Art & Literature

In the six lectures of The Great Gatsby at 100, you will join Sheila Liming of Champlain College to revisit the context and culture of the Roaring ‘20s, which inspired the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his disastrous pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. As you’ll discover, while Gatsby is framed as a love story, it’s also a story of the American experience, revealing the unspoken rules of wealth and class and the false promises of self-made success in a world of Old Money privilege.

American Notes for General Circulation is Dickens' vivid, sharp, engaging account of his 1842 visit to the United States. This travelogue blends keen observations with sharp social commentary, offering Dickens’ reflections on the American landscape, politics, and society. Dickens explores the bustling cities, vast wilderness, and the cultural contradictions of a young nation in its infancy. At once humorous, critical, and insightful, American Notes paints a complex portrait of America during a transformative period.

Casting new light on one of the first modern self-identifying witches in the US, Jason Mankey invites you deep into Buckland's life. Known for bringing Wicca to America and sharing it through his writing, Buckland penned more than forty titles, placing him among the most prolific occult authors of all time.

Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic, as iconic as Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, shares how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

Offering answers to those questions and more through a mix of travelogue and social history, A Month of Sundays entertainingly charts the story of what author Daniel Gray argues is the People's Day. Told through Sundays whiled away in places from the Hebrides to Hyde Park – via Sunderland, Scarborough, Liverpool and beyond – Gray's latest book is a charming journey in time and place. A Month of Sundays offers nostalgia, people's history and affectionate, absorbing writing – a book drenched in the scent of gravy and summoning the faint sound of church bells.

"Recuerdo la mañana en que conocí a Octavio Paz. Fue el 11 de marzo de 1976, en el Panteón Jardín, cuando un grupo de amigos despedíamos al gran ensayista Daniel Cosío Villegas [...] Me acerqué a él para proponerle la publicación en su revista Plural de un ensayo mío sobre el ilustre liberal recién desaparecido. Días después, mi nombre apareció junto al suyo, pero nunca sospeché que ese vínculo sería permanente."

From the age of twelve, Alison Mau wanted to be a journalist like her father. He was a beer-swilling, straight-talking Aussie who was rough around the edges but could quote passages of Hamlet at will. He taught Ali everything—from how to skin a rabbit and throw a punch to how to craft a sharp sentence—and she craved his validation as she navigated the sexist badlands of Australian print and television journalism through the 1980s and '90s.

Soft Tissue Damage tells the story of author ANNA WHITWHAM'S lifelong interest in boxing manifesting itself in the physical act of getting into the ring to fight. From her first tentative training sessions through bruising sparring and building up to a full-blooded fight, Whitwham charts the transformative impact the sport—and all its complicated implications—has on her during a profoundly difficult period dealing with the grief of losing her mother to cancer.

虐待、いじめ、家庭内暴力、無理心中未遂 毒母との38 年の愛憎を描いた壮絶ノンフィクション

La Biblioteca Elena Poniatowska reúne la obra narrativa, ensayística y periodística de una escritora inmersa en la escena cultural iberoamericana. En Ida y vuelta se encuentran algunas de las entrevistas más icónicas de quien convirtió la virtud de escuchar en un arte.

From narrowly avoiding a trip in a mobster’s trunk and saving Howard Stern’s life from a murderous fan, to getting beat up by Spike Lee’s bodyguards and having guns drawn on him after spending Christmas with Mark Hamill and his family, Steve Grillo's life is nothing but surreal. Gorilla Parts is a roller coaster ride from blue-collar Canarsie to Manhattan’s most elite VIP rooms; a common-man’s extended glimpse into the last true era of limitless celebrity freedom: Pre-internet New York City.

Summer in Paris, 1783. The Louvre steps, too hot and no breeze, the air electric with the heady anticipation of a coming storm: the year's Royal Salon. Men and women of every estate are united under art: to love it, to despise it, to gossip endlessly about it. Exhibiting at the Royal Salon was not for the faint of heart, and it was never intended for women. Enter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard . . . Born in Paris in 1749, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard rose from shopkeeper's daughter to an official portraitist of the royal court—only to have her achievements reduced to ash by the French Revolution

By daytime, Ukraine is a sophisticated European country going about its business, and Kyiv seems like an enchanting city. But by night, the sirens roar, and the war begins. Ukraine is using the amount of ammunition that all of Europe produces in one day, and yet on the surface, much of the country appears to be going about its business as usual. This is a very different audiobook as this is a very different war – one fought by a huge army of civilians, from old punk rockers to university professors and Coca Cola brand managers who are working behind the scenes to outwit the Russian army.

Why do people keep deep secrets about their lives and ancestry? In Family Declassified, Katherine Fennelly applies her expertise as a social science researcher to answer this question regarding her maternal grandfather, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who arrived in the US one hundred years ago.

В книгу включены важнейшие сочинения Василия Кандинского: его первое теоретическое обоснование абстракционизма и эстетический манифест художника "О духовном в искусстве", автобиографические записки "Ступени", в которых художник рассказывает, почему он посвятил свою жизнь искусству, и фундаментальное исследование основ художественного языка "Точка и линия на плоскости". Также в издание вошли статьи по педагогике искусства.

What happens when magazine editors behave worse than the celebrities they feature? Shock, comedy, and farce, expertly chronicled in Jeremy Murphy's Too Good to Fact Check, a firsthand account of his ten years traveling with stars as the editor of a glossy magazine. In between taking Julianna Marguiles to the Côte d'Azur, Neil Patrick Harris aboard the Orient Express, and LL Cool J to Paris among other locales, the author lived a wild, decadent life that rivaled anyone he was covering, and recounts the most outrageous moments in colorful, candid detail.

Australia, primi anni del Novecento. Stella Miles Franklin è la maggiore di sette tra fratelli e sorelle, vive in una fattoria dell’entroterra. Si vede libera, padrona del suo destino. Nel 1901, a vent’anni, scrive un romanzo, La mia brillante carriera, che inaspettatamente diventa un bestseller proiettandola agli onori della cronaca.

Anthony Trollope is among the best-loved novelists in the English language. This Very Short Introduction will place Trollope's work in the context of his life and times, drawing on recent scholarship to illuminate his central interests and literary strategies. The major series of novels (the six novels located in the fictional Barsetshire, and the six Palliser novels) are explored alongside the novels set in Ireland, his travel writing, and his less well-known fiction.

La artista Paula Bonet interviene el texto de Chirbes con reproducciones de sus pinturas, inspiradas en la lectura y en la revisión de los espacios comunes que comparten ambos creadores. "Pocos escritores han celebrado la luz de Valencia, el agua, nuestra gastronomía y nuestros cañaverales, la juventud y la carne como lo ha hecho Rafael Chirbes. La luz que describe en los pasajes más hermosos de sus obras más pesimistas se vuelca en la página como si fuera oro porque, como buen pintor, supo mirar y caminar entre las sombras, no le tembló el pulso a la hora de abordarlas.

Der bekannteste Berliner Polizeireporter. Der Schriftsteller und Reporter Leo Heller tauchte in den 1920er-Jahren tief in die Berliner Unterwelt ein. Jeder Ringbruder, jeder Kneipenwirt, jedes "leichte Mädchen“ kannte Heller, der in seinen Reportagen seine Leserinnen und Leser mitnimmt auf seine nächtlichen Streifzüge. Seine beeindruckenden Milieustudien wurden von der Autorin Bettina Müller wieder entdeckt, die einen biografischen Essay zu Leo Heller anfügt.

My Russia is an autobiography that traces Jill Dougherty's fascination with Russia and shares the insights into the country, its people, and its leader she has gleaned through forty years of reporting. Listeners will see Russia's evolution through the eyes of the dedicated and compassionate woman they have watched on cable since 1983.

Ein Buch voller krasser, bizarrer, extremer, verrückter, trauriger und lustiger Anekdoten aus meinem Leben. Nicht geeignet für Psychotherapeuten und Psychologen. An alle Wichtigtuer und Ermittler - Alle Indizien, Beweise und Zeitzeugen sind auf ominöse Weise nicht mehr auffindbar. Viel Vergnügen beim Lesen!

A la mort de sa mère, découvrant les rites funéraires de ses origines, Farida se replonge dans son enfance, si loin de sa vie d'adulte. Les mots et les souvenirs se bousculent alors qu'elle raconte pour la première fois la vie de cette famille d'immigrés algériens : les HLM misérables, les hommes brisés par l'illettrisme et la colonisation, les mères pétrifiées. Au milieu, une fratrie élevée dans une violence inouïe mais soudée par le rire et la force de vie.

Confiteor è il racconto dell'uomo che sono diventato, non flusso di coscienza, ma fatti, storie. E l'attraversamento, in settant'anni di vita, di tre secoli, dal mio "Ottocento" a oggi. Piergiorgio Paterlini ci consegna un mondo, non soltanto un libro. Raccontando di sé - in una confessione sorprendente, spregiudicata, il bisbiglìo a un amico durante una lunga notte - incrocia la sua storia personale con quella di un Paese, tra amarcord e ricerca delle radici, tra romanzo di formazione e la scelta di vivere "dalla parte del torto".

Was bleibt und was nicht – in seiner Bilanz erzählt Hanno Rinke von einem so ungewöhnlichen wie selbstbestimmten Leben und von den verschlungenen Pfaden der Familiengeschichte von 1870 bis 2024 … Der eine Großvater preußischer Offizier, der andere polnischer Jude. Die Mutter ledig, der Vater im Gefängnis. Was wird daraus? "Es ist schön, zufrieden zu sein, dort, wo man ist. Noch schöner ist es, dort sein zu wollen, wo man sein könnte.