despite the relish of his fame. In his later years he professed communism, yet in O'Brian's view retained to the end of his life a residual Catholic outlook.
Not that such matters were allowed to interfere with his vigorous sensuality. Sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedies and tragedies, suicides and wars tumble one another in the vast chaos of his experience. he was "a man almost as lonely as the sun, but one who glowed with much the same fierce, burning life." It is with that impression of its subject that this book leaves its readers. Views: 336
Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically—it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world ... and kill him. These two men's lives weave through one of science fiction's most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of 2010, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.
This edition comes with a tipped in collectors' note and an introduction by David Brin. Views: 336
Dante Alighieri paved the way for modern literature, while creating verse and prose that remain unparalleled for formal elegance, intellectual depth, and emotional grandeur. The Portable Dante contains complete verse translations of Dante's two masterworks, The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova, as well as a bibliography, notes, and an introduction by eminent scholar and translator Mark Musa. Views: 335
Who is George?
Only Howard Carr and his older brother, Ben, can answer that question, because only they know about George. George is the funny little man who lives inside Ben, helping him (mostly) navigate life as a sixth grader who happens to be a scientific genius and who happens to be studying organic chemistry with students much older than he.
One of those students is William Hazlitt, a senior who has been Ben's lab partner in previous years. William's interest in chemistry has taken a troubling turn, and Ben has a plan to come to his rescue. And that's when things get complicated -- for Howard, for Ben, and for George. Views: 335
The "Bookworms Library" is a complete new edition of the Oxford Bookworms Black and Green series. It builds on the success of the original Bookworms, while extending the range of activities and teaching support. Each title has been chosen for its enjoyment value, skilful story-telling and quality of writing. Six graded stages provide more than 130 stories at different levels of ability. The lower levels feature a wide choice of original stories, while the higher levels feature adaptations of well-known works originally published for native speakers. There are titles to suit all tastes: fantasy and horror; thriller and adventure; classics; true stories; crime and mystery; and human interest. All titles are fully illustrated with stylish new covers to attract students' interest. The activities section at the back of each title has been extended to include extra activities before, while and after reading, helping students to interact with the text and get the most out of each story. Each title also has an introduction, a glossary of key topic words, and an informative "About the Author" section. Over 50 titles are available on cassette in British or American English. Views: 335
The first novel from New York Times-bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, a thrilling, dark tale of family, revenge, and two souls intertwined by love and violence—now back in print for fans of America’s most prolific storyteller.
Written when Joyce Carol Oates was in her early twenties, and first published in 1964, With Shuddering Fall is her powerful debut novel, the first of five new Oates reprints from Ecco.
Following the turbulent story of two lovers who discover themselves mortal enemies, the author explores the struggle for dominance in erotic relationships that has become a predominant theme in her work, as well as the perils of patriarchal inheritance, and the ripple-effects of emotional loss in adolescence. The result is an unsentimental yet sympathetic rendering of a disastrous love affair in which hatred is nearly as powerful as love, and a yearning for destruction is an abiding and insatiable passion.
Discover what prompted the New York Times to compare this young writer’s debut to Shirley Jackson’s famous short story, “The Lottery.” Readers looking for a place to start in Joyce Carol Oates’s vast catalogue will be intrigued by the sheer narrative force of the young author, and her willingness to anatomize the darkest recesses of humanity in a search for redemption and resolution. Views: 335
The dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility tetraology takes place in the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting. Views: 333
Nancy witnesses a purse snatching and chases the thief. She rescues the purse, but not its contents. The owner, a doll collector, asks Nancy to do some detecting. The woman provides a mysterious note: "The source of light will heal all ills, but a curse will follow him who takes it from the gypsies." Nancy interprets this clue in her quest to find an old album, a lost doll, and a missing gypsy violinist. The girl detective’s valiant efforts bring happiness to a misunderstood child and her lonely grandmother. This book is the revised text. The plot of the original story (©1947) is similar with one major and other minor revisions. Views: 333
Imaginations makes accessible to the broad reading public live early books by William Carlos Williams, which, except for Kora in Hell, have long been hard to find in their original and complete forms.Written between 1920 and 1932, all five were first published in small editions, three of them in France. These are pivotal and seminal works, books in which a great writer was charting the course he later would follow, experimenting freely, boldly searching for a new kind of prose style to express "the power of the imagination to hold human beings to life and propel them onward."The prose-poem improvisations (Kora in Hell) . . . the interweaving of prose and poetry in alternating passages (Spring and All and The Descent of Winter) . . . an antinovel whose subject is the impossibility of writing "The Great American Novel" in America . . . automatic writing (A Novelette) . . . these are the challenges which Williams accepted and... Views: 333
When Deenie finds out that she has scoliosis, she’s scared. When she sees the brace for the first time, she wants to scream.
But the words won't come out. And Deenie, beautiful Deenie, who everyone says should be a model, is stuck wearing a brace from her neck to her hips. For four years—or longer. She never worried about how she looked before—how will she ever face the hard times ahead? Views: 333
