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  Aretha Franklin - The Queen of Soul

  Mark Bego

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  Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul documents the beloved singing star's rocky personal life and internationally acclaimed show business career. An in-depth and frank examination of Aretha, this definitive biography traces her career from her beginnings as a twelve-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, recording her first album at the age of fourteen, a major recording contract at eighteen, and stardom in her twenties, right up through her headline-grabbing 2010 health scare, to her triumphant return: singing to her cheering Detroit hometown fans in summer 2011. 
   
  This New York Times bestselling author's detailed research includes interviews with the most important people in Aretha's life, including record producers Jerry Wexler, Clyde Otis, and Clive Davis, her first husband, several of Franklin's singing star contemporaries, and a rare one-on-one session with Aretha herself. 
   
  Bego's portrayal of the singing sensation is done with clarity and neutrality. A no-holds-barred look at her roller coaster life, it takes her from two teenage pregnancies and an abusive first marriage, to drinking problems, battles with her weight, the murder of her father, and tabloid wars. This critically acclaimed, freshly updated biography will give readers a clear understanding of what makes Aretha Franklin the "Queen of Soul."

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  Inner Sanctum Mystery: Portrait...

  Fred Maytho

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  In the dim light of a misty old art gallery, an art connoisseur by the name of Mr. Mason purchases a somber old portrait: a portrait with a history of death...for the artist...for the model...and for all those who own it!

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  Botticelli

  Victoria Charles, Emile Gebhart

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  He was the son of a citizen in comfortable circumstances, and had been, in Vasari’s words, “instructed in all such things as children are usually taught before they choose a calling.” However, he refused to give his attention to reading, writing and accounts, continues Vasari, so that his father, despairing of his ever becoming a scholar, apprenticed him to the goldsmith Botticello: whence came the name by which the world remembers him. However, Sandro, a stubborn-featured youth with large, quietly searching eyes and a shock of yellow hair – he has left a portrait of himself on the right-hand side of his picture of the Adoration of the Magi – would also become a painter, and to that end was placed with the Carmelite monk Fra Filippo Lippi. But he was a realist, as the artists of his day had become, satisfied with the joy and skill of painting, and with the study of the beauty and character of the human subject instead of religious themes. Botticelli made rapid progress, loved his master, and later on extended his love to his master’s son, Filippino Lippi, and taught him to paint, but the master’s realism scarcely touched Lippi, for Botticelli was a dreamer and a poet. 
      Botticelli is a painter not of facts, but of ideas, and his pictures are not so much a representation of certain objects as a pattern of forms. Nor is his colouring rich and lifelike; it is subordinated to form, and often rather a tinting than actual colour. In fact, he was interested in the abstract possibilities of his art rather than in the concrete. For example, his compositions, as has just been said, are a pattern of forms; his figures do not actually occupy well-defined places in a well-defined area of space; they do not attract us by their suggestion of bulk, but as shapes of form, suggesting rather a flat pattern of decoration. Accordingly, the lines which enclose the figures are chosen with the primary intention of being decorative. 
      It has been said that Botticelli, “though one of the worst anatomists, was one of the greatest draughtsmen of the Renaissance.” As an example of false anatomy we may notice the impossible way in which the Madonna’s head is attached to the neck, and other instances of faulty articulation and incorrect form of limbs may be found in Botticelli’s pictures. Yet he is recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen: he gave to ‘line’ not only intrinsic beauty, but also significance. In mathematical language, he resolved the movement of the figure into its factors, its simplest forms of expression, and then combined these various forms into a pattern which, by its rhythmical and harmonious lines, produces an effect upon our imagination, corresponding to the sentiments of grave and tender poetry that filled the artist himself.
      This power of making every line count in both significance and beauty distinguishes the great master- draughtsmen from the vast majority of artists who used line mainly as a necessary means of representing concrete objects.

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  Navigating Seattle's...

  PBS NewsHour

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  How do you capture Seattle’s complications, quirks and ever-changing population? A new digital project is mapping out the evolving city by collecting poems that tell unique stories, from growing up in an affluent neighborhood to memories of homelessness and cold concrete. Jeffrey Brown reports on Seattle’s “Poetic Grid.”

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  Soaring Housing Costs Stretch...

  PBS NewsHour

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  For many college students, living costs may exceed the cost of tuition and fees, as affordable housing options are becoming increasingly hard to find. Some find they struggle with debt, or paying for meals; others are at risk for homelessness. As part of our series Rethinking College, Hari Sreenivasan travels to Philadelphia to see how students there are coping.

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  She Can Really Lay it Down - 50...

  Rachel Frankel

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  “There’s so much joy and glory in these portraits” of contemporary female musical artists (from the foreword by Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker staff writer and author of Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records).  She Can Really Lay It Down celebrates fifty incredible women who shredded, sang, and stormed the stage with ferocity and passion. Each incredible musician in this book defied genre and social conventions to shape the music industry as we know it, but have been overlooked simply because they are women.   Sister Rosetta Sharpe, Carol Kaye, Janet Weiss, Carole King, and Wu Man are just a few of the groundbreaking musicians author and illustrator Rachel Frankel shines a spotlight on.   • Each musician is accompanied by a vivid illustration and heartfelt biography • Readers discover new heroes and revisit familiar faces • Features an exposed spine designed to look like the neck of a guitar   These women rock—in every sense of the word.  She Can Really Lay It Down pays homage to songwriters, performers, and musicians from every genre, inspiring a whole new generation of fearless and talented performers.   This coffee table book and conversation starter is a wonderful gift for musicians, diehard music lovers, riot grrrls, singers and songwriters, music teachers, feminists of all ages, and anyone eager for more stories about musical women.

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