"Captured in a beautiful package, including more than fifty color photographs, The Last Waltz tells the intriguing story of of the Viennese Strauss family known for producing some of the best known, best loved music of the nineteenth century. Johann and Josef Strauss, the Waltz Kings, composed hundreds of instantly recognizable and enduring melodies, including The Blue Danube Waltz, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Voices of Spring and The Radetzky March. Their iconic music has been featured on the scores of nearly a thousand films. Yet despite their success, this was a family riven with tension, feuds and jealousy, living in a country that was undergoing seismic upheaval. Through the personal and political chaos, the Strauss family continued to compose music to which the Viennese -- anxious to forget their troubles -- could dance and drank champagne, even as their country hurtled towards oblivion at the hands of the First World War. Classical music expert and radio host John Suchet skillfully portrays this gripping story, capturing the family dramas, the tensions, triumphs and disasters against the turbulent backdrop of Austria in the nineteenth century, from revolution to regicide." --

(Applause Books). Jacob Adler, with his performances in the Yiddish King Lear , Uriel Acosta and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice , became first a megastar of the exploding Yiddish theatre, and then all of Broadway. His memoirs, originally written and published in Yiddish and now translated (by his granddaughter) into English provides not only a compelling portrait of one of America's greatest actors but a fascinating social history of his time.

Lewald (1811-1889), the best-selling German woman writer in the nineteenth century, proved a keen and perceptive observer of the social, artistic, and political life of her times, of which these Recollections offer an excellent example. Written from a woman's perspective, this firsthand account of the revolutions in both Germany and France must be considered a unique document. It is further enhanced by her detailed description of the Frankfurt Parliament and her relationships with many of the prominent politicians and thinkers of that eventful period.

The Staplehurst rail crash of June 9th, 1865 which claimed ten lives, might have passed relatively unnoticed but for the presence of a celebrity passenger among the survivors. Charles Dickens, returning from France on the ill-fated boat train from Folkestone to London, was to be profoundly affected by the experience. In a fascinating exploration of the circumstances surrounding the disaster and probing insight into Dickens' personal life, the writer's great-great-grandson, Gerald Dickens, examines his secret relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan and professional motivation in the years either side of the accident. Questions concerning the conduct of the inquest into the crash and apportioning of blame are raised that remain unresolved even today. Striking parallels are drawn with more recent disasters and the signs of wrestling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are evident in the account of Dickens' final years, powerfully reflected in the stirring ghost story The Signalman.

The life stories of eight working-class militants railroaded to prison or the gallows for the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago. Written from prison, these accounts present a living portrait of the labor movement of the time, as well as the lives and ideas of these fighters for workers' rights.

Surveyor, fur-trader and explorer, David Thompson was the first European to descend the Columbia River from its source to its mouth. A partner in the North West Company, Thompson explored western Canada exhaustively, and the maps he produced became the basis for many future maps of the region. Thompson first came to Canada in 1784 as a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company. He spent several years gaining knowledge of the fur trade, making extensive expeditions and learning the ways of the aboriginal peoples. After learning the use of sextant, chronometer, telescope, compass and nautical almanac, surveying became his primary interest. He explored new territory whenever possible, keeping detailed journals of his bearings and weather conditions, and charted all of his journeys.

In 'Dictations', Avital Ronell, one of literary criticism's most imaginative and inimitable mediums, channels Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).

Siegfried Kracauer’s Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time brilliantly reconfigures the biography form into a remarkable work of social and cultural history. In a book that has frequently been compared with Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, Kracauer uses the life and work of Offenbach to assemble a penetrating portrayal of Second Empire Paris. By examining the superficiality and mystification of collective experience, Kracauer provides the reader with a revelatory “physiognomy” of social reality itself. Offenbach’s immensely popular operettas have long been seen as part of the larger historical amnesia and escapism in the aftermath of 1848. But Kracauer insists that Offenbach’s productions have to be understood as more than simply glittering distractions. The fantasy realms of his operettas, occurring amid the urban renewal of Baron Haussmann and the fanfare of Universal Expositions, were on the one hand fully continuous with the unreality of Napoleon III’s imperial masquerade, but on the other made a mockery of the pomp and pretenses surrounding the apparatuses of power. His music “originated in an epoch in which social reality had been banished by the Emperor’s orders, and for many years it flourished in the gap that was left.” Offenbach’s dreamworlds were embedded with a layer of utopian content that can be seen as an indictment of the fraudulence and corruption of the times. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern critical and cultural studies. This edition includes Kracauer’s preface to the original German edition, translated into English for the first time, and a critical foreword by Gertrud Koch.

On June 27, 1868, Hole in the Day (Bagonegiizhig) the Younger left Crow Wing, Minnesota, for Washington, DC, to fight the planned removal of the Mississippi Ojibwe to a reservation at White Earth. Several miles from his home, the self-styled leader of all the Ojibwe was stopped by at least twelve Ojibwe men and fatally shot. Hole in the Day's death was national news, and rumors of its cause were many: personal jealousy, retribution for his claiming to be head chief of the Ojibwe, retaliation for the attacks he fomented in 1862, or retribution for his attempts to keep mixed-blood Ojibwe off the White Earth Reservation. Still later, investigators found evidence of a more disturbing plot involving some of his closest colleagues: the business elite at Crow Wing. While most historians concentrate on the Ojibwe relationship with whites to explain this story, Anton Treuer focuses on interactions with other tribes, the role of Ojibwe culture and tradition, and interviews with more than fifty elders to further explain the events leading up to the death of Hole in the Day. The Assassination of Hole in the Day is not only the biography of a powerful leader but an extraordinarily insightful analysis of a pivotal time in the history of the Ojibwe people. " An essential study of nineteenth-century Ojibwe leadership and an important contribution to the field of American Indian Studies by an author of extraordinary knowledge and talent. Treuer's work is infused with a powerful command over Ojibwe culture and linguistics." --Ned Blackhawk, author of Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West "The Assassination of Hole in the Day is a masterful history, and more. Anton Treuer illuminates the character of a controversial and charismatic Ojibwe leader from within Ojibwe culture, and tells a powerful story of loss that reverberates in the present." --Louise Erdrich "This is more than a murder mystery. It provides insights into the evolution of clan structure, tribal governance and relations with the Dakota and other tribes since the time a century and a half ago when white pressure, the declining fur trade and other factors led to the cession of great tracts of land and the people's removal to reservations." --Star Tribune "This highly recommended work provides insights into the challenges faced by native peoples during an era when they were under intense pressure by the federal government to move to reservations." --Library Journal "Treuer explores the life and death of this brash young leader, and delves into tribal history and the intricate machinations of Ojibwa politics." --Booklist Anton Treuer, professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, is the author of Ojibwe in Minnesota and several books on the Ojibwe language. He is also the editor of Oshkaabewis Native Journal, the only academic journal of the Ojibwe language.

Anka Muhlstein's lively biography, translated by Teresa Waugh, introduces American readers to Astolphe de Custine, a passionate literary figure, a poet, playwright, essayist, traveler, aristocrat and homosexual adventurer. Against the fascinating background of early-19th-century France, Anka Muhlstein presents the gifted if at times deplorable Custine with vivacity, elegance, and insight. It is a splendid introduction to the Marquis and his world and to his famous 1839 tour of autocratic Russia -- Daniel Aaron. Briliant, visionary, beautiful Astolphe -- man of letters and man of society -- finally gets his biography . . . -- French elle Magazine ... -- Amazon

Hardcover. Jacket shows a few superficial scores, with very minor wear on upper and lower edges. Spine ends of hardcover and jacket are bumped; minimal wear on leading corners of jacket and hardcover. Page block head foxed with a smudge on face; penned number on rear pastedown. Pages are sound and clean throughout; all text clear. TS

Although A.B. Marx is not often acknowledged as such, he remains Western music's single most influential theorist, as the person who gave Sonata Form its name and codified its elements. Above a certain level of proficiency, there is not a single musician in the Western Classical tradition who does not know Sonata Form: they know Marx's legacy, if not his name. Further awareness of Marx as a man is especially important. The naming of Sonata form, and the discussion of its elements, was invested with convictions about music that Marx was among the very first to hold, and which we continue to value: for instance, that a composer's formal choices are not made just by convention, but with intention, and that the way in which a work unfolds is itself meaningful; or that music of any era reflects the aesthetic priorities of its age. Those convictions, in turn, spring from Marx's vigorous intellectual engagement with the world around him, its thinkers, its writers, and its politics. This translation provides a unique opportunity to read Marx in his own words. His Recollections from My Life were published in 1865, Marx's last book to appear during his lifetime, and have not been republished either in the German original, nor in any translation. Our translation with annotation and commentary will make available to English-readers this important view of music in Germany during the time of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and other familiar names from the concert hall.

"This is a beautiful book, full of ideas that could help restore America’s genius for freedom and promise.” — Thomas Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul A lifelong Emerson lover, teacher, and spiritual seeker reveals how American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s twelve essential teachings hold the answer to living an authentic and fulfilling life, one that is in har[Bokinfo]

Few writers have inspired such affection ain their contemporaries, and in later generations of readers, as Robert Louis Stevenson. And yet, difficult though it is to resist the generous, enchanting personality tht shines out from his letters, it is even harder to define it. A descendant of Calvinists who spent his youth in a Bohemian milieu, a lover of his native Scotland who became committed to exile, a man whose humorous enjoyment of human foibles did not preclude an awareness of the nightmarish background against which some lives are lived - Stevenson was highly complex, with a deep sense of moral ambiguities which runs throughout his work. He could have no abler or more sympathetic biographer than David Daiches, Professor of English Studies at Sussex University, and author of an earlier book on the master (Robert Louis Stevenson: A Revaluation) as well as of biographies of Burns and Scott in this series. In a brilliant and absorbing text, Professor Daiches traces Stevenson's life, from his childhood and early manhood in Scotland (whose scenery and townscapes inspired his work throughout his life), through his visits to France and the United States, and on to his las years in Samoa. Professor Daiches also discusses Stevenson's writings, explaining how he harnessed the disparate elements in his nature so that they fertilized his imagination while he developed his gifts as a romancer, essayist, poet and historical novelist, from his early travel books and Treasure Island - the greatest of all adventure stories for boys - to the tragic conflict so superbly realised in Weir of Hermiston, the masterpiece which he did not live to complete.