Biography

By Charles Darwent “A meticulously researched, elegantly written, and generously illustrated biography of an artist whose personality was as enigmatic as his art…Darwent deftly characterizes the outsized egos and philosophical and petty rivalries that roiled the Bauhaus…An authoritative and sensitive portrait of a modern master.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review“A gripping biography of a German artist unjustly pigeonholed as the creator of interminable variations of pictures of squares…Darwent draws extensively on Albers’s previously unpublished writings and drawings to fully capture the artist’s life…Sympathetic and generously illustrated.”―Publishers Weekly Drawing on extensive unpublished archival writings, documents, and illustrations, this is the first full-scale biography of one of the 20th-century’s great artists. In his accessible study of the “whole” Albers, Charles Darwent combats the fables while telling the fascinating story of an artist, friend, and intellectual. Among Albers’s unpublished papers are letters from friends John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and Eva Hesse, as well as fans and collectors ranging from the composer Virgil Thomson to the cartoonist Saul Steinberg. If his network of influence was surprisingly wide, so too, were his interests. He started life at the Bauhaus as a glass-maker and went on to create fonts, to run their famous wallpaper workshop, and to make furniture whose designs are still in production eighty years later. He pioneered the study of color at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and chaired the design department at Yale University. While books have been written about Albers for specialist audiences, this new volume fulfills the clear need for a more general study. Hardcover400 pagesThames & Hudson, 20186.8 x 1.5 x 9.8 inchesISBN 9780500519103Artist Monographs, Art History, Biography

Josef Albers: Life and Work

By Richard H. King “A major work of scholarship and a truly original and pathbreaking way of looking at Arendt and her work. King situates Arendt in an American context in which she is rarely considered, and he draws on his deep knowledge of U.S. intellectual, political, and social history as well as German philosophy to create a book that is one of the most original and important works on Arendt to have been written in many years.”—Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London“King’s great contribution to the literature on Arendt is to show, in fine-grained terms, how her political theory was the result of a quintessentially American experience: to arrive on American shores an immigrant, to draw on resources from both an old country and a new, imagined one, and to participate in the riot of reinvention.”—Los Angeles Review of Books“This book offers a detailed history of Arendt’s intellectual milieu in the United States, moving between her published writings, reviews and correspondence with her key interlocutors. . . . This is a concentrated, slow-burning book that requires careful reading, but is without question a rewarding theoretical and historical contribution.”—Times Literary Supplement German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–75) fled from the Nazis to New York in 1941, and during the next thirty years in America she wrote her best-known and most influential works, such as The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and On Revolution. Yet, despite the fact that a substantial portion of her oeuvre was written in America, not Europe, no one has directly considered the influence of America on her thought—until now. In Arendt and America, historian Richard H. King argues that while all of Arendt’s work was haunted by her experience of totalitarianism, it was only in her adopted homeland that she was able to formulate the idea of the modern republic as an alternative to totalitarian rule. Situating Arendt within the context of U.S. intellectual, political, and social history, King reveals how Arendt developed a fascination with the political thought of the Founding Fathers. King also re-creates her intellectual exchanges with American friends and colleagues, such as Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy, and shows how her lively correspondence with sociologist David Riesman helped her understand modern American culture and society. In the last section of Arendt and America, King sets out the context in which the Eichmann controversy took place and follows the debate about “the banality of evil” that has continued ever since. As King shows, Arendt’s work, regardless of focus, was shaped by postwar American thought, culture, and politics, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War.For Arendt, the United States was much more than a refuge from Nazi Germany; it was a stimulus to rethink the political, ethical, and historical traditions of human culture. This authoritative combination of intellectual history and biography offers a unique approach for thinking about the influence of America on Arendt’s ideas and also the effect of her ideas on American thought. Paperback416 pagesUniversity of Chicago Press, 20186 x 1.3 x 9 inchesISBN 9780226565538Biography, History, Philosophy

Arendt and America [Paperback]

By Elisabeth Young-Bruehl Winner of the 1983 Alfred Harcourt Prize Award for Biography and Memoirs“Both a personal and an intellectual biography...It represents biography at its best.”—Peter Berger, front page, The New York Times Book Review“A story of surprising drama...At last, we can see Arendt whole.”—Jim Miller, Newsweek“Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or...the example of Hannah Arendt.”—Mark Feeney, Boston Globe This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book’s 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject’s life and achievement. Paperback620 pagesYale University Press, 20046.2 x 1 x 7.2 inchesISBN 9780300105889Biography, Philosophy

Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Second Edition

By Fernando González Viñas and José LázaroEmmy Ball-Hennings war Schriftstellerin und Dichterin, nebenbei galt sie als Muse der Literaten und Künstler der avantgardistischen Bohème-Szene, die sich Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts in Berlin und München entwickelte.Sie schrieb Gedichtbände und Romane, kam aber aufgrund ihrer prekären Lebensumstände häufig mit dem Gesetz in Konflikt.Nach einer mehrmonatigen Gefängnisstrafe emigrierte sie in die Schweiz. Gemeinsam mit Hugo Ball gründete Emmy Hennings im Jahre 1916 mit dem Zu?rcher „Cabaret Voltaire“ die Geburtsstätte der Dada-Bewegung.Die zu Unrecht Vergessene, wenn es um diese Zäsur in der Kunstgeschichte geht, hielt das „Cabaret Voltaire“ wirtschaftlich durch ihre Tätigkeit als Sängerin und ihre anziehende Ausstrahlung am Laufen.Fernando Gonzáles Viñas und José Lázaro erzählen in „Alles ist Dada“ die Geschichte eines Lebens, das in seiner Radikalität vollkommen aus der Zeit gefallen zu sein schien.Paperback232 pagesText in GermanAvant Verlag, 20206.9 x 9.3 inches ISBN 9783964450340Biography, Dada, Woman Writer, Graphic Novel

Alles ist Dada: Emmy Ball-Hennings

By Stephen Parker This first English language biography of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in two decades paints a strikingly new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons. First published in 2014 and now available in paperback, it was critically lauded and declared the definitive life of this great artist and writer. Drawing on letters, diaries and unpublished material, including Brecht's medical records, Parker offers a rich and enthralling account of Brecht's life and work, viewed through the prism of the artist. Tracing his extraordinary life, from his formative years in Augsburg, through the First World War, his politicization during the Weimar Republic and his years of exile, up to the Berliner Ensemble's dazzling productions in Paris and London, Parker shows how Brecht achieved his transformative effect upon world theatre and poetry. Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life is a powerful portrait of a great, compulsively contradictory personality, whose artistry left its lasting imprint on modern culture. Paperback704 pagesMethuen Drama, 20156.14 x 1.44 x 9.21 inchesISBN 9781474240000Biography, Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life

Von Margret Greiner Vom Modell der Wiener Moderne zur erfolgreichen New Yorker Galeristin: Die Romanbiografie einer außergewöhnlichen Frau im 20. Jahrhundert, illustriert mit Bildern und historischen Fotografien. Hardcover304 pagesText in German Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau, 20195.5 x 1 x 8.7 inches ISBN 9783218011853 Art History, Biography

Ich will unsterblich werden!: Friederike Beer-Monti und ihre Maler

By Kirsty Bell“With sleuthing interest and novelistic flair, Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents has ruptured familiar terrain…an associative thesis on the dangers of repression, from gargantuan acts of genocide to the comparatively subtle shames of familial collapse…An enchanting and sometimes disturbing symbolism runs through The Undercurrents, as Bell imaginatively weaves the city’s hard factuality with the emotional and physical experience of living in it.”—frieze“From the first moment I heard Kirsty Bell read from her writing, I have yearned for the book she was then working on. And now here it is, perfect and perfectly balanced, a clear-eyed and beautifully written account about place, about consciousness. I treasure The Undercurrents, and so will you.”—Hilton Als, author of White Girls The Undercurrents is a dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism told from a precise vantage point: a stately nineteenth-century house on Berlin’s Landwehr Canal, a site at the center of great historical changes, but also smaller domestic ones. The view from this house offers a ringside seat onto the city’s theater of action. The building has stood on the banks of the canal since 1869, its feet in the West but looking East, right into the heart of a metropolis in the making, on a terrain inscribed indelibly with trauma. When her marriage breaks down, Kirsty Bell—a British-American art critic, adrift in her mid-forties—becomes fixated on the history of her building and of her adoptive city. Taking the view from her apartment window as her starting point, she turns to the lives of the house’s various inhabitants, to accounts penned by Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Gabriele Tergit, and to the female protagonists in the works of Theodor Fontane, Irmgard Keun, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A new cultural topography of Berlin emerges, one which taps into energetic undercurrents to recover untold or forgotten stories beneath the city’s familiar narratives.Paperback400 pagesOther Press, 20225.26 x 1.05 x 7.97 inchesISBN 9781635423440Literature, Memoir

The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin

By Mel Gordon The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber is the first contemporary biography of a notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s. In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber‘s celebrations of “Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy” were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin’s hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine. Multi-talented Anita saw no boundaries between her personal life and her taboo-shattering performances. As such, she was Europe’s first postmodern woman. Among those Anita Berber claimed as members of her vast sexual harem were Marlene Dietrich, Magnus Hirschfeld (the founder of modern sexology and gay liberation), Klaus Mann, Conrad Veidt, Lawrence Durrell, and the King of Yugoslavia. Berber acted in Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler and starred in the silent epic, Lucifer. Even Leni Riefenstahl credits Berber for inspiring her controversial career. After sated Berliners finally tired of Anita Berber’s libidinous antics, she became a “carrion soul that even the hyenas ignored,” dying in 1928 at the age of 29. The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber chronicles a remarkable career, including over 150 photographs and drawings that recreate Anita’s enduring “Repertoire of the Damned.” Paperback200 pagesFeral House Books, 20067 x 0.5 x 10 inchesISBN 9781932595123Biography, Film, Theater

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Depravity

By Elias Canetti Translated by Joachim Neugroschel "His exacting presence honors literature"—George Steiner"Canetti is one of our great imaginers and solitary men of genius"—Iris Murdoch"Canetti is someone who has felt in a profound way the responiblity of words. . . There is no doctrine, but there is a great deal of scorn, urgency, grief, and euphoria. The message of the mind's passions is passion. 'I try to imagine someone saying to Shakespeare, "Relax!"' says Canetti. His work eloquently defends tension, exertion, moral and amoral seriousness."—Susan SontagElias Canetti, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of the major intellectual figures of the twentieth century. He is a master of many genres, having written both a great novel—Auto-da-Fe—and a great work of social theory—Crowds and Power. But Canetti's genius is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his autobiography. The Torch in My Ear, the second volume of Canetti's memoirs, is above all else the account of his admiration for the first great mentor of his adulthood, the Viennese writer Karl Kraus. The book is also a portrait of Canetti's first wife, Veza. Within the framework of these great passions, Canetti provides an astonishing account of the Vienna and Berlin of the 1920s. The voices of Kraus, Veza, and Canetti's mother are accompanied by those of Brecht, Isaac Babel, George Grosz, and many others. Paperback384 pagesFarrar Straus & Giroux, 19836 x 9 inchesISBN 9780374518042Biography

The Torch in My Ear

By Leonora CarringtonIntroduction by Marina Warner "So vivid is Carrington’s step-by-step descent into madness…it is possible to read Down Below in a single sitting, but emotionally quite difficult… [You] get the distinct impression that for Carrington, reality is malleable." —Carmen Maria Machado, NPR"Her stories are vivid, funny and surprisingly fresh...[they] combine satire with surrealist situations to deftly mock the pomposity of organized religion, sexual repression or the endless forms of bureaucratic hypocrisy and ineptitude... She controls her imagery, amuses us with her tweaking of the bourgeoisie and moves us with her dazzling dreamscapes, all the while firmly maintaining her slightly bemused sang-froid." —Richard Burgin, The New York TimesA stunning work of memoir and an unforgettable depiction of the brilliance and madness by one of Surrealism’s most compelling figuresIn 1937 Leonora Carrington—later to become one of the twentieth century’s great painters of the weird, the alarming, and the wild—was a nineteen-year-old art student in London, beautiful and unapologetically rebellious. At a dinner party, she met the artist Max Ernst. The two fell in love and soon departed to live and paint together in a farmhouse in Provence. In 1940, the invading German army arrested Ernst and sent him to a concentration camp. Carrington suffered a psychotic break. She wept for hours. Her stomach became “the mirror of the earth”—of all worlds in a hostile universe—and she tried to purify the evil by compulsively vomiting. As the Germans neared the south of France, a friend persuaded Carrington to flee to Spain. Facing the approach “of robots, of thoughtless, fleshless beings,” she packed a suitcase that bore on a brass plate the word Revelation.This was only the beginning of a journey into madness that was to end with Carrington confined in a mental institution, overwhelmed not only by her own terrible imaginings but by her doctor’s sadistic course of treatment. In Down Below she describes her ordeal—in which the agonizing and the marvelous were equally combined—with a startling, almost impersonal precision and without a trace of self-pity. Like Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Down Below brings the hallucinatory logic of madness home.Paperback112 pagesNYRB Classics, 20175 x 0.3 x 8 inches ISBN 9781681370606Surrealism, Memoir

Down Below

By Irene Gammel "Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa mounts an enthusiastic case for her as one of the great unsung modernists."—Village Voice"The Baroness could not have asked for a more thoughtful and engaged monument than Gammel's book."—The New York Times Book Review Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) is considered by many to be the first American dadaist as well as the mother of dada. An innovator in poetic form and an early creator of junk sculpture, "the Baroness" was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances. Some thought her merely crazed, others thought her a genius. The editor Margaret Anderson called her "perhaps the only figure of our generation who deserves the epithet extraordinary." Yet despite her great notoriety and influence, until recently her story and work have been little known outside the circle of modernist scholars. In Baroness Elsa, Irene Gammel traces the extraordinary life and work of this daring woman, viewing her in the context of female dada and the historical battles fought by women in the early twentieth century. Striding through the streets of Berlin, Munich, New York, and Paris wearing such adornments as a tomato-soup can bra, teaspoon earrings, and black lipstick, the Baroness erased the boundaries between life and art, between the everyday and the outrageous, between the creative and the dangerous. Her art objects were precursors to dada objects of the teens and twenties, her sound and visual poetry were far more daring than those of the male modernists of her time, and her performances prefigured feminist body art and performance art by nearly half a century. Paperback562 pagesThe MIT Press, 20037 x 1.3 x 9 inchesISBN 9780262572156Dada

Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity

By Edward Skidelsky "Skidelsky gives a close, technical account of the ways in which Cassirer was never just a Marburg School stereotype; but he aligned himself neither with the logical positivists nor with the Heideggerian, existentialist tradition which between them carved up the field of 20th-century philosophy, as they arguably continue to do."—David Simpson, London Review of Books"Skidelsky's book is a must read for those interested in the history of ideas in general and for academic philosophers in particular. Indeed, philosophers, particularly of the Anglo-American variety, will find this book especially enlightening."—Kevin Aho, European Legacy"A major accomplishment and an excellent introduction to Cassirer's philosophy. Most important, Skidelsky shows that Cassirer did not simply align himself with the tradition of German political thought reaching from Humboldt and Goethe to the later Thomas Mann, but that his entire philosophy was actually subservient to the project of rethinking the basis of political liberalism. Skidelsky overturns the widely accepted view that Cassirer was an apolitical epistemologist."—John Michael Krois, author of Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History This is the first English-language intellectual biography of the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), a leading figure on the Weimar intellectual scene and one of the last and finest representatives of the liberal-idealist tradition. Edward Skidelsky traces the development of Cassirer's thought in its historical and intellectual setting. He presents Cassirer, the author of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, as a defender of the liberal ideal of culture in an increasingly fragmented world, and as someone who grappled with the opposing forces of scientific positivism and romantic vitalism. Cassirer's work can be seen, Skidelsky argues, as offering a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict between the "two cultures" of science and the humanities--and between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy. The first comprehensive study of Cassirer in English in two decades, this book will be of great interest to analytic and continental philosophers, intellectual historians, political and cultural theorists, and historians of twentieth-century Germany. Paperback304 pagesPrinceton University Press, 20086.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780691152356Biography, Philosophy

Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture

By Andreas PlatthausEr prägte das von Walter Gropius gegründete Bauhaus, dem er als einziger Meister vom ersten bis zum letzten Tag angehörte – von 1919 bis zur Auflösung durch die Nationalsozialisten 1933 –, wie kaum ein Zweiter. Mit seinen Freunden Paul Klee und Wassily Kandinsky revolutionierte er die Kunst. Später wurde er so populär und von der Alltagskultur eingemeindet, dass man Bilder von ihm als Plakate bei einem großen schwedischen Möbelhaus kaufen konnte: Lyonel Feininger. 1871 in New York geboren, hielt er sich von seinem siebzehnten Lebensjahr an fast ein halbes Jahrhundert lang in Deutschland auf. Den Großteil dieser Zeit verbrachte er in Berlin, wo sich auch die rätselhaftesten Episoden seines Lebens abspielten. Warum blieb er, obwohl als "feindlicher Ausländer" registriert, während des Ersten Weltkriegs? Und warum verließ er, obwohl mit einer Jüdin verheiratet und Vater dreier Söhne, Nazi-Deutschland erst 1937? In der Persönlichkeit des Malers spiegelt sich das Dilemma einer doppelten Exil-Existenz im 20. Jahrhundert.Andreas Platthaus, der für dieses Buch zahlreiche Archivbestände auswerten konnte, erzählt das Leben eines Mannes, der sich im steten Zwiespalt zwischen amerikanischem und deutschem Selbstverständnis befand.Hardcover448 pagesText in GermanRowohlt Berlinm, 20215.7 x 8.6 inchesISBN 9783737101165Biography

Lyonel Feininger - Porträt eines Lebens

Von Margret GreinerEmilie Flöge lernte als junges Mädchen Gustav Klimt kennen und führte mit ihm ein Leben lang eine Beziehung jenseits aller Konventionen. Vor allem aber war sie eine herausragende Modeschöpferin. Im Wien um 1900, wo Malerei, Architektur, Kunsthandwerk und Mode eine Blütezeit erlebten, schuf Emilie Flöge einen bahnbrechenden Mode-Stil, der die Frauen – fünfzehn Jahre vor Coco Chanel – von Korsett und Mieder befreite. Paperback303 SeitanKremayr & Scheriau, 20164.65 x 0.94 x 7.36 inchesISBN 9783442714131 Literature

Auf Freiheit zugeschnitten: Emilie Flöge: Modeschöpferin und Gefährtin Gustav Klimts

By Stuart Jeffries “An engaging and accessible history of the lives and main ideas of the leading thinkers of the Frankfurt School.”—The New York Review of Books“This seemingly daunting book turned out to be an exhilarating page-turner . . . Grand Hotel Abyss is an outstanding critical introduction to some of the most fertile, and still relevant, thinkers of the 20th century.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post“Jeffries moves swiftly across the decades, retracing the jagged paths from the official founding of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt in June 1924, through its years in exile in New York in the ’30s and Los Angeles in the ’40s and its hasty return to Frankfurt in the early postwar years, up to the work of Horkheimer and Adorno’s prized protégé Jürgen Habermas and the Institute’s legacy today.”—Noah Isenberg, Bookforum Grand Hotel Abyss combines biography, philosophy, and storytelling to reveal how a group of German thinkers, the Frankfurt School, redefined the twentieth century and our own times. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. By taking popular culture seriously as an object of study—whether it was film, music, ideas, or consumerism—the Frankfurt School elaborated upon the nature and crisis of our mass-produced, mechanized society. Grand Hotel Abyss shows how much these ideas still tell us about our age of social media and runaway consumption. Paperback336 pagesVerso, 20175.1 x 1.3 x 7.6 inchesISBN 9781784785697Biography, Philosophy

Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School

By Lydia FlemTranslated by Susan Fairfield The world knows Freud as a thinker—one of the founding giants of modern culture. Now Lydia Flem paints a unique and unforgettable portrait of Freud the man: a father, husband, and friend, a secular Jew with passion for classical antiquity and European culture, torn between his need to be fully accepted in an anti-Semitic society while remaining faithful to his origins.Flem enters into the depths of Freud's creativity, showing how his thinking is connected to his immersion in the arts, the history of religions, and mythology. The intimate details of his daily life, his relationships with women, his poetic gifts, his travels, his dreams, his letters to family, friends, and colleagues: all reveal his vision of the unconscious. We accompany Freud on his walks through Vienna and Rome; look over his shoulder as he writes to his fiancee; learn the significance of the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian figurines that stand before him on his desk as he conceives his groundbreaking ideas; and discover the books, read in childhood, that later shape his self-analysis and his theoretical development. Paperback220 pagesOther Press, 20146 x 0.6 x 9 inchesISBN 9781590517338Biography

Freud the Man: an Intellectual Biography

By Élisabeth RoudinescoTranslated by Catherine Porter Original Price: $35.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS “Through seamlessly and eloquently weaving together details from Freud’s time and our own, [Roudinesco] provides a refreshingly new and welcome account—warts and all.”—Janet Sayers, Times Higher Education“What makes Freud: In His Time And Ours…such a captivating read, is the author’s ability to explain what are often complex, deeply-layered, and dark taboo subjects, into a language that is easily understood…[A] brilliant biography.”—J. P. O’Mallery, The Irish Examiner“[Roudinesco] provides an insightful, balanced, and sympathetic portrait of Freud. As she assesses Freud’s revolutionary ideas about rationality, sexuality, and the unconscious, Roudinesco demonstrates that Freud was less a scientific thinker who uncovered universal truths than a product of his time: a genius, to be sure, but very much a bourgeois shaped by society, family, and politics in the late 19th century… Her critique has an especially persuasive force because it is grounded not only in an analysis of Freud’s books, diaries, and letters but from accounts of his sessions with patients.”—Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today Élisabeth Roudinesco offers a bold and modern reinterpretation of the iconic founder of psychoanalysis. Based on new archival sources, this is Freud’s biography for the twenty-first century—a critical appraisal, at once sympathetic and impartial, of a genius greatly admired and yet greatly misunderstood in his own time and in ours.Roudinesco traces Freud’s life from his upbringing as the eldest of eight siblings in a prosperous Jewish-Austrian household to his final days in London, a refugee of the Nazis’ annexation of his homeland. She recreates the milieu of fin de siècle Vienna in the waning days of the Habsburg Empire—an era of extraordinary artistic innovation, given luster by such luminaries as Gustav Klimt, Stefan Zweig, and Gustav Mahler. In the midst of it all, at the modest residence of Berggasse 19, Freud pursued his clinical investigation of nervous disorders, blazing a path into the unplumbed recesses of human consciousness and desire.Yet this revolutionary who was overthrowing cherished notions of human rationality and sexuality was, in his politics and personal habits, in many ways conservative, Roudinesco shows. In his chauvinistic attitudes toward women, and in his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the growing threat of Hitler until it was nearly too late, even the analytically-minded Freud had his blind spots. Alert to his intellectual complexity—the numerous tensions in his character and thought that remained unresolved—Roudinesco ultimately views Freud less as a scientific thinker than as the master interpreter of civilization and culture. Hardcover592 pagesHarvard University Press, 20166.2 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780674659568Biography, Psychology

Freud: In His Time and Ours

By Peter Gay "Brilliant.…A dazzling performance.…Gay's ability to integrate into a coherent whole the vast published and unpublished literature on Freud including hundreds of previously unknown or inaccessible letters is awesome.…A work of art."—Jonathan Sharp, San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle"Intelligent and wholly absorbing.…Judicious, original biography, scrupulously grounded in close readings of [Freud's] work."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"Elegant…puts Freud's life into the context of his time while attempting to explain him for readers who cannot escape his shadow. In Gay's hands, the Olympian figure is almost within mortal reach."—Michael Skube, Raleigh News and Observer A New York Times bestseller, this is the most highly regarded biography of Freud ever written. To read this book is to enter the world of Sigmund Freud as never before: his family, his city, his professional struggles, his long fruitful and embattled life. Drawing on a vast store of unpublished documents, including hundreds of hitherto unknown or inaccessible letters, Peter Gay deals frankly with the controversies that have long swirled around Freud's impassioned friendships, his love life, and his theoretical innovations which, as Freud himself put it, agitated the sleep of mankind. Paperback864 pagesW.W. Norton & Co., 20066.2 x 1.6 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780393328615Biography, Psychology

Freud: A Life For Our Time

By Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-SaloméEdited by Ernst PfeifferTranslated by William Robson-Scott and Elaine Robson-Scott Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) was a writer and disciple of Freud who became a practicing analyst. For over two decades she and Freud kept up an intensive correspondence. Freud found in her a perceptive appreciator and amplifier of his ideas, and Frau Andreas found him a sympathetic critic of her own. Their exchanges on theoretical topics and clinical experiences, their admiring friendship, and the glimpses of their personalities makes this collection invaluable for readers interested in the history of psychoanalysis. Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote her first letter to Freud in 1912, asking his permission to come to Vienna for psychoanalytical training. This extraordinary Russian woman, whose intelligence and beauty captivated Nietzsche and Rilke, now captivated Freud, while she discovered in Freud's psychoanalysis the true fulfillment of her life. Freud's letters contain revealing commentaries on his working methods, his conception of narcissism, and his interpretation of Moses, and they treat the themes that preoccupied him in old age: death, religion, war. Frau Andreas's topics include her relationship to Rilke, and her reaction to his death, and the psychology of the artist. The book includes an introduction and notes by Ernst Pfeiffer, Lou Andreas-Salomé's literary executor. Paperback264 pagesW. W. Norton & Company, 19855.3 x 0.6 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9780393302615Biography, Psychology

Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé: Letters

By Fiona MacCarthy “This is an absolute triumph—ideas, lives, and the dramas of the twentieth century are woven together in a feat of storytelling. A masterpiece."—Edmund de Waal, ceramic artist and author of The White Road The impact of Walter Gropius can be measured in his buildings—Fagus Factory, Bauhaus Dessau, Pan Am—but no less in his students. I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Anni Albers, Philip Johnson, Fumihiko Maki: countless masters were once disciples at the Bauhaus in Berlin and at Harvard. Between 1910 and 1930, Gropius was at the center of European modernism and avant-garde society glamor, only to be exiled to the antimodernist United Kingdom during the Nazi years. Later, under the democratizing influence of American universities, Gropius became an advocate of public art and cemented a starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design. Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women’s artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners. Though a traveler in elite circles, he objected to the cloistering of beauty as “a special privilege for the aesthetically initiated.” Gropius offers a poignant and personal story—and a fascinating reexamination of the urges that drove European and American modernism.Hardcover560 pages | 50 photosBelknap Press, 20196.25 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780674737853Biography, Bauhaus

Gropius: The Man Who Built the Bauhaus

By George GroszTranslated by Nora Hodges "George Grosz's autobiography is here translated in a version that restores its bite, verve and sardonic humor. . . . It's a brilliant autobiography, masterfully written, shot through with poetry, filled with sharp observations."—Publishers Weekly This acclaimed autobiography by one of the twentieth century's greatest satirical artists is as much a graphic portrait of Germany in chaos after the Treaty of Versailles as it is a memoir of a remarkable artist's development. Grosz's account of a world gone mad is as acute and provocative as the art that depicts it, and this translation of a work long out of print restores the spontaneity, humor, and energy of the author's German text. It also includes a chapter on Grosz's experience in the Soviet Union—omitted from the original English-language edition—as well as more writings about his twenty-year self-imposed exile in America, and a fable written in English.Paperback325 pagesUniversity of California Press, 1998Originally published in 19469.1 x 5.8 x 0.8 inchesISBN 9780520213272Autobiography, Artist Monograph, Illustration, Drawings

George Grosz: An Autobiography

By Alice Herdan-ZuckmayerTranslated by Ida H. Washington and Carol E. WashingtonIntroduction by Elisa Albert “These literate glimpses of rural America make good stand-alone chapter reads: raising chickens, meeting reticent New England neighbors, marveling at the mysterious USDA pamphlets or the Sears, Roebuck catalog, journeying to the Dartmouth library, etc…This volume will be of special regional and historical interest as well as of general interest in public libraries where anecdotal essays are popular.”—Booklist“The Zuckmayers’ courage and strength is an inspiration to all who may be set in unfamiliar surroundings, even in their own country.”—Publishers Weekly“The book offers readers an interesting historical perspective of Vermont during the war years, as well as an inspiring narrative on the indomitable human instinct to survive….The contemporary reader will come away feeling inspired by the Zuckmayers’ perseverance and with renewed gratitude for all of the amenities (like heat) which we now take for granted.”—Jennifer Falvey, Vermont Standard Alice and Carl Zuckmayer lived at the center of Weimar era Berlin. She was a former actor turned medical student, he was a playwright, and their circle of friends included Stefan Zweig, Alma Mahler, and Bertolt Brecht. But then the Nazis took over and Carl’s most recent success, a play satirizing German militarism, impressed them in all the wrong ways. The couple and their two daughters were forced to flee, first to Austria, then to Switzerland, and finally to the United States. Los Angeles didn’t suit them, neither did New York, but a chance stroll in the Vermont woods led them to Backwoods Farm and the eighteenth-century farmhouse where they would spend the next five years. In Europe, the Zuckmayers were accustomed to servants; in Vermont, they found themselves building chicken coops, refereeing fights between fractious ducks, and caring for temperamental water pipes “like babies.” But in spite of the endless work and the brutal, depressing winters, Alice found that in America she had at last discovered her “native land.” This generous, surprising, and witty memoir, a best seller in postwar Germany, has all the charm of an unlikely romantic comedy. Paperback256 pagesNYRB Classics, 2017Originally published 19495 x 0.6 x 8 inches ISBN 9781681370743Memoir

The Farm in the Green Mountains

By Hermann HesseTranslated by Basil Creighton "For all its savagely articulate descriptions of torment and isolation, it is most eloquent about something less glamorous but far more important: healing."—The GuardianWith its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesse’s best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literature’s most poetic evocations of the soul’s journey to liberation.Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater—For Madmen Only!Originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf ’s wisdom continues to speak to our souls and marks it as a classic of modern literature. Also available in German. Paperback224 pagesPicador Publishing, 2002Originally published in 1927ISBN 9780312278670Autobiographical Fiction

Steppenwolf

Edited with text by Nicholas Sawicki and Marie Rakušanová Preface by Zuzana Jürgens Text by Alexander Klee, Marek Nekula, and Miroslav Halak Journey through Kafka’s Prague and discover the art, architecture, media and performances that influenced the author’s oeuvre What did Franz Kafka see and do, whom did he meet and what did he read while roaming the streets of Prague? Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka brings the world of turn-of-the-century Czechoslovakia and its cultural milieu to life. The author’s home city was a heterogeneous and multilingual metropolis whose visual environment shaped his everyday experiences, from local painting and sculpture to architecture, monuments and popular visual media including advertisements, photography and cabaret. Kafka’s attention to the modern visual culture of his era was reflected in his writings and in his interest in drawing, a practice in which he received preliminary training and which he took up in his free time during his years as a university student. This illustrated publication immerses us in Kafka’s world; by following in his footsteps and looking through his eyes, we gain a new understanding of his thoughts, philosophies and inspirations. Hardcover224 pages | 231 color and 16 tri-tone IllustrationsKant, 20258.25 x 11.25 inchesISBN 9788074374265Exhibition Catalogue, Biography

Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka: Between Image and Language

Written and Illustrated by Nicolas MahlerTranslated by Alexander Booth "If you are Nicolas Mahler, the writer and illustrator of a short but engaging graphic biography of the man, you’d see [Kafka] as a sort of blob of hair and eyebrows on a stick. The illustrations of Completely Kafka may look rudimentary, but they work. In fact they’re similar in style to the doodles Kafka himself would make in his notebooks."—Spectator "Much the best thing about the book are the charming black and white drawings. The best are the drawings of Kafka himself, drawn in thick brushstroke. Some are like cartoons, a few are more like Kafka’s own drawings, angular, isolated."—Jewish Chronicle A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death The young Franz Kafka has too many fears to name. Mirrors, clothing, his own body, almost everything causes him to fret. How did this ‘anxious and small bundle of bones’ become one of the world’s great writers? With telling details and sharply minimal illustrations, Nicolas Mahler tells a wickedly funny story of the development of Kafka’s genius, offering a tribute that is as playful as it is profound. Paperback128 pages Pushkin Press, 20245.35 x 8.44 inchesISBN 9781805331582Biography, Historic Graphic Novel

Completely Kafka: A Comic Biography

Original Price: $45.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS Signed copies from translator Ross Benjamin are available. This book was featured as part of our Literatur Café series. By Franz Kafka Translated by Ross Benjamin “Essential . . . The new volume, in a sensitive and briskly idiomatic translation by Ross Benjamin, offers revelation upon revelation. It’s an invaluable addition to Kafka’s oeuvre.”—The New York Times “Franz Kafka’s inner life has always been a bit of a mystery. The expurgated diaries in their original German and English versions hinted at his complicated, often confused relationship to sex, politics, illness, and being Jewish. This readable new translation of the complete German version of the diary transforms the silent Kafka of a century ago into a Kafka not only of his times but of ours.”—Sander Gilman, author of Franz Kafka, The Jewish PatientAn essential new translation of the author’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.Dating from 1909 to 1923, the handwritten diaries contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of the diary entries and provides substantial new content, including details, names, literary works, and passages of a sexual nature that were omitted from previous publications. By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive—and often surprisingly unpolished—writing in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary experimentation and private self-expression, but also their value as a work of art in themselves.Hardcover704 pagesSchocken, 20236.2 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780805243550Literature, Kafka

The Diaries of Franz Kafka

Original Price: $37.50 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Joachim Unseld"We have before us a book that is to be recommended to everyone who wants to gain a nuanced picture of Kafka and the literary world he inhabited."—Süddeutsche Zeitung"It is refreshing. . .to have a work which provides us with new insights as well as new facts."—World Literature TodayFranz Kafka's wishes concerning publication of his works during his lifetime as well as the disposition of his literary estate have long been controversial and have given rise to many misunderstandings and misrepresentations—some attaining an almost folkloric status. The prevalent view of an author who desired to have his works destroyed contradicts the reality shown here of the close, symbiotic relationship between Kafka's private life and his literary ambitions. Particular attention is given to Kafka's relationship to and interactions with his publishers, as Unseld discloses the history of the primary correspondence between Kafka and Ernst Rowohlt, Kurt Wolff, and his friend and tireless advocate, Max Brod. Hardcover393 pagesAriadne Press, 19946 x 1.2 x 9 inchesISBN 9780929497785Biography

Kafka: A Writer's Life

Original Price: $27.50 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Pascale CasanovaTranslated by Chris Turner "From Casanova, we get a methodological model of how to excavate historical subjects’ temporal and social location so that we can understand how they comprehend and react to their condition of domination [. . .] Casanova shows how Kafka’s anger became invisible when the specific world in which he wrote, and upon which he commented, disappeared. Only by recovering the political disputes of his time and place can we make sense of the literary “weapons of the weak” that Kafka developed."—Richard Lachmann, Public SeminarFranz Kafka was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His writing contributed greatly to existentialism, and the term “Kafkaesque” is now synonymous with the literature of the surreal, the complex and the illogical. His works sustained themes of violence, family conflict, bizarre and all-powerful bureaucracies, and fantastical transformations. However, in Kafka, Angry Poet, Pascale Casanova looks past the customary analyses of Kafka’s work and dives deep into his mind, examining his motives rather than the results. She bravely asks the question, “What if Kafka were the most radical of social critics? What if he had actually attempted to pull the wool over our eyes with narratives that are, in fact, subtly deceptive?”The hypothesis she develops is that Kafka began with an awareness of the tragic fate of the German-speaking Jews of early twentieth-century Prague and was subsequently led to reflect on other forms of power, such as male dominance and colonial oppression. The stories produced as a result were traps for the unwary, throwing the reader off the scent with the use of unreliable and even deceitful narrators. Curiously, says Casanova, it is not in literature that one finds the answers to these questions but in German ethnology, a field which, as an intellectual of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka knew well. Through her detailed research, Casanova shows us a combative Kafka who is at once ethnologist and investigator, unstintingly denouncing all forms of domination with the kind of tireless rage that was his hallmark. In so doing, she sheds light on the deep-seated reasons for Kafka’s anger.Hardcover391 pagesSeagull Books, 20155 x 1.5 x 8 inchesISBN 9780857421623Biography, Literary Criticism

Kafka, Angry Poet

Original Price: $16.95 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Benjamin Balint Winner of the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature"Dramatic and illuminating…[R]aises momentous questions about nationality, religion, literature, and even the Holocaust."―Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal friend Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfill Kafka’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted his life to championing Kafka’s work, rescuing his legacy from both obscurity and physical destruction. Nearly a century later, an international legal battle erupted to determine which country could claim ownership: the Jewish state, where Kafka dreamed of living, or Germany, where Kafka’s three sisters perished in the Holocaust? Benjamin Balint offers a gripping account of the controversial trial in Israeli courts―brimming with dilemmas legal, ethical, and political―that determined the fate of Kafka’s manuscripts. Paperback288 pagesW.W. Norton & Company, 20195.6 x 0.7 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9780393357387Biography

Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy [Paperback]

By Klaus WagenbachTranslated by Peter LewisNearly one hundred years after Franz Kafka’s death, his works continue to intrigue and haunt us. Kafka is regarded as one of the most significant intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth century, and even for those who are only barely acquainted with his novels, stories, diaries, or letters, “Kafkaesque” has become a term synonymous with the menacing, unfathomable absurdity of modern existence and bureaucracy. While the significance of his fiction is wide-reaching, Kafka’s writing remains inextricably bound up with his life and work in a particular place: Prague. It is here that the author spent every one of his forty years.Drawing from a range of documents and historical materials, this is the first book specifically dedicated to the relationship between Kafka and Prague. Klaus Wagenbach’s account of Kafka’s life in the city is a meticulously researched insight into the author’s family background, his education and employment, his attitude toward the town of his birth, his literary influences, and his relationships with women. The result is a fascinating portrait of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic writer and the city that provided him with so much inspiration. W. G. Sebald recognized that “literary and life experience overlap” in Kafka’s works, and the same is true of this book.Paperback160 pages | 48 half-tonesHaus Publishing, 20205 x 8 inchesISBN 9781909961654History, Prague

Kafka's Prague

Original Price: $35 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Diethard Leopold In the 1950s, as the world continued to recover from war and artists were grappling with new conditions in striking new ways, Rudolf Leopold (1925–2010) achieved something impressive: he built up a large, aesthetically sophisticated and historically relevant art collection of international renown. This book draws on the memories of Leopold’s son, Diethard, to tell Leopold’s story, presenting him as a fascinating collector. It shows how Leopold, beginning his collection around a core of works by Egon Schiele, branched out to collect major works by Klimt, Kokoschka, Gerstl, Egger-Lienz, and Kubin, as well as by German expressionists—thus bringing together a representative grouping of the key artists of the period.Hardcover320 pagesHirmer Publishers, 20186.5 x 1.1 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9783777428673Biography, Art History, Museum Studies

Rudolf Leopold

By Claire Beck LoosTranslated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders "Claire [Beck Loos]'s book reveals a sharp eye for capturing personality, story and zeitgeist."―Stewart Oksenhorn, Arts Editor, Aspen Times"A valuable fine-grained portrait…The English translation of her book is fluent and accurate, conveying well the tone of Claire Loos’ original (which, in turn, to some extent mimics Loos’ own writing style). Richly informative."―Christopher Long, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture"Claire Beck Loos, a gifted photographer and writer…reveals much about her ex-husband’s mercurial persona in a series of conversationally-toned vignettes….Claire died tragically at 38, at the Riga concentration camp; her memoir thus becomes a haunting tribute not only to Loos's talents, but to her own..."―Judy Pollan, Modernism Magazine Adolf Loos—A Private Portrait is an unusual, literary biography featuring lively, often humorous, “snapshots” of Viennese-Czechoslovak architect Adolf Loos. An intimate collection of vignettes reveal Loos’ personality, temperament and philosophy during the last years of his life (1929-1933) and the ways in which he helped shape Modern architecture. This translation, by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders, is the first English edition.The author, Claire Beck Loos, was a photographer and Adolf Loos’ last wife. She was born in 1904 in Czechoslovakia; her family were Jewish industrialists and important early clients of Loos, commissioning several apartments in Pilsen and works by the architect’s friend Oskar Kokoschka. In addition to being a biography of her husband, Adolf Loos—A Private Portrait also serves as a self-portrait of Claire, a vibrant young artist who died a tragic and untimely death at Riga, a Nazi concentration camp, in 1942. The book includes supplemental texts by Claire’s niece Janet Beck Wilson, biographical materials and previously unpublished artistic photographs by the author. Hardcover200 pagesDoppelHouse Press, 2011 1.8 x 1 x 7.1 inchesISBN 9780983254003Biography, Architecture

Adolf Loos — A Private Portrait

By Stefan ZweigTranslated by Cedar Paul "Zweig’s accumulated historical and cultural studies, whether in essay or monograph form, remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in…Full-sized books on Marie-Antoinette, Mary Stuart, and Magellan were international best sellers.”—Clive James, Cultural Amnesia"Stefan Zweig cherished the everyday imperfections and frustrated aspirations of the men and women he analysed with such affection and understanding.”—Paul Bailey, Times Literary Supplement The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) is one of the most famous navigators in history—he was the first man to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and led the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe, although he was killed en route in a battle in the Philippines.In this biography, Zweig brings to life the Age of Discovery by telling the tale of one of the era’s most daring adventurers. In typically flowing and elegant prose he takes us on a fascinating journey of discovery ourselves.Paperback352 pagesPushkin Press, 2012Originally published in 19385.2 x 0.8 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781906548490Biography, History

Magellan

By Stephen Johnson "There have been many books on [Mahler] but Stephen Johnson's new volume is unique, concentrating on the composer's mighty Eighth Symphony (the 'Symphony of a Thousand'), setting the piece and Mahler's work in general within the context of the world and society he lived in. This is a book written with both passion and scholarship that will send listeners to the composer afresh."―Barry Forshaw, Classical CD Choice“In a new book, The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910, the British composer and critic Stephen Johnson frames the symphony around the relationship between Mahler and his amorous wife, Alma, whom he feared losing. Much of Mahler’s music is death haunted. The Eighth stands out for its utter excess of love, the force beyond comprehension."―Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times"[A] thrilling study of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 8. . . . Johnson makes a strong case for its quality, musically and philosophically, in this magnificent, strongly argued and yet wonderfully subtle study. Whatever our final judgment may be on the Eighth, having read Johnson, we shall never listen to it in the same way again."―John Banville, GuardianSeptember 12, 1910: The world premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his life. Munich’s new Musik Festhalle was filled to capacity on two successive evenings for the performances, which were received with rapturous applause. Representatives of many European royal houses were in attendance, along with an array of stars from the musical and literary world, including Thomas Mann and the young Arnold Schoenberg. Also present were Alma Mahler, the composer’s wife, and Alma’s longtime lover, the architect Walter Gropius. Knowledge of their relationship would precipitate an emotional crisis in Mahler that, compounded with his heart condition and the loss of his young daughter Maria, would lead to his premature death the next year.In The Eighth, Stephen Johnson provides a masterful account of the symphony’s far-reaching consequences and its effect on composers, conductors, and writers of the time. The Eighth looks behind the scenes at the demanding one-week rehearsal period leading up to the premiere—something unheard of at the time—and provides fascinating insight into Mahler’s compositional habits, his busy life as a conductor, his philosophical and literary interests, and his personal and professional relationships. Johnson expertly contextualizes Mahler’s work among the prevailing attitudes and political climate of his age, considering the art, science, technology, and mass entertainment that informed the world in 1910. The Eighth is an absorbing history of a musical masterpiece and the troubled man who created it.Hardcover320 pagesUniversity of Chicago Press, 20205.5 x 8.5 x 1.3 inchesISBN 9780226740829Biography, Music, History

The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910

Original Price: $25.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS Durchgesehener Neusatz bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Michael Holzinger. Please note that Rare/Out-of-Print titles are very limited in stock. Paperback184 pagesText in GermanCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 20146 x 0.4 x 9 inchesISBN 9783743723504Letters

Briefwechsel 1910 – 1914

By Marissa Moss "A brief comic book style episode introduces each chapter making an effective attention-grabber and a boon to report writers."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "Moss presents a spectacular story of history, science, and women’s struggle for respect through the narrative of Meitner’s life. The writing style is captivating and the book is a quick page-turner."—School Library Journal"Absorbing and well-paced. . .Moss provides readers with comprehensible descriptions of her subject’s scientific work."—The Horn Book MagazineBestselling author-illustrator Marissa Moss tells the gripping story of Lise Meitner, the physicist who discovered nuclear fission.As a female Jewish physicist in Berlin during the early 20th century, Lise Meitner had to fight for an education, a job, and equal treatment in her field, like having her name listed on her own research papers.Meitner made groundbreaking strides in the study of radiation, but when Hitler came to power in Germany, she suddenly had to face not only sexism, but also life-threatening anti-Semitism as well. Nevertheless, she persevered and one day made a discovery that rocked the world: the splitting of the atom. While her male lab partner was awarded a Nobel Prize for the achievement, the committee refused to give her any credit.Suddenly, the race to build the atomic bomb was on—although Meitner was horrified to be associated with such a weapon. “A physicist who never lost her humanity,” Meitner wanted only to figure out how the world works, and advocated for pacifism while others called for war.The book includes an afterword, author's note, timeline, select terms of physics, glossary of scientists mentioned, endnotes, select bibliography, index, and Marissa Moss’s celebrated drawings throughout. The Woman Who Split the Atom is a fascinating look at Meitner’s fierce passion, integrity, and her lifelong struggle to have her contributions to physics recognized.Hardcover264 pagesAge range: 10-14 yearsAbrams Books for Young Readers, 20225.85 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9781419758539Teen Literature, Women Historical Non-Fiction

The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner

By Eric Torgersen "It was not until I read Requiem for a Friend in Eric Torgersen's translation that I understood what a great and tragic poem it is: guilt-ridden, impassioned, intimate, a sublimated howl. Torgersen's version is one of those rare complete successes in the absolutely impossible art of translation."—Galway Kinnell"A brilliant and valuable study, written with grace and passion, Torgesen's work could scarcely be bettered, both for the delight of reading it provides and for the insights into the lives it exposes."—Choice"As a guide through the intersecting lives and relevant work of Rilke, Modersohn-Becker, and Westhoff, this study has qualitatively and in its focus no parallel in either English or German."—Reinhold Heller, University of ChicagoIn 1908, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote Requiem for a Friend in memory of Paula Moderson-Becker, the German painter who had profoundly affected him and who had died a year earlier. Although one of the great modern painters, Modersohn-Becker is remembered primarily as she is portrayed in Rilke's poem. Dear Friend looks at the relationship of two great artists whose often-strained friendship was extraordinarily productive for both. Paperback 276 pagesNorthwestern University Press, 20006 x 0.8 x 9 inchesISBN 9780810118195Biography, Letters, Poetry

Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker

By Uwe M. Schneede A highly illustrated critical biography of groundbreaking artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, harbinger of the modernist movement. Nineteenth-century German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) defied every convention of an artist at the time: she was a professional female artist, she painted everyday scenes of women’s life and self-portraits―including during her pregnancy―and she used a rich, earthy palette, including many pinks. In this accessible introduction to the artist, art historian Uwe M. Schneede tells the story of how Modersohn-Becker became one of the most important artists of the modern movement. Schneede conducts a thorough visual analysis of Modersohn-Becker’s paintings, examining how she painted women, including herself, in a way that had not been seen before and unpacking why her images have remained so significant. This study is paired with a revealing discussion of the artist’s short life, from her early classes at the Association of Berlin Women Artists to creating the first-known female nude self-portraits. Featuring rarely seen images from Modersohn-Becker’s archive, as well as fascinating insight into her life and work, Paula Modersohn-Becker presents a welcome opportunity to get to know this key modern artist. Hardcover 240 pages | 120 illustrations Thames & Hudson, 2023 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches‎ISBN 9780500025628Artist Monographs

Paula Modersohn-Becker: A Life in Art

This book was featured in our Lecture Series. Translated by Ulrich Baer from the collection edited by Rainer StammIntroduction by Jill LloydThe painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke were two of the most talented and original creative artists at work in early twentieth-century Europe. They enjoyed a close friendship that left in its wake a remarkable series of letters. Encompassing topics such as art, literature, and the nature of marriage, their correspondence testifies to both writers’ brilliant descriptive gifts and penetrating social intelligence. Brought together in English for the first time, the letters that Modersohn-Becker and Rilke sent to one another provide a fascinating view of everyday life during an exceptionally fertile and exciting period of cultural production.Paperback120 pagesEris Press, 20247.8 x 5.1 inchesISBN 9781916809901Biography, Correspondence, Art History

The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence

By Stefan ZweigTranslated by Will StoneCover illustration by David Pearson "Zweig’s accumulated historical and cultural studies remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in."—Clive James"[Zweig’s] life and work tell of the perilous flimsiness of our world of security—a message that many insistently deny, but somehow need to hear."—John Gray, New Statesman He who thinks freely for himself, honours all freedom on earth.Stefan Zweig was already an émigré-driven from a Europe torn apart by brutality and totalitarianism-when he found, in a damp cellar, a copy of Michel de Montaigne's Essais. Montaigne would become Zweig's last great occupation, helping him make sense of his own life and his obsessions-with personal freedom, with the sanctity of the individual. Through his writings on suicide, he would also, finally, lead Zweig to his death.With the intense psychological acuity and elegant prose so characteristic of Zweig's fiction, this account of Montaigne's life asks how we ought to think, and how to live. It is an intense and wonderful insight into both subject and biographer. Paperback153 pagesPushkin Press, 2015Originally published in 19854.8 x 0.6 x 6.5 inchesISBN 9781782271031Biography, Philosophy

Montaigne

By Stefan ZweigTranslated by Will Stone "Zweig’s accumulated historical and cultural studies [are] almost too impressive to take in."—Clive James"Zweig is the most adult of writers: civilized, urbane, but never jaded or cynical; a realist who none the less believe in the possibility—the necessity—of empathy." —Independent"Zweig…deserves to be famous again, and for good."—TLS In this vivid biography, Zweig eschews traditional academic discussion and focuses on Nietzsche’s habits, passions and obsessions. Concentrating on the man rather than the work, on the tragedy of his existence and his apartness from the world in which he moved in enforced isolation, Zweig draws the reader inexorably into Nietzsche’s tragic life.This edition is illustrated with numerous photographs relating to Nietzsche and his European locations, in a superb translation by Will Stone.Paperback128 pages Pushkin Press, 2020Originally published in 19257.8 x 0.3 x 5.1 inchesISBN 9781782276364Biography

Nietzsche

By Friedrich Nietzsche Introduction by Michael TannerTranslated by R.J. HollingdaleIn late 1888, only weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche (1844-1900) set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo remains one of the most intriguing yet bizarre examples of the genre ever written. In this extraordinary work Nietzsche traces his life, work and development as a philosopher, examines the heroes he has identified with, struggled against and then overcome—Schopenhauer, Wagner, Socrates, Christ—and predicts the cataclysmic impact of his ‘forthcoming revelation of all values’. Both self-celebrating and self-mocking, penetrating and strange, Ecce Homo gives the final, definitive expression to Nietzsche’s main beliefs and is in every way his last testament.Paperback122 pages Penguin, 2004Originally published in 19087 x 0.3 x 10 inches ISBN 9780140445152Autobiographical, Philosophy, Existentialism

Ecce Homo

By Katharina Rich Perlow At various times throughout her adult life in the United States, Katharina Rich Perlow was asked how her family survived World War II in Vienna, Austria. She was reluctant to conjure up the harrowing events of her childhood—until now. As the number of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust diminishes rapidly, and for the sake of her children and grandchildren, Katharina felt compelled to tell her story. Her memoir is the story of six-year-old Katharina, her two older siblings, her Catholic mother and her Jewish father, forcibly moved from a quiet, small-town life into a tiny apartment in the heart of wartime, working-class Vienna. It is the story of her soon-to-be widowed mother trying desperately to conceal from neighbors the secret that meant the difference between life and death. Despite being deprived of all the normal hallmarks of childhood, including school, social life, and even food, Katharina tells her story from the point of view of the energetic, curious, and insightful girl that she was, and the woman she was to become. From learning to dance the waltz in her tiny kitchen, to hiding in the catacombs during the Allied bombing, this is a story of bravery, family sacrifice, and survival under the most horrific of circumstances—and ultimately, of hope and resilience. Paperback202 pagesWalter Press, 20146 x 0.5 x 9 inchesISBN 9780615926292Memoir, Biography, Austrian History

Obstructed View: A Memoir of a Young Girl Growing Up in Wartime Vienna

By Marjorie Perloff "One of our finest critics and a tireless advocate for the avant-garde….To have this memoir now is a boon."—Andrew DuBois, Harvard ReviewA fascinating memoir of refugee flight and survival, intellectual yet highly personal, by one America's eminent literary critics.The Vienna Paradox is Marjorie Perloff's memoir of growing up in pre-World War II Vienna, her escape to America in 1938 with her upper-middle-class, highly cultured, and largely assimilated Jewish family, and her self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele Mintz to the English-speaking Marjorie—who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schüller, the Austrian foreign minister under Chancellor Dollfuss and a special delegate to the League of Nations. Compelling as the story is, this is hardly a conventional memoir. Rather, it interweaves biographical anecdote and family history with speculations on the historical development of early 20th-century Vienna as it was experienced by her parents' generation, and how the loss of their "high" culture affected the lives of these cultivated refugees in a democratic United States that was, and remains, deeply suspicious of perceived "elitism." This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading critics, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal. Paperback224 pagesNew Directions, 20045.2 x 0.8 x 8 inchesISBN 9780811215718Memoir, Biography, Austrian History

The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir

Original Price: $49.95 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS Von Margret GreinerLeidenschaft für die Wiener Werkstätte!Glanz und Elend, Erfolg und Ruin: Die packende Geschichte der Primavesi-Frauen zwischen Olmütz, Wien und Montréal – zwei Leben für die Kunst.Mäda Primavesi senior und junior waren selbstbestimmte, eigenwillige Frauen, der Kunst und dem Kunstgewerbe verschrieben. Gustav Klimt hat sie beide porträtiert. Die Mutter wagt sich, nachdem sich ihr Mann Otto ruiniert hatte, selbst in die Unternehmensführung der Werkstätte, wirft ihre Person und ihr Vermögen in die Waagschale. Die Tochter geht eigene Wege, widmet sich ebenfalls dem Kunstgewerbe, wandert nach dem 2. Weltkrieg aus, verbindet die Liebe zu Kindern mit erfolgreicher Gründung und Führung eines Kinderheims in Kanada. Die Primavesis – zwei außergewöhnliche Frauen, die ihrer Zeit voraus waren. Hardcover304 SeitenText in GermanKremayr & Scheriau, 20235 1/3 x 8 1/2 InchesISBN 9783218013048Biografie, Wiener Werkstätte

Mäda & Mäda: Gustav Klimt, die Wiener Werkstätte und die Familie Primavesi

By Rachel Corbett Winner of the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing, 2016 “[An] empathetic and imaginative biography, deeply researched.”―The New Yorker "You Must Change Your Life is an enthralling exploration of the complex relationship between two creative giants of art and literature, drawn together in Paris at the birth of a new century...Corbett...sustains the reader’s interest through intellectual rigour, elegance, and above all empathy."—The London Magazine "...she [Rachel Corbett] evokes the interaction between Rodin's and Rilke's circumstances and mental states in vivid detail...The result of her efforts is a beautiful exercise in compact, interwoven double biography."—Times Literary Supplement In 1902, Rainer Maria Rilke―then a struggling poet in Germany―went to Paris to research and write a short book about the sculptor Auguste Rodin. The two were almost polar opposites: Rilke in his twenties, delicate and unknown; Rodin in his sixties, carnal and revered. Yet they fell into an instantaneous friendship―and before long Rodin hired Rilke as his secretary. With verve and great insight, Corbett transports readers to turn-of-the-twentieth-century Paris to explore this surprising friendship and the development of their influential ideas about art and creativity. She captures the dawn of modernism with appearances by such charismatic figures as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Isadora Duncan, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean Cocteau, as well as the rise of the concept of “empathy” amid the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Georg Simmel. Corbett also introduces the women in these men’s lives, many of them esteemed writers and artists in their own right: Rodin’s muse Camille Claudel, Rilke’s wife and fellow artist Clara Westhoff, and the remarkable Lou Andreas-Salome, who was Nietzsche’s lover and Rilke’s lifelong friend. You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin’s singular friendship, heartbreaking rift, and moving reconciliation, and it is a testament to the ways their work continues to reverberate to this day. Paperback320 pagesW. W. Norton & Company, 20175.6 x 0.9 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9780393354928Biography, Art

You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin [Paperback]

By Birgit Haustedt Translated by Stephen Brown"We discover a lot about both the city and the poet…knowledgeably written…"―Die Zeit Travel was a way of life for the Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke, and it was integral to his work. Between 1897 and 1920 he visited Venice ten times. The city has inspired countless writers and artists, but Rilke was both enthralled and provoked by it, as eager to see and explore the city’s deserted shipyards and back alleys as the iconic sights of St Mark’s and the Doge’s Palace. Staying in simple guesthouses or the grand palaces of his patrons, Rilke would walk prodigiously. His contemporary Stefan Zweig commented that ‘knowing every last corner and depth of the city was his passion’ and Rilke himself said his walking allowed him to ‘grasp the whole breadth of the city’. In eleven walks Birgit Haustedt guides readers through Venice in the poet’s footsteps, showing us well-known sights though Rilke’s eyes so that we might see them anew.Paperback187 pagesHaus Publishing, 20195 x 8 inchesISBN 9781909961630Biography, Travel

Rilke's Venice: The City in Eleven Walks

By Susan Wider A uniquely artistic interpretation of, and profound insight into, pivotal moments in Salomon’s life. . . Wider effortlessly blends vibrant art and little-known history for a winning visual read.—Publishers Weekly A gripping middle-grade biography of Charlotte Salomon, and an ode to how art can capture both life’s everyday beauty and its monumental horrors. Charlotte Salomon was a German-Jewish artist born in Berlin. She is remembered for her autobiographical series of paintings, Life? or Theater?, which consists of 769 individual works painted between 1940 and 1942 while she was in hiding from the Nazis in the south of France, and which has been called a painted parallel to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl and an early graphic novel. In 1943, she entrusted her collection of paintings to a friend. In October of that year, she was captured and deported to Auschwitz, where she and her unborn child were gassed to death upon arrival. It’s My Whole Life covers Charlotte’s remarkable life from her childhood and art school days to her time as a refugee in Nazi-occupied France, where she created the largest single work of art created by a Jew during the Holocaust. Compellingly written and accompanied by vivid color photographs of Salomon’s artwork, Susan Wider has crafted an illuminating portrait of an enigmatic and evanescent young artist.Hardcover 160 pagesAge range: 13-18 yearsNorton Young Readers, 20226.4 x 0.7 x 9.4 inchesISBN 9781324015451 German-Jewish History, Artistic Biography

It's My Whole Life: Charlotte Salomon an Artist in Hiding During World War II

By Julia Vickers The daughter of an illustrious Russian general, Lou von Salome left her home in the heart of Tsarist Russia to conquer intellectual Europe at the tender age of 18. Eventually settling in Germany, she became a best-selling novelist, a groundbreaking essayist, and a well-known literary critic. In addition to all this, Salome was a real-life muse for some of the most brilliant men of her time. This biography tells the story of Salome's entire life and career, focusing on her young adulthood; celibate marriage with linguistics scholar Carl Friedrich Andreas; rumored affairs with Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainier Maria Rilke, and several other authors and poets; and her relationship with Sigmund Freud, which was marked most notably by their contrasting views of psychoanalysis. Paperback209 pagesMcFarland & Company, 2008 5.9 x 8.8 x 0.6 inchesISBN 9780786436064Biography

Lou von Salome: A Biography of the Woman Who Inspired Freud, Nietzsche and Rilke

By Mark Berry "Berry’s perspective on the controversy (still) surrounding the composer is clear-eyed, empathetic, and pleasingly free of polemics of its own...Berry's survey of the individual works is comprehensive and exemplary."—BBC Music Magazine"A superb piece of writing: informative, engaging and compact. It wears its considerable research with a winning lightness of touch. The best introduction to the composer."—Thomas Hyde, composer and Lecturer in Music at Worcester College, Oxford"Arnold Schoenberg lived a “critical life” by any standards, and his entry here into the Critical Lives series of compact volumes devoted to leading cultural figures of the modern period is very welcome. No composer has ever earned quite such a bogeyman reputation, one still widely held if concert and opera programming is any evidence, yet for those of us who actively crave the sound of his music there is also the fascination of the figure himself—and a deeply human side of the composer, to which those who knew him still testify."—OperaThe most radical and divisive composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg remains a hero to many, and a villain to many others. Born in the Jewish quarter of his beloved Vienna, Schoenberg’s early career took him to Berlin, as a leading light of Weimar culture, before he fled in the dead of night from Hitler’s Third Reich. He found himself in the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where he would inspire composers from George Gershwin to John Cage. Schoenberg’s revolutionary approach to musical composition incorporated Wagnerian late Romanticism and the brave new worlds of atonality and serialism, and it changed the history of music forever.In this refreshingly balanced biography, Mark Berry tells the story of Schoenberg’s life and work within the wider context of nineteenth and twentieth-century history. He also introduces all of Schoenberg’s major musical works, from his very first compositions such as String Quartet in D Major to his invention of the 12-tone method. This book is essential reading for all those with an interest in the music and history of the twentieth century.Paperback240 pagesReaktion Books, 20195 x 0.6 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781789140873Music, Biography

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