Photographs are everywhere. They have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. This title examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives.
John Berger''s writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues in which Berger probes the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith - and the lives of those photographed - with fierce engagement, intensity and tenderness.br>br>The selection is made and introduced by Geoff Dyer, author of the award-winning The Ongoing Moment.br>br>How do we see the world around us? This is one of a number of pivotal works by creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision for ever.br>br>John Berger was born in London in 1926. His acclaimed works of both fiction and non-fiction include the seminal Ways of Seeing and the novel G., which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, and he now lives in a small village in the French Alps.br>br>Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and several non-fiction books. Winner of the Lannan Literary Award, the International Centre of Photography''s 2006 Infinity Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters''s E. M. Forster Award, Dyer is also a regular contributor to many publications in the UK and the US. He lives in London.>
An exploration of how art acquires its financial value. It explores the artist and his hinterland, subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), "wall-power", provenance and market weather, in which the trade of the art market is examined and at one point compared to the football transfer market.
From October to December 1888 a pair of artists lived under one roof in the French provincial town of Arles. Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh ate, drank, talked, argued, slept and painted in one of the most intense and astonishing creative outpourings in history.
The no. 1 bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel explores the profound lessons that traditional societies offer us today Over the past 500 years, the West achieved global dominance, but do Westerners necessarily have better ideas about how to raise children, care for the elderly, or simply live well? In this epic journey into our past, Jared Diamond reveals that traditional societies around the world offer an extraordinary window into how our ancestors lived for the majority of human history - until virtually yesterday, in evolutionary terms. Drawing on decades of his own fieldwork, Diamond explores how tribal people approach essential human problems, from health and diet to conflict resolution and language, and discovers they have much to teach us. Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the seminal million-copy-bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel , which was named one of TIME's best non-fiction books of all time, and Collapse , a #1 international bestseller. A professor of geography at UCLA and noted polymath, Diamond's work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology and history, among others.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings is firmly established as the world's leading guide to recorded jazz, a mine of fascinating information and a source of insightful - often wittily trenchant - criticism. This is something rather different: Brian Morton (who taught American history at UEA) has picked out the 1000 best recordings that all jazz fans should have and shows how they tell the history of the music and with it the history of the twentieth century. He has completely revised his and Richard Cook's entries and reassessed each artist's entry for this book. The result is an endlessly browsable companion that will prove required reading for aficionados and jazz novices alike.
This is the autobiography of Woody Guthrie, the founder of modern American folk music. It is a funny, cynical, earthy and tragic account of his life in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, of the Depression, and of his subsequent travels in, on and under trains, in stolen cars and on his feet round America.
Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's pop icon. Nureyev's achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor's wife; defected to the West in l961; and, sparked Rudimania across the globe.
Gay Talese is the father of American New Journalism, who transformed traditional reportage with his vivid scene-setting, sharp observation and rich storytelling. His 1966 piece for Esquire, one of the most celebrated magazine articles ever published, describes a morose Frank Sinatra silently nursing a glass of bourbon, struck down with a cold and unable to sing, like 'Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel - only worse'. The other writings in this selection include a description of a meeting between two legends, Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali; a brilliantly witty dissection of the offices of Vogue magazine; an account of travelling to Ireland with hellraiser Peter O'Toole; and a profile of fading baseball star Joe DiMaggio, which turns into a moving, immaculately-crafted meditation on celebrity.
A collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Penguin book jacket. From classics to crime, it contains over seventy years of quintessentially British design in one box.
Scott Schuman just wanted to take photographs of people on the street who looked great. This book is an anthology of Scott's favourite shots from around the world. It includes photographs of well-known fashion figures as well as those shots of the anonymous passerby whose imagination and taste delight the viewer.
Andy Warhol kept these diaries faithfully from November 1976 right up to his final week, in February 1987. Written at the height of his fame and success, Warhol records the fun of an Academy Awards party, nights out at Studio 54, trips between London, Paris and New York, and surprisingly even the money he spent each day, down to the cent. With appearances from and references to everyone who was anyone, from Jim Morrison, Martina Navratilova and Calvin Klein to Shirley Bassey, Estee Lauder and Muhammad Ali, these diaries are the most glamorous, witty and revealing writings of the twentieth century.
Presents an account of the history of reggae. This book describes reggae's origins and development in Jamaica, from ska to rock-steady to dub and to reggae itself, a local music which conquered the world. It relates the story of reggae to the history of Jamaica, from Colonial Island to troubled independence, and Jamaicans, from Kingston to London.
This work publishes the diaries of Kurt Cobain that were found after his death in 1994. Genuinely moving, provocative and candid, and surprisingly funny, pieces of writing which, as a whole, provide a unique account of the rise and fall of a great popular artist and icon.
"A joy... essential reading for anyone seeking an engaging and highly informed chronicle of the great composers and their works... takes the story of opera from its roots in late-Renaissance Italy via Mozart, Rossini, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Strauss and many less familiar figures through to Berg, Britten and beyond". Daniel Snowman, Opera.
'Squirm-inducing, excruciatingly honest and painfully funny' Joseph O'Connor We all went to school with friends who've turned out more successful than ourselves. But they don't all phone from improbably glamorous places and drive us mad by telling us about it. And they're not all Bono.
Neil McCormick always dreamed of life as a rock star. Instead, he had to watch while his friend became one of the most famous men on the planet. Killing Bono tells the story of the less-than-successful rival band which he set up with his brother Ivan in the late 1970s.
While the young brothers struggled to find success Bono and his friends went on to achieve superstar status. A heartwarming story of friendship, loyalty, rivalry and ambition, read it and weep - with sympathy and laughter.
From the author of the bestselling annual Movie Guide comes this ultimate guide for fans of classic films both familiar and obscure. The Classic Movie Guide covers thousands of films, from the silent era to the 1960s, including The Birth of a Nation, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Grand Illusion, and The Maltese Falcon (all three versions: 1931, 1936, and 1941), Singin' in the Rain, and Godzilla, King of the Monsters! With entries spanning across the decades, this comprehensive guide has expanded star and director indexes, and capsule reviews of obscure and forgotten-the sort that turn up on Turner Classic Movies in the wee hours of the morning. This is the perfect companion for anyone who loves the thrill of discovering vintage movies on DVD or cable.
The Edifice Complex explores the intimate and inextricable relationship between power, money and architecture in the twentieth century. How and why have presidents, prime ministers, mayors, millionaires and bishops come to share such a fascination with grand designs? From Blair to Mitterrand, from Hitler to Stalin to Saddam Hussein, architecture has become an end in itself, as well as a means to an end. This is a book of genuine timeliness, throwing new light on the motivations of the rich and powerful around the world - and on the ways they seek to affect us.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. The worlds of Milan, Rome and Naples through which Caravaggio moved and which Andrew Graham-Dixon describes brilliantly in this book, are those of cardinals and whores, prayer and violence. On the streets surrounding the churches and palaces, brawls and swordfights were regular occurrences. In the course of this desperate life Caravaggio created the most dramatic paintings of his age, using ordinary men and women - often prostitutes and the very poor - to model for his depictions of classic religious scenes. Andrew Graham-Dixon's exceptionally illuminating readings of Caravaggio'spictures, which are the heart of the book, show very clearly how he created their drama, immediacy and humanity, and how completely he departed from the conventions of his time.
When eighteen year old Danny Goldberg wrote his first music review for Billboard, he couldn't have imagined that he would go on to enjoy one of the most varied and influential careers in the world of rock and roll. He went on to do PR for Led Zeppelin and KISS, launched Stevie Nicks' solo career, was Bonnie Raitt's manager when she won four Grammys for Nick of Time, managed the career of Nirvana, signed Warren Zevon to his label for the artist's last album, and, in between, ran Atlantic Records, Mercury Records and Warner Bros Records. In Bumping into Geniuses, Goldberg shares his stories about those artists with whom he worked closely, as well as others who represent a powerful portion of the psychic real estate of the rock and roll kingdom over the last forty years, including Patti Smith, The Moody Blues, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Courtney Love, Steve Earle, and more.
But there is more to this story than Goldberg's career. It's a revealing look at the music industry itself: a business that was neither the romantic vehicle for self-expression that its most naive fans imagined, nor the purely crass money machine depicted by its most cynical critics. It was complex and chaotic - a mixture of art and commerce, idealism and selfishness - and sometimes, rock's most gifted musicians were able to transcend it all. Despite the drugs, lies and shallow quests for fame and money that stalked the rock industry, it managed to produce the music that Goldberg and countless fans love.
Above all, this book is Goldberg's love letter to rock and roll and to the countless musical geniuses he bumped into along the course of his extraordinary career. For anyone interested in the rock and roll industry, or simply the mores and temperaments of the musicians themselves, Bumping into Geniuses is an incredible insider's tale that only Goldberg could tell.
