Other books that might interest you

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  Beethoven - The Universal Composer

  Edmund Morris

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  From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author, “an ideal starting point toward ultimate Beethoven appreciation” (Entertainment Weekly). 
   
  Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was a genius so universal that his popularity, extraordinary even during his lifetime, has never ceased to grow. It now encircles the globe: Beethoven’s most famous works are as beloved in Beijing as they are in Boston. 
   
  Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies and a lifelong devotee of Beethoven, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence. A gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints, he was not so much a social rebel as an astute manipulator of the most powerful and privileged aristocrats in Germany and Austria, at a time when their world was threatened by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. 
   
  But Beethoven’s achievement rests in his immortal music. Struggling against progressive, incurable deafness (which he desperately tried to keep secret), he nonetheless produced towering masterpieces, such as his iconic Fifth and Ninth symphonies. With sensitivity and insight, Edmund Morris illuminates Beethoven’s life, including his interactions with the women he privately lusted for but held at bay, and his work, whose grandeur and beauty were conceived “on the other side of silence.” 
   
  “Vivid . . . Morris deftly sorts his way through Beethoven’s biography.” —The New York Times Book Review 
   
  “Brilliant . . . superb, elegant writing . . . every word as masterly as the notes of the artist it illuminates.” —Christopher Buckley, Forbes

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  Woman of Rome - A Life of Elsa...

  Lily Tuck

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  The first biography in any language of one of the most celebrated Italian writers of the twentieth century.Born in 1912 to an unconventional family of modest means, Elsa Morante grew up with an independent spirit, a formidable will, and an unshakable commitment to writing. Forced to hide from the Fascists during World War II in a remote mountain hut with her husband, renowned author Alberto Moravia, she re-emerged at war's end to take her place among the premier Italian writers of her day. When Rome was film capital of the world, she counted Pasolini, Visconti, and the young Bertolucci among her circle of friends. She was charismatic, beautiful, and fiercely intelligent; her marriage, a passionate union of literary giants, captivated a nation; her love affairs were intense and often tragic. And until now few Americans have known of this remarkable woman and her powerful, original talent.

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  Ebert's Bests

  Roger Ebert

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  A treasury of year-by-year ten-best lists, plus personal reminiscences by the man whose name became synonymous with the movies.   In Ebert’s Bests, the iconic Roger Ebert takes us through the journey of how he became a film critic, from his days at a student-run cinema club to his rise as a television commentator in At the Movies and Siskel & Ebert. Recounting the influence of the French New Wave; his friendships with Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese; and travels to Sweden and Rome to visit Ingrid Bergman and Federico Fellini, Ebert never loses sight of film as a key component of our cultural identity. In considering the ethics of film criticism—why we should take all film seriously, without prejudgment or condescension—he argues that film critics ought always to engage in open-minded dialogue with a movie.   All this is accompanied by decades’ worth of annual ten-best lists, which showcase Roger Ebert’s  recommendations—while at the same time reminding us that hearts and minds, and even rankings, are bound to change.

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  The Meaning of Travel -...

  Emily Thomas

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  How can we think more deeply about our travels? 
   
   
   
  This was the question that inspired Emily Thomas's journey into the philosophy of travel. Part philosophical ramble, part travelogue, The Meaning of Travel begins in the Age of Discovery, when philosophers first started taking travel seriously. It meanders forward to consider Montaigne on otherness, John Locke on cannibals, and Henry Thoreau on wilderness. 
   
   
   
  On our travels with Thomas, we discover the dark side of maps, how the philosophy of space fueled mountain tourism, and why you should wash underwear in woodland cabins . . . We also confront profound issues, such as the ethics of "doom tourism" (travel to "doomed" glaciers and coral reefs), and the effect of space travel on human significance in a leviathan universe. 
   
   
   
  The first ever exploration of the places where history and philosophy meet, this book will reshape your understanding of travel.

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  Little Book of Abba

  Pat Morgan

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  Abba's boy-girl chemistry and irresistibly catchy music took them to towering heights of fame and fortune before the pressures took their toil and the band split in 1982. But the memories and music lived on.

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  The Emerald City of Oz

  L. Frank Baum

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  The Emerald City is built all of beautiful marbles in which are set a profusion of emeralds, every one exquisitely cut and of very great size. There are other jewels used in the decorations inside the houses and palaces, such as rubies, diamonds, sapphires, amethysts and turquoises. But in the streets and upon the outside of the buildings only emeralds appear, from which circumstance the place is named the Emerald City of Oz.

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