Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Lou Harrison - American Musical...

  Brett Campbell, Bill Alves

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  A biography on the legendary gay American composer of contemporary classical music. 
   
  American composer Lou Harrison (1917–2003) is perhaps best known for challenging the traditional musical establishment along with his contemporaries and close colleagues: composers John Cage, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein; Living Theater founder, Judith Malina; and choreographer, Merce Cunningham. Today, musicians from Bang on a Can to Björk are indebted to the cultural hybrids Harrison pioneered half a century ago. His explorations of new tonalities at a time when the rest of the avant-garde considered such interests heretical set the stage for minimalism and musical post-modernism. His propulsive rhythms and ground-breaking use of percussion have inspired choreographers from Merce Cunningham to Mark Morris, and he is considered the godfather of the so-called “world music” phenomenon that has invigorated Western music with global sounds over the past two decades. 
   
  In this biography, authors Bill Alves and Brett Campbell trace Harrison’s life and career from the diverse streets of San Francisco, where he studied with music experimentalist Henry Cowell and Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, and where he discovered his love for all things non-traditional (Beat poetry, parties, and men); to the competitive performance industry in New York, where he subsequently launched his career as a composer, conducted Charles Ives’s Third Symphony at Carnegie Hall (winning the elder composer a Pulitzer Prize), and experienced a devastating mental breakdown; to the experimental arts institution of Black Mountain College where he was involved in the first “happenings” with Cage, Cunningham, and others; and finally, back to California, where he would become a strong voice in human rights and environmental campaigns and compose some of the most eclectic pieces of his career. 
   
  “Lou Harrison’s avuncular personality and tuneful music coaxed affectionate regard from all who knew him, and that affection is evident on every page of Alves and Campbell’s new biography. Eminently readable, it puts Harrison at the center of American music: he knew everyone important and was in touch with everybody, from mentors like Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives and Harry Partch and Virgil Thomson to peers like John Cage to students like Janice Giteck and Paul Dresher. He was larger than life in person, and now he is larger than life in history as well.” —Kyle Gann, author of Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays After a Sonata

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  Scipio Africanus: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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  While he remains far less known than Hannibal, Publius Cornelius Scipio, the man who has become known to history as Scipio Africanus, is widely regarded as one of the greatest military leaders of all time. In the space of less than 10 years, the genius of Scipio took Rome from being on the brink of utter destruction to becoming the dominant power in the Mediterranean. He displayed not just acute understanding of the tactical needs of the battlefield but also a strategic overview that consistently allowed him to confound his enemies. Scipio has been described as “the embodiment of grand strategy, as his campaigns are the supreme example in history of its meaning.” 
  However, like many other successful military leaders, Scipio proved much less able to deal with the envy and political machinations of the Roman Senate, and he ended his life not in glory but in bitter, self-imposed retirement, much the same way Hannibal did. Both men left legacies of military genius, catastrophic defeats, perseverance in the face of setbacks, astounding victories. Their stories also heavily involve ingratitude, envy, and enmity from within. 
  Scipio Africanus: The Life and Legacy of the Roman General Who Defeated Hannibal during the Second Punic War chronicles how Scipio rose to prominence, his legendary victory at Zama, and the legacy he had on antiquity. 

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  The Games Presidents Play -...

  John Sayle Watterson

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  This look at the connections between sportsmanship and statesmanship “introduces an intriguing way of evaluating presidential fitness for office” (Richmond Times-Dispatch). 
   
  Whether throwing out the first pitch of the baseball season, fishing for trout, or cheating at golf, American presidents through history have had connections to the world of sports in many ways. This book explores how various commanders-in-chief worked and played—and how their athletic activities reflected their political identities. 
   
  The author considers George Washington, whose athleticism contributed to his success on the battlefield and perhaps to the birth of the republic. He moves into the nineteenth century, when frontier sports were part of the formative years of Jackson, Lincoln, and Cleveland. With twentieth-century presidents—most notably the hyperactive, headline-grabbing Teddy Roosevelt—he shows how the growth of mass media and transportation transformed presidential sports into both a form of recreation and a means of establishing a positive image. Exploring everything from FDR’s fight to restore his polio-ravaged body to Eisenhower’s obsessive love affair with golf to Nixon’s enthusiasm for football, this book uses sports to open a window onto the presidency and the nation’s culture, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, and personalities of America’s leaders. 
   
  “Watterson’s history rises above trivia in its attention to the political ramifications of presidents’ sports while also being a consistently entertaining trove of lore and, as the author puts it, ‘just weird stuff,’ such as John Q. Adams granting an interview while skinny-dipping. A wry and perceptive work.” —Booklist  
   
   “An enjoyable study of politics and culture.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “Will appeal to history buffs and sports fans alike.” —Library Journal

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  Diamonds and Deadlines - A Tale...

  Betsy Prioleau

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  The first major biography of the glamorous and scandalous Miriam Leslie, titan of publishing and an unsung hero of women’s suffrageAmong the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt—is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For twenty years she ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But Miriam Leslie was also a byword for scandal: She flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both during and after her lifetime, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth.Diamonds and Deadlines reveals the unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: She left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage—a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In this dazzling biography, cultural historian Betsy Prioleau draws from diaries, correspondence, genealogies, and published works to provide an intimate look at the life of one of the Gilded Age’s most complex, powerful women and unexpected feminist icons. Ultimately, Diamonds and Deadlines restores Mrs. Frank Leslie to her rightful place in history, as a monumental businesswoman who presaged the feminist future and reflected, in bold relief, the Gilded Age, one of the most momentous, seismic, and vivid epochs in American history.

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  Doctors From Hell - The Horrific...

  Vivien Spitz

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  A court reporter for the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Nazi doctors reveals the shocking truth of their torture and murder in this monumental memoir. 
   
  Vivien Spitz reported on the Nuremberg trials for the U.S. War Department from 1946 to 1948. In Doctors from Hell, she vividly describes her experiences both in and out of the courtroom. A chilling story of human depravity and ultimate justice, this important memoir includes trial transcripts as well as photographs used as evidence. 
   
  The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg. She recounts dramatic courtroom testimony and the reactions of the defendants to the proceedings. Witnesses tell of experiments in which they were deprived of oxygen; frozen; injected with malaria, typhus, and jaundice; subjected to the amputation of healthy limbs; forced to drink seawater for weeks at a time; and other horrors. 
   
  Doctors from Hell is a significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend. 
   
  “In this personal account of her service in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Vivien Spitz continues to contribute to the cause of human rights.” —President James Carter

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  Slow Getting Up - A Story of NFL...

  Neta Jackson

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  One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football LeagueAs an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos, Nate Jackson took the path of thousands of unknowns before him to carve out a professional football career twice as long as the average player. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the NFL's workweek. Fast-paced, lyrical, dirty, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.

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