Art Study

Without a doubt, Schopenhauer is one of the giants of Western philosophy. He represents a turning point from the quest to define the external world as something apart from our experience to a recognition of our experience as the medium of our world. Philosophy is a discourse, a conversation spread out over centuries that explores and develops different lines of thought.

Considered by many to be a founder of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra - a.k.a. Herman Blount - was a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, entrepreneur, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. He recorded over 200 albums with his Arkestra, which, dressed in Egypto-space costumes, played everything from boogie-woogie and swing to fusion and free jazz.

Drawing on a host of recently declassified documents from the Reagan-Thatcher years, A Diplomatic Meeting provides an innovative framework for understanding the development and nature of the special relationship between British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and American President Ronald Reagan, who were known as "political soulmates". James Cooper boldly challenges the popular conflation of the leaders' platforms and proposes that Reagan and Thatcher's summitry highlighted unique features of domestic policy in their respective countries.

An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy’s modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the ’80s and the ’90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the directors, writers, and stars of the iconic films that defined the genre.

In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes—deeply feminist, sensitively written—that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

There has been a void where this audiobook should have been. Plenty has been written on the mechanics of writing effective fiction, but story is more than its structure. Christian writers need not appeal to culture. Rather, they can guide listeners through stories that encourage them to become the heroes and heroines that we need. People need to be inspired, convicted, and encouraged, and The Soul of Story does that fearlessly.

This is audio summary of The War of Art, a book that helps identify the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.

The films, the stars, the filmmakers - all get their due in Hollywood Black, a sweeping overview of Blacks in film from the silent era through Black Panther, with striking photos and an engrossing history by award-winning author Donald Bogle.

God Save the Queens pays tribute to the women of hip-hop - from the early work of Roxanne Shante, to hitmakers like Queen Latifah and Missy Elliot, to the superstars of today. Exploring issues of gender, money, sexuality, violence, body image, feuds, objectification and more, God Save the Queens is an important and monumental work of music journalism that at last gives these influential female artists the respect they have long deserved.

In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.

What happens when we push past the surface and allow real, grounded, mutually challenging, and edifying friendships to develop? We need only look at the little-known friendship between eminent Christian thinkers Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis to find out. Born out of a fan letter that celebrated mystery novelist Sayers wrote to Lewis as his star was just beginning to rise, this friendship between a married woman and a longtime bachelor developed over years of correspondence as the two discovered their mutual admiration of each other's writing, thinking, and faith.

What does the cross of Christ have to do with the thunderbird? How might the life and work of Christian writer G. K. Chesterton shed light on our understanding of North American Indigenous art and history? This unexpected connection forms the basis of these discerning reflections by art historian Matthew Milliner. In this fifth volume in the Hansen Lectureship Series, Milliner appeals to Chesterton's life and work in order to understand and appreciate both Indigenous art and the complex, often tragic history of First Nations peoples, especially in the American Midwest.

Just as Susan Sontag did for photography and Marshall McLuhan did for television, Virginia Heffernan (called one of the "best living writers of English prose") reveals the logic and aesthetics behind the Internet. Since its inception, the Internet has morphed from merely an extension of traditional media into its own full-fledged civilization. It is among mankind's great masterpieces - a massive work of art. As an idea, it rivals monotheism.

Chris Dubbs tells the fascinating stories of Edith Wharton, Nellie Bly, and more than 30 other American women who worked as war reporters. As Dubbs shows, stories by these journalists brought in women from the periphery of war and made them active participants - fully engaged and equally heroic, if bearing different burdens and making different sacrifices. Women journalists traveled from belligerent capitals to the front lines to report on the conflict. But their experiences also brought them into contact with social transformations, political unrest, labor conditions, and more.

In some of the bleakest corners of the world, an unprecedented movement is taking root. From the favelas of Brazil to the Maori villages in New Zealand, from occupied Palestine to South Central Los Angeles, musicians with strong social consciences are founding intensive orchestra programs for children in need. In this captivating and inspiring account, authors Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth tell the remarkable story of the international El Sistema movement.

Scandal, shock, and rivalry all have negative connotations, don't they? They can be catastrophic to businesses and individual careers. A whiff of scandal can turn a politician into a smoking ruin. But these potentially disastrous "negatives" can and have spurred the world of fine art to new heights. A look at the history of art tells us that rivalries have, in fact, not only benefited the course of art, from ancient times to the present, but have also helped shape our narrative of art, lending it a sense of drama that it might otherwise lack.

A fearless deep dive into the 2020 election from former MSNBC “Road Warrior” and now NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali, who covered the campaign trail every step of the way—investigating the gendered double standards placed on women presidential candidates of that cycle and those who came before, and what it will take for a woman to finally break the glass ceiling and win the White House.

"Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word orthodox. In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him. The armies with their cruel security, the kings with their cold faces, the decorous processes of State, the reasonable processes of law - all these like sheep had gone astray...."

In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman describes how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times' meanings. And in a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.

The JT LeRoy scandal is a story of our times. In January 2006, the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy. A media frenzy ensued as JT's fans, mentors, and readers came to terms with the fact that the gay male-ex-truck stop prostitute turned literary wunderkind was really a girl from San Francisco whose sister-in-law wrote the books.