Finalist, 2008 Pulitzer Prize Lincoln Kirstein was a tireless champion of the arts in America. Working behind the scenes to provide artists with money, space, audiences, and, at times, emotional support, he helped found such landmark cultural institutions as the New York City Ballet, the School of American Ballet, New York’s Lincoln Center and Stratford's American Shakespeare Festival. Duberman's biography sheds light on this lamentably neglected cultural figure. Though best known as a benefactor of the arts, Kirstein was also an adept critic, poet and novelist who published some fifteen books in his lifetime. From his undergraduate years at Harvard, where he established the influential literary magazine Hound and Horn , as well as the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art (precursor to the Modern Museum of Art), to his complex and historically significant relationship with George Balanchine, Kirstein's contributions were indespensible to the development of the arts in America. Authoritative and elegant, Duberman's biography utilizes previously unavailable documents, including Kirstein's diaries, to reveal the keen eye, incessant self-doubt, and enormous ambition that drove Kirstein's relentless advocacy. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein brings attention to an important, but until-now unappreciated figure whose individual contribution to the arts was one of the greatest of the twentieth century.

Drawing on a series of new sources, this biography of Ezra Pound - the first to appear in more than a decade - outlines his contribution to modernism through a detailed account of his development, influence and continued significance. It pays special attention to his role in creating Imagism, Vorticism and the modern long poem, as well as his importance for Yeats, Joyce and Eliot. His roles as editor, translator and critic, plus his attempt to complete The Cantos , are also studied.

This new visual biography is an extraordinary chronicle of Lady Pamela's life. Daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last viceroy of India, Lady Pamela was a first cousin to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and served as a bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II, before marrying legendary interior designer David Hicks. Sifting through her parents' archives, India has uncovered a trove of material about her mother. This beautifully illustrated personal history includes ephemera such as letters from the Queen; images of the houses and gardens where she grew up and made her wonderfully elegant home; details of her extraordinary work during Indian independence, her marriage to David Hicks and the homes he designed for them, the assassination of her father in Ireland, and later life in the country, as well as the lessons India has learned from her mother having had a front-row seat at so many historical events --

Looks at such major aspects of the author's life as family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair, and argues that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to him.

A revealing look at the power of speaking out, Writing in an Age of Silence describes Paretski’s coming of age in a time of great possibility, during the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and the women’s movement. Bestselling crime-writer Sarah Paretsky has won critical acclaim for her V.I. Warshawski novels, centered around one of the first and most popular female investigators in contemporary fiction. In this fascinating and personal account, Paretsky describes a life shaped by the desire to act. From the feminist movement—which triggered her aspirations to write and shaped the character of her female detective—to the Patriot Act and the liberties we have lost, Paretsky describes the struggle of one individual to find a voice. A moving call to action, Writing in an Age of Silence chronicles the social changes that have shaped contemporary America, and mirrors a desire for freedom, both personal and political, that many Americans will relate to today.

An Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and a mystery novelist, Roger L. Simon is the only American writer to pull off the amazing trick of being profiled positively in both Mother Jones and National Review in one lifetime. The stunning story of his political odyssey is told in this memoir, where Simon recounts his migration from financier of the Black Panther Breakfast Program to pioneer blogosphere mogul beloved by the right as a 9/11 Democrat. But Simon is beholden to neither right nor left in this tale of Hollywood chic run amuck, as he talks out of school about his adventures with, among many others, Richard Pryor, Warren Beatty, Timothy Leary, Richard Dreyfuss, Woody Allen, and Julian Semyonov, the Soviet Union's version of Robert Ludlum and also a KGB colonel who tempted Simon to join the KGB himself. Among the topics covered along the way: Is there a new blacklist in Hollywood, this one targeting conservatives? Simon's red-carpet tours of the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union with Hollywood screenwriters and famous mystery novelists. Why Al Gore's documentary on global warming didn't deserve the Oscar on artistic grounds alone; and why the Academy's voting system is so corrupt. And, as they say, there is much, much more besides.

This text provides an account of the turbulent romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham. In July 1937 Scott Fitzgerald was broken in spirit, desperate for money and headed for Hollywood for work as a screenwriter - his one last shot at staying sober and re-establishing himself as a writer. There he met the young Sheilah Graham, a fledgling columnist who had transformed herself from a Jewish orphan from London's East End to a British aristocrat, determined to eradicate all traces of her squalid youth. Scott was fascinated by the gutsy Graham, she instinctively understood him and his demons and, together, they sought refuge from the glittering ferment of late-1930s Hollywood among friends such as Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the brilliant author of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night, was a man haunted by failure to live up to his own early successes. In 1937, desperate for money, nearly broken in spirit, he headed west for work as a Hollywood screenwriter and one last shot at staying sober.

How a little-known industrial neighborhood in New York unintentionally became a nexus of creative activity for a brief burst of time. During the 1960s and 1970s in New York City, young artists exploited an industrial wasteland to create spacious studios where they lived and worked, redefining the Manhattan area just south of Houston Street. Its use fueled not by city planning schemes but by word-of-mouth recommendations, the area soon grew to become a world-class center for artistic creation indeed, the largest urban artists' colony ever in America--let alone the world. Richard Kostelanetz's Artists' SoHo not only examines why the artists came and how they accomplished what they did but also delves into the lives and works of some of the most creative personalities who lived there during that period, including Nam June Paik, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Hannah Wilke, George Macuinas, and Alan Suicide. Gallerists followed the artists in fashioning themselves, their homes, their buildings, and even their streets into transiently prominent exhibition and performance spaces. SoHo pioneer Richard Kostelanetz's extensively researched intimate history is framed within a personal memoir that unearths myriad perspectives: social and cultural history, the changing rules for residency and ownership, the ethos of the community, the physical layouts of the lofts, the types of art produced, venues that opened and closed, the daily rhythm, and the gradual invasion of "new people." Artists' SoHo also explores how and why this fertile bohemia couldn't last forever. As wealthier people paid higher prices, galleries left, younger artists settled elsewhere, and the neighborhood became a "SoHo Mall" of trendy stores and restaurants. Compelling and often humorous, Artists' SoHo provides an analysis of a remarkable neighborhood that transformed the art and culture of New York City over the past five decades.

""Peter David, award-winning writer of comic books, novels, television, films and video games, has boatloads of stories to tell about his 30-year career. Whether it was attending George Takei's wedding, being described as Will Smith's bodyguard, or wandering around on the set of Babylon 5, David has been telling anecdotes of his life for years. Here they are all in one place, along with the story of a career that has taken him from writing Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk for twelve years to adventures in the Star Trek universe to the New York Times bestseller list."-Provided by publisher"--

By focusing on the human side as well as the intellectual dimensions of how economists work and think, this collection of interviews with top economists of the 20th century becomes a startling and lively introduction to the modern world of macroeconomics. A fun read! For more information, frequent updates, and to comment on the forthcoming book, visit William A. Barnett's weblog at http://economistmind.blogspot.com/. Acclaim for Inside the Economist's Mind "In candid interviews, these great economists prove to be fabulous story tellers of their lives and times. Unendingly gripping for insiders, this book should also help non-specialists understand how economists think." Professor Julio Rotemberg, Harvard University Business School, and Editor, Review of Economics and Statistics. "Economics used to be called the 'dismal science'. It will be impossible for anybody to hold that view anymore ... This is science with flesh and blood, and a lot of fascinating stories that you will find nowhere else." Dr. Jean-Pascal Bénassy, Paris-Jourdan Sciences Économiques, Paris, France "This book provides a rare and intriguing view of the personal and professional lives of leading economists ... It is like A Beautiful Mind , scaled by a factor of 16 [the number of interviews in the book]." Professor Lee Ohanian, University of California at Los Angeles " ... if you want an insider view of how economics has been developing in the last decades, this is the (only) book for you." Professor Giancarlo Gandolfo, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza,’ Rome "Here we see the HUMAN side of path-breaking research, the personalities and pitfalls, the DRAMA behind the science." Professor Francis X. Diebold, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

The well-known columnist and commentator offers a funny and poignant memoir of his youth as a Jew growing up in Boston and of the influences that molded him, from the Boston Latin school, to the candy store, to jazz

As Times Square turns 100, New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub tells the story of how this mercurial district became one of the most famous and exciting places in the world. The Devil’s Playground is classic and colorful American history, from the first years of the twentieth century through the Runyonesque heyday of nightclubs and theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, to the district’s decline in the 1960s and its glittering corporate revival in the 1990s. First, Traub gives us the great impresarios, wits, tunesmiths, newspaper columnists, and nocturnal creatures who shaped Times Square over the century since the place first got its name: Oscar Hammerstein, Florenz Ziegfeld, George S. Kaufman, Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, and “the Queen of the Nightclubs,” Texas Guinan; bards like A. J. Liebling, Joe Mitchell, and the Beats, who celebrated the drug dealers and pimps of 42nd Street. He describes Times Square’s notorious collapse into pathology and the fierce debates over how best to restore it to life. Traub then goes on to scrutinize today’s Times Square as no author has yet done. He writes about the new 42nd Street, the giant Toys “R” Us store with its flashing Ferris wheel, the new world of corporate theater, and the sex shops trying to leave their history behind. More than sixty years ago, Liebling called Times Square “the heart of the world”—not just the center of the world, though this crossroads in Midtown Manhattan was indeed that, but its heart. From the dawn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, Times Square was the whirling dynamo of American popular culture and, increasingly, an urban sanctuary for the eccentric and the untamed. The name itself became emblematic of the tremendous life force of cities everywhere. Today, Times Square is once again an awe-inspiring place, but the dark and strange corners have been filled with blazing light. The most famous street character on Broadway, “the Naked Cowboy,” has his own website, and Toys “R” Us calls its flagship store in Times Square “the toy center of the universe.” For the giant entertainment corporations that have moved to this safe, clean, and self-consciously gaudy spot, Times Square is still very much the center of the world. But is it still the heart?

This book is both a powerful personal memoir and the definitive history of an organization that helped change American society. Jack Greenberg was a key figure at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) for some thirty-five years. Most of the cases we associate from that period--school integration, equal employment, fair housing, voter registration--were LDF cases, either argued by Greenberg himself or litigated under his direction. Greenberg represented Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham and won for him the right to march from Selma to Montgomery. Under Greenberg's leadership, the LDF forced the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith and integrated the University of Alabama when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door. Greenberg won the cases in which the Supreme Court repudiated the "all deliberate speed" doctrine, which had made school desegregation intolerably slow. Through the 1970s and 1980s, LDF tackled most of the important cases that enforced the new civil rights legislation of the 1960s involving public accommodations, employment, education, and health care, and started the campaigns for prisoners' rights and against capital punishment. More than a history of the litigation that made the LDF so important, the book offers unique insights into its strategies, courtroom techniques, values, and personal relationships. Filled with stories only Greenberg could tell of his experiences with Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Lani Guinier, Roy Wilkins, Vernon Jordan, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Lyndon Johnson, and scores of others, Crusaders in the Courts is an epic saga of a critical period in American history as well as the poignant personal story of the evolution of a white Jewish lawyer into a major civil rights advocate.

"This account of Philip Roth traces the psychological and artistic origins of his creative life. It examines the major events of his career, while identifying a series of personal themes in his writing, from his relationship with Judaism to family, marriage, Eastern Europe and America. It addresses his private challenges from romance and health, to surviving as a writer burdened with success. The book also reflects how living outside the United States, initially in Italy and then England, plus his visits to Eastern Europe and exposure to their oppressed writers affected his writing. In particular, it primed him for a new engagement with American political and social history, resulting in a renewed determination to re-write America through his American trilogy and The Plot Against America. Although chronology is the framework, this is a thematic reading of Roth's life and career with attention to family, self-identity and success. A set of contrasting angles form this approach, beginning with his prolonged sense of discontent, yet public image of success, his search for sustained relationships but then decision to end them, his idealization of his parents but persistent undercurrent of criticism. Three overlapping issues provide the impetus for this reading: the aesthetic, the emotional and the historical. The lasting importance of such themes as anger, betrayal and failure has a vital role in understanding Roth's character and work. So, too, does his sense of performance on and off the page. Location is also significant and there are extensive discussions of Newark, London, Iowa, Prague and rural Connecticut. Particular attention to writers of the Holocaust, notably Primo Levi and Aharon Appelfeld, and contemporaries such as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, also frame the narrative along with discussions of John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Norman Mailer, Nadine Gordimer and Nicole Krauss. Works receiving special attention are Portnoy's Complaint, The Ghost Writer, Sabbath's Theater and the American trilogy. The shifting patterns of Roth's writing style, often related to changes in his physical and psychological health, are also considered. But more importantly is Roth's character and how early incidents formed later behavior, especially his inability to forget the past, particularly an insult or criticism. Analysis of his life with his two wives, Margaret (Maggie) Williams and Claire Bloom also occurs, as well as his relationships with other women. Further commentary focuses on Roth's illnesses and his life after he publically announced that he had stopped writing"--

"One hot midsummer morning, crime novelist Howard Engel picked up his newspaper from his front step and discovered he could no longer read it. The letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves into something that looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next. While he slept, Engel had experienced a stroke and now suffered from a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia, meaning that while he could still write, he could no longer read"--Jacket flap.

During the hard and bitter years of his youth in England, Harry Bernstein’s selfless mother never stops dreaming of a better life in America, no matter how unlikely. Then, one miraculous day when Harry is twelve years old, steamship tickets arrive in the mail, sent by an anonymous benefactor. Suddenly, a new life full of the promise of prosperity seems possible–and the family sets sail for America, meeting relatives in Chicago. For a time, they get a taste of the good life: electric lights, a bathtub, a telephone. But soon the harsh realities of the Great Depression envelop them. Skeletons in the family closet come to light, mafiosi darken their doorstep, family members are lost, and dreams are shattered. In the face of so much loss, Harry and his mother must make a fateful decision–one that will change their lives forever. And though he has struggled for so long, there is an incredible bounty waiting for Harry in New York: his future wife, Ruby. It is their romance that will finally bring the peace and happiness that Harry’s mother always dreamed was possible.

Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859 with little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today. In Frances Dinkelspeil's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner only to become California's premier money man of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman quickly learned the use to which capital could be put, founding Los Angeles's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheny the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gray Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles's first synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the University of Southern California, and served as Regent of the University of California. His influence, however, was not limited to Los Angeles. He controlled the California wine industry for almost 20 years, and after San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, calmed the financial markets there in order to help that great city rise from the ashes. With all of these accomplishments, Isaias Hellman almost single-handedly brought California into modernity --