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DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH by FAIRCLOUGH PAULINE
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
Dmitry Shostakovich was one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century--a musician who adapted as no other to the unique pressures of his age. By turns vilified and feted by Stalin during the Great Purge, Shostakovich twice came close to succumbing to the whirlwind of political repression ...Show more
Derek Jarman by Michael Charlesworth
Category: Fiction | Series: Critical Lives
Derek Jarman (1942-1994) is most often remembered as one of Europe's most innovative independent film-makers, whose films called into question and re-ordered the nature of film-making itself. But he was also a painter, writer and poet, gardener, set designer for other people's films, ballet, opera and t ...Show more
Erik Satie by Mary E. Davis
Category: Music | Series: Critical Lives
A musical composer who dabbled in the Dada movement, a Bohemian gymnopediste of fin-de-siecle Montmartre, and a legendary dresser known as The Velvet Gentleman for his sartorial choices, Erik Satie was nearly unprecedented in technique, style and philosophy among European composers in the early twentiet ...Show more
Ernest Hemingway by Verna Kale
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives
Ernest Hemingway has enjoyed a rich legacy as the progenitor of modern fiction, an oversized character in literary lore who wrote some of the most honest and moving accounts of the twentieth century, set against such grand backdrops as the bullrings of Spain, the savannahs of Africa and the rivers of th ...Show more
Fidel Castro by Nick Caistor
Category: Biography Memoir | Series: Critical Lives
The Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro is one of the most written-about men in the world today. Most approaches to his life are either glowing hagiographies, or critical rants in which he is portrayed as a dictator who has kept the island of Cuba under his heel for the past fifty years. By contrast, Nick ...Show more
Frantz Fanon by James S. Williams
Category: Philosophy | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
A biography of the revolutionary philosopher and psychiatrist. Doctor, militant, essayist, ambassador, teacher, journalist, pan-Africanist, Frantz Fanon sought to decolonize mid-twentieth-century culture as he embodied a new kind of intellectual. Born in colonial Martinique, he fought for France durin ...Show more
Frida Kahlo by Gannit Ankori
Category: Art and Design | Series: Critical Lives
Frida Kahlo stepped into the limelight in 1929 when she married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She was 22; he was 43. Hailed as Rivera's exotic young wife who 'dabbles in art', she went on to produce brilliant paintings, but remained in her husband's shadow throughout her life. Today, almost six dec ...Show more
Friedrich Nietzsche by Ritchie Robertson
Category: Philosophy and Religion | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
An accessible and informative study of the life and work of this vaunted German philosopher. In this concise yet comprehensive critical biography, Ritchie Robertson examines the work of Friedrich Nietzsche within the context of his life. The book traces Nietzsche's development from outstanding classical ...Show more
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE by SCOTT NANCY J
Category: Art Literature | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
Georgia O'Keeffe, the most famous woman artist of American modernism and a pioneer in abstract art, created a vision without precedent. She expressed the grandeur of her world in the Southwest, from the high desert mesas to the smallest flower, with fierce independence. And a separate world has risen up ...Show more
Gustave Flaubert by Anne Green
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest novelists, and his work continues to influence and inspire contemporary writers, artists, and musicians. Flaubert was determined from a young age to become a writer and achieved sudden fame in 1857 when his first published no ...Show more
Guy de Maupassant by Christopher Lloyd
Category: Biography Memoir | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
The most celebrated French storyteller of the nineteenth century, Guy de Maupassant was a master of the modern short story. Offering an intriguing picture of French life, his stories derive their enduring appeal from understated artistry, extreme craftsmanship, and the universality of his characters and ...Show more
Günter Grass by Julian Preece
Category: Biography | Series: Critical Lives Ser.
G nter Grass was Germany's foremost writer for more than half a century, and his books were and remain best-sellers across the world. The Tin Drum was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1979, and the memoir Peeling the Onion astounded readers by revealing Grass had been drafted into the military wing of ...Show more