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Other Entertainment: Collected Pieces
by Ned RoremA collection of insightful essays, interviews, and commentaries on music, art, and those who make it, from acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Ned RoremIt is a rare artist who can deftly cross the boundaries separating one artistic endeavor from another. Contemporary American composer Ned Rorem is one of the able few, not only &“the world&’s best composer of art songs&” (Time magazine) but a remarkable purveyor of prose works, as well. Rorem&’s superb collection Other Entertainment features insightful and fascinating essays on music, musicians, and literature, as well as provocative interviews with well-known figures in the arts and elsewhere. Whether he&’s offering a cogent analysis of Benjamin Britten&’s published diaries, confronting John Simon on the famously acerbic film and theater reviewer&’s alleged homophobia, or providing in-depth commentary on the lives and accomplishments of major artists and musical colleagues—as well as moving obituaries for those we have lost—Rorem proves himself to be as entertaining and controversial a social and cultural critic as America has ever produced.
Other People's Daughters: The Life And Times Of The Governess
by Ruth BrandonA rich and fascinating account of the lives of Victorian governesses, exploring nineteenth-century attitudes to women, family and class.If a nineteenth century lady had neither a husband to support her nor money of her own, almost her only recourse was to live in someone else's household and educate their children - in particular, their daughters. Marooned within the confines of other people's lives, neither servants nor family members, governesses occupied an uncomfortable social limbo. And being poor and insignificant, their papers were mostly lost. But a few journals and letters have come down to us, giving a vivid record of what it was to be a lone professional woman at a time when such a creature officially did not exist.
Other People's Daughters: The Life And Times Of The Governess
by Ruth BrandonA rich and fascinating account of the lives of Victorian governesses, exploring nineteenth-century attitudes to women, family and class.If a nineteenth century lady had neither a husband to support her nor money of her own, almost her only recourse was to live in someone else's household and educate their children - in particular, their daughters. Marooned within the confines of other people's lives, neither servants nor family members, governesses occupied an uncomfortable social limbo. And being poor and insignificant, their papers were mostly lost. But a few journals and letters have come down to us, giving a vivid record of what it was to be a lone professional woman at a time when such a creature officially did not exist.
Other People's Dirt: A Housecleaner's Curious Adventures
by Louise RafkinEntertaining stories of house cleaning
Other People's Houses
by Hilary McPheeIn Other People's Houses publishing legend Hilary McPhee exchanges one hemisphere for another. Fleeing the aftermath of a failed marriage, she embarks on a writing project in the Middle East, for a member of the Hashemite royal family, a man she greatly respects. Here she finds herself faced with different kinds of exile, new kinds of banishment. From apartments in Cortona and Amman and an attic in London, McPhee watches other women managing magnificently alone as she flounders through the mire of Extreme Loneliness. Other People's Houses is a brutally honest memoir, funny, sad, full of insights into worlds to which she was given privileged access, and of the friendships which sustained her. And ultimately, of course, this is the story of returning home, of picking up the pieces, and facing the music as her house and her life takes on new shapes.
Other People's Houses: A Novel
by Lore SegalWith a foreword by Cynthia Ozick, this semiautobiographical novel of a Jewish girl forced away from home in the face of Nazi persecution is an extraordinary tale of fortitude and survivalOn a December night in 1938, a ten-year-old girl named Lore is put on the Kindertransport, a train carrying hundreds of Jewish children out of Austria to safety from Hitler&’s increasingly alarming oppression. Temporarily housed at the Dover Court Camp on England&’s east coast, Lore will find herself living in other people&’s houses for the next seven years: the Orthodox Levines, the Hoopers, the working-class Grimsleys, and the wealthy Miss Douglas and Mrs. Dillon.Charged with the task of asking &“the English people&” to get her parents out of Austria, Lore discovers in herself an impassioned writer. In letters to potential sponsors, she details the horrors happening back at home; in those to her parents, she notes the mannerisms and reactions of the new families around her as she valiantly tries to master their language. And the closer the world comes to a new war, the more resolute Lore becomes to survive.As powerful now as when it was first released fifty years ago, Other People&’s Houses is a poignant tale about the creation of a new life in the face of hopelessness and fear—a hallmark of the postwar immigration experience.
Other People's Mothers
by Julie Marie WadeThis coming-of-age memoir explores the relationship between a daughter, her mother, and the other mothers present in their lives, revealing a young woman grappling with complex messages about who she is permitted—or destined—to become.
Other People: Takes & Mistakes
by David ShieldsAn intellectually thrilling and emotionally wrenching investigation of otherness: the need for one person to understand another person completely, the impossibility of any such absolute knowing, and the erotics of this separation. Can one person know another person? How do we live through other people? Is it possible to fill the gap between people? If not, can art fill that gap? Grappling with these questions, David Shields gives us a book that is something of a revelation: seventy-plus essays, written over the last thirty-five years, reconceived and recombined to form neither a miscellany nor a memoir but a sustained meditation on otherness. The book is divided into five sections: Men, Women, Athletes, Performers, Alter Egos. Whether he is writing about sexual desire or information sickness, George W. Bush or Kurt Cobain, women's eyeglasses or Greek tragedy, Howard Cosell or Bill Murray, the comedy of high school journalism or the agony of first love, Shields's sustained, piercing focus is on the multiplicity of perspectives informing any situation, on the irreducible log jam of human information, and on the possibilities, and impossibilities, for human connection.From the Hardcover edition.
Other People’s Money: The rise and fall of Britain’s most audacious fraudster
by Neil Forsyth Elliot CastroThe true story behind the BBC documentary Confessions of a Teenage Fraudster'The crime of fraud, when conducted well, is a fascinating pursuit. It’s a test of intellect, determination and stamina. It is a floating mess of fact and fiction that you have to carry in your mind for twenty-four hours a day. It can be used to realize dreams, to slip on any mask required.’Elliot Castro was just a teenager when he began to use his formidable intelligence and charm to swindle millions from the credit card system. No outside individual has ever pulled off this scale of fraudulent activity. But the money wasn’t funding an addiction or other criminal enterprises; Elliot was simply a working-class kid with no qualifications who wanted to see the world. From London to New York, Ibiza to Beverly Hills, Castro lived a fantasy life. He stayed in famous hotels, travelled first class and blew a small fortune on designer clothes and champagne.Time after time, Elliot managed to wriggle free of the authorities while his life spiralled out of control. As he juggled aliases, and lied to family and friends, he began to lose his grip on reality. Meanwhile, a detective from Heathrow Police Station was patiently tracking him down. It would soon turn intoan international manhunt.In Other People’s Money, Neil Forsyth chronicles Elliot’s extraordinary journey. A gripping tale of charm and deceit, filled with humour and heart-stopping suspense, this true story offers a fascinating insight into the mind of Britain’s most audacious, and friendliest, credit card fraudster.
Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull
by Barbara GoldsmithFrom the author of Little Gloria, a stunning combination of history and biography that interweaves the stories of some of the most important social, political, and religious figures of America's Victorian era with the courageous and notorious life of Victoria Woodhull, to tell the story of her astonishing rise and fall and rise again. This is history at its most vivid, set amid the battle for woman suffrage, the Spiritualist movement that swept across the nation (10 million strong by midcentury) in the age of Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War, and the bitter fight that pitted black men against white women in the struggle to win the right to vote. <P><P>The cast includes: Victoria Woodhull, billed as a clairvoyant and magnetic healer--a devotee and priestess of those "other powers" that were gaining acceptance across America--in her father's traveling medicine show . . . spiritual and financial advisor to Commodore Vanderbilt . . . the first woman to address a joint session of Congress, where--backed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony--she presents an argument that women, as citizens, should have the right to vote . . . becoming the "high priestess" of free love in America (fiercely believing the then- heretical idea that women should have complete sexual equality with men) . . . making a run for the presidency of the United States against Horace Greeley and Ulysses S. Grant, and felled when her past career as a prostitute finally catches up with her. <P><P>Tennessee Claflin, sister of Victoria, also a clairvoyant, mistress to Commodore Vanderbilt . . . indicted for manslaughter in connection with the death of a woman in a bogus cancer clinic run by her father during the Civil War. <P><P>Henry Ward Beecher, the great preacher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church--the most influential church in the country . . . brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe . . . caught up in the scandal of the century (first revealed in Victoria Woodhull's own newspaper): his affair with Lib Tilton, the wife of his parishioner and best friend. <P><P>Lib Tilton, angelic, obedient wife of Theodore Tilton who believed her philandering husband's insistence that she was sexless and arid--until Henry Ward Beecher fell under her thrall and their affair exploded into the shocking Tilton-Beecher Scandal Trial that dominated the headlines for two years, made radical inroads toward the idea of acceptable sexual relations between men and women, and inspired the first questioning of the sanctity of the middle-class American Victorian home. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a discontented housewife who, bolstered by the great black activist Frederick Douglass, put forth a Declaration of Rights and Sentiments to empower women at the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls. <P><P>Anna Dickinson, lecturer extraordinaire, feminist heroine to thousands of women across the country, the model for Verena Tarrant in Henry James's The Bostonians. <P><P>Horace Greeley, editor of the Tribune, whose campaign for the presidency of the United States was centered on his opposition to the policies of Reconstruction . . . who helped to undermine the suffrage movement by writing editorials denouncing Victoria Woodhull. <P><P>Anthony Comstock, U.S. special postal agent, enthusiastically in charge of stamping out obscenity and pornography (he compared erotic feelings to "electrical wires connected to the inner dynamite of obscene thoughts"), who arrested Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin on charges of sending obscene material through the mail and was determined to bring his crusade against vice to the forefront of American thought, and to be hailed as a "paladin of American purity." All of these people play major roles in this compelling book. <P><P> Barbara Goldsmith draws on ten years of research and letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, and court transcripts to tell the story of a woman who embodied--and lived--the tumults that were shaping the America of her time.
Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
by Peter HesslerAn intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China&’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country&’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter centuryMore than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China&’s economic boom, an experience chronicled in his book River Town, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan Province to instruct students from the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners. Over the years, Hessler had kept in close contact with many of the people he had taught in the 1990s. By reconnecting with these individuals—members of China&’s &“Reform generation,&” now in their forties—while teaching current undergrads, Hessler gained a unique perspective on China&’s incredible transformation.In 1996, when Hessler arrived in China, almost all of the people in his classroom were first-generation college students. They typically came from large rural families, and their parents, subsistence farmers, could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China, as well as a new kind of student—an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious cohort of parents. At Sichuan University, many young people had a sense of irony about the regime but mostly navigated its restrictions with equanimity, embracing the opportunities of China&’s rise. But the pressures of extreme competition at scale can be grueling, even for much younger children—including Hessler&’s own daughters, who gave him an intimate view into the experience at their local school.In Peter Hessler&’s hands, China&’s education system is the perfect vehicle for examining the country&’s past, present, and future, and what we can learn from it, for good and ill. At a time when anti-Chinese rhetoric in America has grown blunt and ugly, Other Rivers is a tremendous, essential gift, a work of enormous empathy that rejects cheap stereotypes and shows us China from the inside out and the bottom up. As both a window onto China and a mirror onto America, Other Rivers is a classic from a master of the form.
Other Side of Suffering: The Father of JonBenet Ramsey Tells the Story of His Journey from Grief to Grace
by John Ramsey Marie ChapianThe untold story of how John Ramsey survived unspeakable tragedy and learned to hope again. Like the biblical Job, John Ramsey had it all-wealthy, social position, a loving family. And like Job, Ramsey was destined for great affliction, as many of the most precious things in his life were cruelly taken from him. First came the death of his eldest daughter in a car accident in 1992. Then, four years later, his beloved six-year-old, JonBenét, was murdered; Ramsey was the one who discovered her body, concealed in the basement of his family's home. The case drew international media attention, and-compounding Ramsey's woe-suspicion unfairly focused on Ramsey and his wife, Patsy. Although they were ultimately cleared of any connection with the crime, Ramsey's sorrows did not end. In 2006, Patsy died, at 49, of ovarian cancer. In this remarkable book, Ramsey reveals how he was sustained by faith during the long period of spiritual darkness, and he offers hope and encouragement to others who suffer tragedy and injustice.
Other Side of the Sky: A Memoir
by Farah AhmediFarah Ahmedi's "poignant tale of survival" (Chicago Tribune) chronicles her journey from war to peace. Equal parts tragedy and hope, determination and daring, Ahmedi's memoir delivers a remarkably vivid portrait of her girlhood in Kabul, where the sound of gunfire and the sight of falling bombs shaped her life and stole her family. She herself narrowly escapes death when she steps on a land mine. Eventually the war forces her to flee, first over the mountains to refugee camps across the border, and finally to America. Ahmedi proves that even in the direst circumstances, not only can the human heart endure, it can thrive. The Other Side of the Sky is "a remarkable journey" (Chicago Sun-Times), and Farah Ahmedi inspires us all.
Other Spaces, Other Times: A Life Spent In The Future
by Robert SilverbergCapturing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of science fiction, this unique autobiography by Robert Silverberg shows how famous stories in this genre were conceived and written. Chronicling his career as one of the most important American science fiction writers of the 20th century, this account reveals how he rose to prominence as the pulp era was ending-and the genre was beginning to take on a more sophisticated tone-to eventually be named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Other Traditions (The Charles Eliot Norton lectures)
by John Ashbery“An entertaining and shrewd little book … Ashbery is an accomplished raconteur.” —Charles Simic, New York Review of BooksThe most influential American poet of his generation appraises the lesser-known writers who shaped his own confounding, infinitely inventive work.John Ashbery was the quintessential “difficult poet.” When asked to explain his work, he typically responded by insisting that his poetry was its own explanation. Fittingly, then, when he was invited to deliver the Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1989, Ashbery declined to spell out what he put on the page. Instead, he offered rapt audiences a tour of his influences, the authors he turned to as a “jumpstart for times when the batteries have run down.”The poets in Ashbery’s personal canon—John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Raymond Roussel, John Wheelwright, Laura Riding, and David Schubert—were all tragic figures in their own way, plagued by mental illness or poverty, ridiculed or barely recognized in their own lives, and in some cases, all but forgotten today. More importantly for Ashbery, each wrote poetry that somehow defies the reader. Clare’s sometimes-monotonous naturalism, Roussel’s exhausting maze of parenthetical clauses, and Wheelwright’s eccentric Anglican mysticism do not invite casual reading. But under Ashbery’s tutelage, we experience the idiosyncratic brilliance of these “other traditions,” discovering how they shaped not only Ashbery’s poetics but also the broader trajectory of twentieth-century literature, from surrealism to New Criticism.With inimitable charm, wit, and erudition, the lectures collected in Other Traditions elevate the imperfect and peculiar, affirming the literary virtues of Ashbery’s difficult predecessors. The result is a revealing self-portrait of one of the giants of American poetry, if only through a convex mirror.
Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children
by Nicole LouieA deeply personal exploration of childless and childfree women in their own words. Others Like Me is the story of fourteen women around the world, from different walks of life, who don’t have children. It’s also the story of why Nicole Louie had to find these women and what they taught her. Part memoir, part exploration of childlessness through candid conversations, this book showcases the many ways in which people find fulfilment outside of parenthood. And because the social expectation to procreate weighs the most on women, Louie focuses solely on them, their experiences, and how they flourish outside of motherhood. In doing so, she upends the stereotypes that diminish women who are childless by choice, circumstance, or ambivalence and offers reassurance and companionship on a path less known.
Otherwise
by Farley MowatA Canadian icon gives us his final book, a memoir of the events that shaped this beloved writer and activist.Farley Mowat has been beguiling readers for fifty years now, creating a body of writing that has thrilled two generations, selling literally millions of copies in the process. In looking back over his accomplishments, we are reminded of his groundbreaking work: He single-handedly began the rehabilitation of the wolf with Never Cry Wolf. He was the first to bring advocacy activism on behalf of the Inuit and their northern lands with People of the Deer and The Desperate People. And his was the first populist voice raised in defense of the environment and of the creatures with whom we share our world, the ones he has always called The Others. Otherwise is a memoir of the years between 1937 and the autumn of 1948 that tells the story of the events that forged the writer and activist. His was an innocent childhood, spent free of normal strictures, and largely in the company of an assortment of dogs, owls, squirrels, snakes, rabbits, and other wildlife. From this, he was catapulted into wartime service, as anxious as any other young man of his generation to get to Europe and the fighting. The carnage of the Italian campaign shattered his faith in humanity forever, and he returned home unable and unwilling to fit into post-war Canadian life. Desperate, he accepted a stint on a scientific collecting expedition to the Barrengrounds. There in the bleak but beautiful landscape he finds his purpose -- first with the wolves and then with the indomitable but desperately starving Ihalmiut. Out of these experiences come his first pitched battles with an ignorant and uncaring federal bureaucracy as he tries to get aid for the famine-stricken Inuit. And out of these experiences, too, come his first books.Otherwise goes to the heart of who and what Farley Mowat is, a wondrous final achievement from a true titan.From the Hardcover edition.
Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life
by Jonathan GouldThe long-awaited, definitive biography of The King of Soul, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Redding's iconic performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Otis Redding remains an immortal presence in the canon of American music on the strength of such classic hits as “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” “Try a Little Tenderness,” and “Respect,” a song he wrote and recorded before Aretha Franklin made it her own. As the architect of the distinctly southern, gospel-inflected style of rhythm & blues associated with Stax Records in Memphis, Redding made music that has long served as the gold standard of 1960s soul. Yet an aura of myth and mystery has always surrounded his life, which was tragically cut short at the height of his career by a plane crash in December 1967. In Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life, Jonathan Gould finally does justice to Redding’s incomparable musical artistry, drawing on exhaustive research, the cooperation of the Redding family, and previously unavailable sources of information to present the first comprehensive portrait of the singer’s background, his upbringing, and his professional career. In chronicling the story of Redding’s life and music, Gould also presents a social history of the time and place from which they emerged. His book never lets us forget that the boundaries between black and white in popular music were becoming porous during the years when racial tensions were reaching a height throughout the United States. His indelible portrait of Redding and the mass acceptance of soul music in the 1960s is both a revealing look at a brilliant artist and a provocative exploration of the tangled history of race and music in America that resonates strongly with the present day.
Otis and Will Discover the Deep: The Record-Setting Dive of the Bathysphere
by Katherine Roy Barb RosenstockThe suspenseful, little-known true story of two determined pioneers who made the first dive into the deep ocean.On June 6, 1930, engineer Otis Barton and explorer Will Beebe dove into the ocean inside a hollow metal ball of their own invention called the Bathysphere.They knew dozens of things might go wrong. A tiny leak could shoot pressurized water straight through the men like bullets! A single spark could cause their oxygen tanks to explode! No one had ever dived lower than a few hundred feet...and come back. But Otis and Will were determined to become the first people to see what the deep ocean looks like.This suspenseful story from acclaimed author Barb Rosenstock with mesmerizing watercolors by award-winning artist Katherine Roy will put you right in the middle of the spine-tingling, record-setting journey down, down into the deep.
Otra Luz
by Alfred GarcíaEste conjunto de poemas, canciones y fotografías de Alfred García son el cuaderno de bitácora de su última gira y de algunas impresiones que tuvo a partir de su participación en Operación Triunfo, Eurovisión y de la creación de su disco 1016. Sus textos e instantáneas nos permiten conocer su mundo íntimamente. «Los que le conocéis y cantáis sus temas en los conciertos, que no para de ofrecer en esta gira interminable, sabéis de lo que hablo. Muchos días actúa por convicción, pero, como buen músico de jazz, sabe que la improvisación lo es todo en la vida, más para un individuo tan intuitivo como él.»David Castillo, periodista, escritor y biógrafo de Dylan
Otra mirada sobre la bipolaridad: No hay que avergonzarse por elegir la felicidad
by Benjamin NemopodeEl increíble recorrido de un hombre a través del trastorno bipolar. ¿Está diagnosticado con bipolaridad? ¿Conoce a alguien que padezca esta enfermedad y esté luchando por encontrarse a sí mismo? ¿Está buscando aprender más sobre este terrible problema psíquico? ¿Está buscando la paz o está interesado en el budismo? ¿Trastorno bipolar o realidad del despertar espiritual? Siga el camino de Arthuro Jobsquare, bipolar, de Paris a Montreal, pasando por Londres, hasta alcanzar el estado de Buda. Una aventura fantástica, un golpe a la bipolaridad. Una determinación impresionante para superar esta enfermedad que amenazaba con controlarlo para siempre. Descripción de la enfermedad y del increíble recorrido de un bipolar tipo 1. Este libro describe el increíble camino de un bipolar y proporciona una descripción precisa y exacta de esta enfermedad. Si está buscando un libro sobre el trastorno bipolar o sobre el despertar espiritual, no busque más, lo ha encontrado... Encargue su ejemplar AHORA y comience su propio despertar. Extractos de comentarios de lectores ★★★★★ "El autor nos habla de su doloroso recorrido como bipolar tipo 1. Es un relato conmovedor, logrado y maravillosamente escrito..." - Frédérique Madison (Francia) ★★★★★ "Leí este libro en varias veces lo cual no es mi costumbre. Es necesario pausar la lectura, recuperar el aliento y retomarla. Uno siente todo el sufrimiento de la persona que se esfuerza por poner distancia con su vivencia... "- Armand Poursin (Francia) ★★★★★ "Recomiendo este libro como complemento de todas la investigaciones sobre la enfermedad y de los testimonios de personas afectadas por la misma. Pude entenderla con mayor claridad. Y hoy amo aún más a mi hombre que es bipolar. ." -Eva de Almeida ★★★★★ "Este libro es increíblemente preciso, su lectura es fundamental para todos aquellos que de
Otter Country: An Unexpected Adventure In The Natural World
by Miriam Darlington“Beguiling. The gentle and persistent search by Darlington sparkles.” —The Guardian A plan formed in my mind. I would explore the places in this land that hid my grail. I would spend a whole year or longer, if that’s what it took, wading through marshes, hiding between mossy rocks, paddling down rivers and swimming in sea lochs; recording my journey through the seasons as I searched for wild otters. Mysterious, graceful, and ever-clever, otters have captivated our imaginations, despite the fact that few people have encountered one in the wild. In Otter Country, celebrated nature writer Miriam Darlington captures the fascination she's had for these playful animals since childhood, and chronicles her immersive journey into their watery world. Over the course of a single year, Darlington takes readers on a winding expedition in pursuit of these elusive creatures—from her home in Devon, England, and through the wilds of Scotland, Wales, the Lake District, and the countryside of Cornwall. As she’s drawn deeper into wilder habitats, trekking through changing landscapes, seasons, and weather, Darlington meets biologists, conservationists, fishing and hunting enthusiasts, and poets—enriching her understanding, admiration, and awe of the wild otter. With each encounter, she reveals the scientific, environmental, and cultural importance of this creature and the places it calls home. Full of wonder, hope, and an abiding love for the natural world, Otter Country: An Unexpected Adventure in the Natural World is a beautiful and captivating work of nature writing, pursuing one of nature’s most endearing and endlessly fascinating creatures.
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary
by Richard A. Lupoff Bill SchellyOtto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary chronicles the career of Otto Binder, from pulp magazine author to writer of Supergirl, Captain Marvel, and Superman comics. As the originator of the first sentient robot in literature ("I, Robot," published in Amazing Stories in 1939 and predating Isaac Asimov's collection of the same name), Binder's effect on science fiction was profound. Within the world of comic books, he created or co-created much of the Superman universe, including Smallville; Krypto, Superboy's dog; Supergirl; and the villain Braniac. Binder is also credited with writing many of the first "Bizarro" storylines for DC Comics, as well as for being the main writer for the Captain Marvel comics. In later years, Binder expanded from comic books into pure science writing, publishing dozens of books and articles on the subject of satellites and space travel as well as UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Comic book historian Bill Schelly tells the tale of Otto Binder through comic panels, personal letters, and interviews with Binder's own family and friends. Schelly weaves together Binder's professional successes and personal tragedies, including the death of Binder's only daughter and his wife's struggle with mental illness. A touching and human story, Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary is a biography that is both meticulously researched and beautifully told, keeping alive Binder's spirit of scientific curiosity and whimsy.
Otto Kahn
by Theresa M. CollinsIn the early decades of the twentieth century, almost everyone in modern theater, literature, or film knew of Otto Kahn (1867-1934), and those who read the financial press or followed the news from Wall Street could scarcely have missed his name. A partner at one of America's premier private banks, he played a leading role in reorganizing the U.S. railroad system and supporting the Allied war effort in World War I. The German-Jewish Kahn was also perhaps the most influential patron of the arts the nation has ever seen: he helped finance the Metropolitan Opera, brought the Ballets Russes to America, and bankrolled such promising young talent as poet Hart Crane, the Provincetown Players, and the editors of the Little Review. This book is the full-scale biography Kahn has long deserved. Theresa Collins chronicles Kahn's life and times and reveals his singular place at the intersection of capitalism and modernity. Drawing on research in private correspondence, congressional testimony, and other sources, she paints a fascinating portrait of the figure whose seemingly incongruous identities as benefactor and banker inspired the New York Times to dub him the "Man of Velvet and Steel."
Otto Preminger: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
by Gary BettinsonOtto Preminger (1905–1986), whose Hollywood career spanned the 1930s through the 1970s, is popularly remembered for the acclaimed films he directed, among which are the classic film noir Laura, the social-realist melodrama The Man with the Golden Arm, the CinemaScope musical Carmen Jones, and the riveting courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder. As a screen actor, he forged an indelible impression as a sadistic Nazi in Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 and as the diabolical Mr. Freeze in television’s Batman. He is remembered, too, for drastically transforming Hollywood’s industrial practices. With Exodus, Preminger broke the Hollywood blacklist, controversially granting screen credit to Dalton Trumbo, one of the exiled “Hollywood Ten.” Preminger, a committed liberal, consistently shattered Hollywood’s conventions. He routinely tackled socially progressive yet risqué subject matter, pressing the Production Code’s limits of permissibility. He mounted Black-cast musicals at a period of intense racial unrest. And he embraced a string of other taboo topics—heroin addiction, rape, incest, homosexuality—that established his reputation as a trailblazer of adult-centered storytelling, an enemy of Hollywood puritanism, and a crusader against censorship. Otto Preminger: Interviews compiles nineteen interviews from across Preminger’s career, providing fascinating insights into the methods and mindset of a wildly polarizing filmmaker. With remarkable candor, Preminger discusses his filmmaking practices, his distinctive film style, his battles against censorship and the Hollywood blacklist, his clashes with film critics, and his turbulent relationships with a host of well-known stars, from Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra to Jane Fonda and John Wayne.