Great Art

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did - and it felt like the revolution was happening.

Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye and many more.

In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, "I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go."

Have no fear! The Great Book of Pub Trivia Volume 2 is finally here, and it’s the perfect companion for game nights, fun family times, fun evenings with friends, or just reading to brush up on your pub trivia knowledge. You’ll get instant access to fun quizzes covering different topics such as film, politics, science, history, fashion, and many more.

When he graduated from Columbia in 1958, John Giorno was handsome, charismatic, ambitious, and eager to soak up as much of Manhattan's art and culture as possible. Poetry didn't pay the bills, so he worked on Wall Street, spending his nights at the happenings, underground movie premiers, art shows, and poetry readings that brought the city to life. An intense romantic relationship with Andy Warhol - not yet the global superstar he would soon become - exposed Giorno to even more of the downtown scene, but after starring in Warhol's first movie, Sleep, they drifted apart.

In 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster; it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage dowry - but it opens an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life. Using the court testimony as a springboard, acclaimed nonfiction writer Charles Nicholl examines this fascinating period in Shakespeare's life.

Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world's leading experts in natural sound, and he's spent his life discovering and recording nature's rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world's honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth.

In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.

With clarity and insight, Richard Brestoff introduces the great acting teachers, explaining their techniques and how they are applied today. Beginning with Quintilian and Delsarte, he guides us to the present with an inside look at what is currently being taught in the major acting schools and private acting studios; The Actors Studio, Yale University, NYU, Juilliard and many more are visited. The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods will help you understand the most important ideas about acting, where they originated and how they are used in training programs today.

A perfect introduction for anyone interested in the rich history of Western Art. Great Artists takes its listeners on a comprehensive journey through the history of art. This book, part one, provides a dedicated chapter on each of the following artists: Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Bruegel. These major painters of Western art are considered, placed in their social context, and discussed in terms of the most recent scholarship.

The Great Commanders is a masterly portrait of six men - Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Horatio Nelson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ulysses S. Grant and Georgi Zhukov - whose military genius changed the course of world history.

If you're lucky, somewhere in your past is that one person who changed your life forever. The one who pushed you to dream bigger and to reach higher, and who set you straight on what matters in life. Perhaps it was a coach, or a professor, or a family friend. For Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky, that person was a public-school music teacher, Jerry Kupchynsky, known as Mr. K - a Ukrainian-born taskmaster who yelled and stomped and screamed, and who drove his students harder than anyone had ever driven them.

Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.

This unique book brings together George Bernard Shaw's witty and iconoclastic take on Wagner's masterwork, The Ring of the Nibelungen, with the composer's own essay on the role of art in revolution.

Use this guide to storytelling as a sturdy foundation to change how you use stories. You can build solid stories to support your goals in business and life. The provided examples are from some of the world's greatest speakers, storytellers, with advice from leading experts. From best-selling authors to generation-changing motivational speakers, this audiobook covers all the fundamentals of outstanding storytelling. It will help you deliver stories to audiences that will leave them personally affected and motivated.

A perfect introduction for anyone interested in the rich history of Western art. Great Artists takes its readers on a comprehensive journey through the history of art. This book, part two, provides a dedicated chapter on each of the following artists: El Greco, Rubens, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Turner. These major painters of Western art are considered, placed in their social contexts, and discussed in terms of the most recent scholarship.

With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. You'll learn that Michelangelo's body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn't stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O'Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you'll never forget!

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. Only 23 and newly married to the already world-famous 43-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions.

The Art of Military Strategy: Lessons from Sun Tzu, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte introduces listeners to the leadership, strategies, and battle exploits of these three great men. With this audiobook, you’ll understand how they influenced their generations and the impact they've had on the history of the world.

Seven years in the making and meticulously researched - Gabler is the first writer to be given complete access to the Disney archives - this is the full story of a man whose work left an ineradicable brand on our culture but whose life has largely been enshrouded in myth.