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Mussolini 1883-1915
by Emilio Gentile Spencer M. Di ScalaThis book describes Mussolini's little-known radical ideology, including his activities in Switzerland, relationship with revolutionary syndicalism, and radical journalism. It provides an in-depth treatment of the young Benito Mussolini as a revolutionary Socialist and describes the political maneuverings that took a major European Socialist party by storm before the First World War. It explains the process of how he came to dominate Italian Socialism until the crisis caused by Italy's intervention in World War I. It illuminates Mussolini's leadership qualities and his rise to leader of the Italian Socialist Party.
Mussolini's Dream Factory
by Stephen GundleThe intersection between film stardom and politics is an understudied phenomenon of Fascist Italy, despite the fact that the Mussolini regime deemed stardom important enough to warrant sustained attention and interference. Focused on the period from the start of sound cinema to the final end of Fascism in 1945, this book examines the development of an Italian star system and evaluates its place in film production and distribution. The performances and careers of several major stars, including Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari, and Alida Valli, are closely analyzed in terms of their relationships to the political sphere and broader commercial culture, with consideration of their fates in the aftermath of Fascism. A final chapter explores the place of the stars in popular memory and representations of the Fascist film world in postwar cinema.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: Heir to the Empire (The World in a Life Series)
by Ryan Gingeras<p>Part of The World in a Life series, this brief text provides insight into the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. By the outbreak of World War II, the Republic of Turkey epitomized more than a state bound for better times; it aspired to represent the essence of modern politics in the twentieth century. To contemporaries of this period, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk--the country's first president--was both the muse and the architect of this radical transformation. By the time of his death in 1938, he was regularly compared alongside other luminary statesmen of the post-Versailles era. Outside of Turkey, his name was synonymous with bold leadership and ambitious reform. Atatürk's reputation as a man both progressive and iconoclastic greatly augmented his already lofty status as Turkey's premier general and war hero. Yet there were some aspects of his life presidency that tempered contemporary admiration for Mustafa Kemal. His acclaim and celebrity came with the understanding that he was a dictator with little patience for liberal democracy. Atatürk's inability to brook compromise and tolerate opposition engendered acts of violence and oppression that resulted in the deaths of large numbers of his fellow citizens. As a whole, the legacies of both his achievements and flaws as a leader remain critical to any understanding of modern-day Turkey. <p>We live in a global age where big concepts like "globalization" often tempt us to forget the personal side of the past. The titles in The World in a Life series aim to revive these meaningful lives. Each one shows us what it was like to live on a world historical stage. Brief, inexpensive, and thematic, each book can be read in a week, fit within a wide range of curricula, and shed insight into a particular place or time. Four to six short primary sources at the end of each volume sharpen the reader's view of an individual's impact on world history.</p>
My Ideal Partner: How I Met, Married, and Cared for The Man I Loved Despite Debilitating Odds
by Abbie Johnson TaylorIn September of 2005, Abbie Johnson married Bill Taylor. She was in her mid-forties, and he was nineteen years older. Three months later, Bill suffered the first of two strokes that paralyzed his left side and confined him to a wheelchair. Abbie Johnson Taylor, once a registered music therapist, uses prose and poetry to tell the story of how she met and married her husband, then cared for him for six years despite her visual impairment. At first, there was a glimmer of hope that Bill would walk again, but when therapists gave up on him seven months after his second stroke, Taylor resigned herself to being a permanent family caregiver. She discusses learning to dress him and transfer him from one place to another, sitting up with him at night when he couldn't urinate or move his bowels, and dealing with doctors and bureaucrats to obtain necessary equipment and services. There were happy times, like when she played the piano or guitar and sang his favorite songs, or when they went out to eat or to a concert. She also explains how she purchased a wheelchair accessible van and found people to drive it, so they wouldn't always depend on the local paratransit service's limited hours. In the end, she describes the painful decision she and Bill made to move him to a nursing home when he became too weak for her to care for him in September of 2012. He seemed to give up on life and passed away a month later. Abbie Johnson Taylor lives in Sheridan, Wyoming and is the author of three previously published books.
My (Part-Time) Paris Life: How Running Away Brought Me Home
by Lisa AnselmoPoignant, touching, and lively, this memoir of a woman who loses her mother and creates a new life for herself in Paris will speak to anyone who has lost a parent or reinvented themselves. Lisa Anselmo wrapped her entire life around her mother, a strong woman who was a defining force in her daughter’s life—maybe too defining. When her mother dies from breast cancer, Lisa realizes she hadn’t built a life of her own, and struggles to find her purpose. Who is she without her mother—and her mother’s expectations? Desperate for answers, she reaches for a lifeline in the form of an apartment in Paris, refusing to play it safe for the first time. What starts out as a lurching act of survival sets Lisa on a course that reshapes her life in ways she never could have imagined. But how can you imagine a life bigger than anything you’ve ever known? In the vein of Eat, Pray, Love and Wild, My (Part-time) Paris Life a story is for anyone who’s ever felt lost or hopeless, but still holds out hope of something more. This candid memoir explores one woman’s search for peace and meaning, and how the ups and downs of expat life in Paris taught her to let go of fear, find self-worth, and create real, lasting happiness.
My (Underground) American Dream: My True Story as an Undocumented Immigrant Who Became a Wall Street Executive
by Julissa ArceWhat does an undocumented immigrant look like? What kind of family must she come from? How could she get into this country? What is the true price she must pay to remain in the United States? JULISSA ARCE knows firsthand that the most common, preconceived answers to those questions are sometimes far too simple-and often just plain wrong. On the surface, Arce's story reads like a how-to manual for achieving the American dream: growing up in an apartment on the outskirts of San Antonio, she worked tirelessly, achieved academic excellence, and landed a coveted job on Wall Street, complete with a six-figure salary. The level of professional and financial success that she achieved was the very definition of the American dream. But in this brave new memoir, Arce digs deep to reveal the physical, financial, and emotional costs of the stunning secret that she, like many other high-achieving, successful individuals in the United States, had been forced to keep not only from her bosses, but even from her closest friends. From the time she was brought to this country by her hardworking parents as a child, Arce-the scholarship winner, the honors college graduate, the young woman who climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs-had secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant. In this surprising, at times heart-wrenching, but always inspirational personal story of struggle, grief, and ultimate redemption, Arce takes readers deep into the little-understood world of a generation of undocumented immigrants in the United States today- people who live next door, sit in your classrooms, work in the same office, and may very well be your boss. By opening up about the story of her successes, her heartbreaks, and her long-fought journey to emerge from the shadows and become an American citizen, Arce shows us the true cost of achieving the American dream-from the perspective of a woman who had to scale unseen and unimaginable walls to get there.
My 90 Year Journey
by Margaret MuirheadThis is the story of how a shy, un-noticed girl transformed herself into a strong and seemingly ageless woman; an inspiration to everyone she meets. Margaret Muirhead’s memoir lets you share her journey through different times and places, from early twentieth century Adelaide to pre-independence Papua New Guinea; from Canberra in the time of Whitlam to Darwin in the time of Tracy; from motherhood to management; from dirty nappies to dinner with the Queen. Join her as she re-traces her steps through the winding paths of a rich and fascinating life!
My Brain on Fire: Paris and Other Obsessions
by Leonard PittThis is Leonard Pitt's story of growing up the misfit in Detroit in the 1940s and 50s. In a later age he would have been put on Ritalin and paraded before psychiatrists because he couldn't pay attention in school. In 1962, at the end of a misguided foray towards a career in advertising he took the ultimate cure, a trip to Paris. He thought it would only be a visit. He stayed seven years. There in the City of Light, Leonard's mind exploded. And it hasn't stopped since.Studying mime with master Etienne Decroux and living in Paris were the university he never knew. This inspiration unleashed a voracious appetite to understand the "why" of things. He asked a simple question, "Why did the ballet go up?" While building a theatre career performing and teaching, he embarked on a quest to study the origins of the ballet, the history of early American popular music, the pre-Socratic philosophers, early modern science, the European witch hunt, the history of Paris, and more. To his unschooled mind it all fits together. Who would see a historical arc between Louis XIV and Elvis Presley? Leonard does. And he'll tell you about it.
My Broken Pieces: Mending the Wounds From Sexual Abuse Through Faith, Family and Love
by Rosie RiveraThe sister of "La Diva de la Banda"--legendary Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera--opens up for the first time about Jenni's untimely death and her own triumph over abuse and addiction.<P><P>Jenni Rivera was the top selling female Mexican-American recording artist of all time, before a plane crash ended her life on December 9, 2012. But to Rosie Rivera, she was simply "sister."Now, for the first time since Jenni's death, Rosie has found her own voice. With unflinching candor and courage, she recounts her very personal and very difficult story--from a childhood filled with love and praise to sexual abuse at the hands of a family member. The resulting trauma sent her life spiraling into a never-ending cycle of addiction, depression, and promiscuity, culminating in a suicide attempt. But, thanks to the unconditional love and compassion of her beloved sister, Jenni, Rosie was able to reconcile with her family, her faith, and--most importantly--herself. Filled with compelling stories of her family's humble beginnings, their meteoric rise to stardom, and Jenni's fatal crash, this memoir is a testament to Rosie's strength--and her struggle to fit together the broken pieces of her life on a new path towards hope and healing. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS
My Childhood (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Maxim GorkyColoured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand - in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev - the life of the ordinary Russian. After his father, a paperhanger and upholsterer, died of cholera, five-year-old Gorky was taken to live with his grandfather, a polecat-faced tyrant who would regularly beat him unconscious, and with his grandmother, a tender mountain of a woman and a wonderful storyteller, who would kneel beside their bed (with Gorky inside it pretending to be asleep) and give God her views on the day's happenings, down to the last fascinating details. She was, in fact, Gorky's closest friend and the epic heroine of a book swarming with characters and with the sensations of a curious and often frightened little boy. My Childhood, the first volume of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy, was in part an act of exorcism. It describes a life begun in the raw, remembered with extraordinary charm and poignancy and without bitterness. Of all Gorky's books this is the one that made him 'the father of Russian literature'.
My Confection
by Lisa KotinA funny, candid, and original coming-of-age story told through sugar addictionShe doesn't drink or do drugs, but like millions of other Americans, Lisa Kotin has a substance abuse problem. Kotin is addicted to sugar. My Confection is a darkly funny and candid memoir of where sugar took this teenage mime when she left her San Francisco Bay Area home in pursuit of artistic greatness. From the strict macrobiotic house where she is kicked out for smuggling Snickers, to her early days of Overeaters Anonymous meetings where she is bewildered by the idea of submitting to a higher power, to the stylish shrink who suggests she figure out how many minutes of tennis equal the calories in one jelly donut, to the men she unwraps and consumes like cheap chocolate bars, Kotin careens from romantic disasters to caloric catastrophes. Original and surprisingly affecting, this portrait of a sugar addict has nothing to do with losing weight or getting fit but rather with coming out of the (sugar) closet, finding allies who understand, and learning how to live healthfully, in spite of her compulsion.From the Trade Paperback edition.
My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor
by Keith Morris Jim RulandKeith Morris is a true punk icon. No one else embodies the sound of Southern Californian hardcore the way he does. With his waist-length dreadlocks and snarling vocals, Morris is known the world over for his take-no-prisoners approach on the stage and his integrity off of it. Over the course of his forty-year career with Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, and OFF!, he's battled diabetes, drug and alcohol addiction, and the record industry...and he's still going strong.My Damage is more than a book about the highs and lows of a punk rock legend. It's a story from the perspective of someone who has shared the stage with just about every major figure in the music industry and has appeared in cult films like The Decline of Western Civilization and Repo Man. A true Hollywood tale from an L.A. native, My Damage reveals the story of Morris's streets, his scene, and his music-as only he can tell it.
My Dear Li: Correspondence, 1937-1946
by Werner Heisenberg Irene Heisenberg Anna Maria Hirsch-Heisenberg Elisabeth HeisenbergPersonal letters reveal the quandary of a prominent German physicist during the Nazi years and the strength he shared with his loving wife Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg lived far from his wife, Elisabeth, during most of the Second World War. An eminent scientist, Werner headed Germany's national atomic research project in Berlin, while Elisabeth and their children lived more safely in Bavaria. This selection of more than 300 letters exchanged between husband and wife reveals the precarious nature of Werner's position in the Third Reich, Elisabeth's increasingly difficult everyday life as the war progressed, and the devoted relationship that gave strength to them both. These letters provide a fascinating new perspective on Werner's much-debated wartime work and his attitude toward the atomic bomb. They also shed light on his reluctance to emigrate despite the urging of friends. An excerpt from his private diary, an introduction and notes by his daughter, and a selection of personal family photographs complete this compelling volume.
My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell
by Arthur Bear Chief Frits Pannekoek Judy BedfordArthur Bear Chief suffered both sexual and psychological abuse during his time at Old Sun Residential school in Gleichen on the Siksika Nation. My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is a of chronological vignettes that depict the punishment, cruelty, and injustice that Arthur endured at Old Sun and then later relived in the traumatic process of retelling his story in connection with a complicated claims procedure. Late in life, after working for both the provincial and federal government, Arthur returned home to Gleichen. It was there that he began to reconnect with Blackfoot language and culture and to write his story.
My Father Before Me: A Memoir
by Chris ForhanAn award-winning poet offers a multi-generational portrait of an American family--weaving together the lives of his ancestors, his parents, and his own coming of age in the 60s and 70s in the wake of his father's suicide, in this superbly written, "fiercely honest" (Nick Flynn) memoir.The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of silence. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn't come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but not mentioned. And on a cold night in 1973, just before Christmas, Forhan's father killed himself in the carport. Forty years later, Forhan "bravely considers the way he is and is not his father's son" (Larry Watson), digging into his family's past and finding within each generation the same abandonment, loss, and silence in which he was raised. Like Ian Frazier in Family or Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes, Forhan shows his family members as both a part and a product of their time. My Father Before Me is a family history, an investigation into a death, and a stirring portrait of growing up in an Irish Catholic childhood, all set against a backdrop of America from the Great Depression to the Ramones. Marrying the literary scope of memoirists Geoffrey Wolff and J.R. Moehringer with the intensity of family novels like The Corrections and We Are Not Ourselves, My Father Before Me is the kind of epic, immersive memoir that comes along once in a decade.
My Father and Atticus Finch: A Lawyer's Fight for Justice in 1930s Alabama
by Joseph Madison BeckThe story of Foster Beck, the author's late father, whose defense of a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama foreshadowed the trial at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories--when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a black man charged with raping a white woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was twelve years old. On the day of Foster Beck's client's arrest, the leading local newspaper reported, under a page-one headline, that "a wandering negro fortune teller giving the name Charles White" had "volunteered a detailed confession of the attack" of a local white girl. However, Foster Beck concluded that the confession was coerced. The same article claimed that "the negro accomplished his dastardly purpose," but as in To Kill a Mockingbird, there was evidence at the trial to the contrary. Throughout the proceedings, the defendant had to be escorted from the courthouse to a distant prison "for safekeeping," and the courthouse itself was surrounded by a detachment of sixteen Alabama highway patrolmen. The saga captivated the community with its dramatic testimonies and emotional outcome. It would take an immense toll on those involved, including Foster Beck, who worried that his reputation had cast a shadow over his lively, intelligent, and supportive fiancé, Bertha, who had her own social battles to fight. This riveting memoir, steeped in time and place, seeks to understand how race relations, class, and the memory of southern defeat in the Civil War produced such a haunting distortion of justice, and how it may figure into our literary imagination.
My Father, the Pornographer
by Chris OffuttAfter inheriting 400 novels of pornography written by his father in the 1970s and '80s, critically acclaimed author Chris Offutt sets out to make sense of a complicated father-son relationship in this carefully observed, beautifully written memoir."Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious of places--the cave of a monstrous enigma named Andrew J. Offutt--armed with nothing but his own restless curiosity. Spoiler alert: He makes it out alive, walking into the daylight to bring us a deeper, funnier, more tender and more heartbroken truth--and his masterpiece." --Michael Chabon When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and eighteen hundred pounds of pornographic fiction. Andrew had been considered the "king of twentieth-century smut," with a writing career that began as a strategy to pay for his son's orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the 1970s when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel reached its height. With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon. In this fashion he wrote more than four hundred novels, including pirate porn, ghost porn, zombie porn, and secret agent porn. The more he wrote, the more intense his ambition became and the more difficult it was for his children to be part of his world. Over the long summer of 2013, Chris returned to his hometown to help his widowed mother move out of his childhood home. As he began to examine his father's manuscripts and memorabilia, journals, and letters, he realized he finally had an opportunity to gain insight into the difficult, mercurial, sometimes cruel man he'd loved and feared in equal measure. Only in his father's absence could he truly make sense of the man and his legacy. In My Father, the Pornographer, Offutt takes us on the journey with him, reading his father's prodigious literary output as both a critic and as a son seeking answers. This is a book about the life of a working writer who supports his family solely by the output of his typewriter; it's about the awful psychic burdens one generation unthinkingly passes along to the next; and it's about growing up in the Appalachian hills with a pack of fearless boys riding bicycles through the woods, happy and free.
My First Hundred Years in Show Business: A Memoir
by Mary Louise WilsonThis Tony winner&’s memoir is &“a riot of characters met and characters played . . . a funny, frank, and savvy chronicle of a wonderful life.&” —David Hyde Pierce Mary Louise Wilson became a star at age sixty with her smash one-woman play Full Gallop, portraying legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. But before and since, her life and career—including the Tony Award for her portrayal of Big Edie in Grey Gardens—have been celebrated and varied. Raised in New Orleans with a social climbing, alcoholic mother, Mary Louise moved to New York City in the late 1950s; lived with her gay brother in the Village; entered the nightclub scene in a legendary revue; and rubbed shoulders with every famous person of that era and since. My First Hundred Years in Show Business gets it all down. Yet as delicious as the anecdotes are, the heart of this book is in its unblinkingly honest depiction of the life of a working actor. In her inimitable voice—wry, admirably unsentimental, mordantly funny—Mary Louise Wilson has crafted a work that is at once a teeming social history of the New York theatre scene and a thoroughly revealing, superbly entertaining memoir of the life of an extraordinary woman and actor. &“Brims with anecdotes . . . plenty of laughs [and] plenty of candor, too.&” —Nola.com
My Heart Can't Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome
by Amy SilvermanAll parent stories about raising a child with Down syndrome are special and unique, but in the hands of a good writer, they can have the power to reach, change, and resonate far beyond family and friends. And that is the case with this book by journalist, blogger, and NPR contributor Amy Silverman. Amy bravely looks at her life, before and after her daughter Sophie was born, and reflects on her transformation from a spoiled, self-centered brat, who used words like retard and switched lines at the Safeway to avoid a bagger with special needs, into the mother of a child with Down syndrome and all that her new identity entails. She describes her evolution as gradual, one built by processing her fears and facing questions both big and small about Sophie, Down syndrome, and her place in the world. Funny, touching, and honest, this wonderful book looks at a daughter and her power to change minds and fill hearts with love so deep that, as Sophie once remarked to her mum, I love you so much my heart can't even believe it! Theirs is a story worth reading.
My Heart Will Triumph
by Mirjana Soldo Sean Bloomfield Miki MusaMirjana Soldo was only 16 years old when she and five other children saw a mysterious woman on a hillside in the village of Medjugorje, then part of Yugoslavia. The woman 'who possessed a beauty and grace that seemed to come from beyond' identified herself as the Virgin Mary. The apparitions that began on the afternoon of June 24, 1981 would dramatically change Mirjana's life and the lives of countless people around the world. Her claims, however, brought the wrath of the Communist government down on Mirjana and everyone around her. Amazingly, the apparitions have continued for over 35 years. Millions of people travel to Medjugorje every year in search of answers to life's biggest questions. And, according to Mirjana, the Virgin entrusted her with ten secrets that foretell the future of the world--secrets that she will reveal within her lifetime.
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
by William PerryMy Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. This book traces his thought process as he journeys from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to crafting a defense strategy in the Carter Administration to offset the Soviets' numeric superiority in conventional forces, to presiding over the dismantling of more than 8,000 nuclear weapons in the Clinton Administration, and to his creation in 2007, with George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger, of the Nuclear Security Project to articulate their vision of a world free from nuclear weapons and to lay out the urgent steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers.
My Life In His Paws: The Story of Ted and How He Saved Me
by Wendy HillingMy Life in His Paws is the story of the amazing dog who gave back someone's freedom and confidence. Wendy Hilling has a rare skin condition which means her skin is very delicate. Every moment is difficult and causes pain. It affects the body inside and out: her throat is very narrow and she can stop breathing at any time. But eight years ago Wendy's life changed forever. She met Ted, the Golden Retriever, and he became her full-time carer. He has saved her life more times than she can remember, always watching and listening, and Wendy is now entirely reliant on him. This is the story of Wendy and her incredible bravery living with a disability and battling against the odds. It's also the story of Ted, the extraordinary assistance dog, and the unique relationship between a human and animal and the extraordinary things animals are capable of.
My Life in Court
by Louis NizerIn this electrifying bestseller, the shrewd and voluble trial lawyer Louis Nizer, who made a long career of representing famous people in famous cases, recounts some of his significant civil and criminal cases.Nizer rose to national fame with his real-life accounts of tension-filled courtrooms and the fervor of the advocate, and "My Life in Court" proved to be no exception: it rose to the top of the Times's best-seller list on its publication in 1961 and logged 72 weeks as a sales leader.The book is an in-depth collection of some of Mr. Nizer's court case success stories, including his client Quentin Reynolds' famous libel action against the columnist Westbrook Pegler, which would also become the basis of the 1963 Broadway play "A Case of Libel."Praised by critics as "entertaining and philosophically instructive, an unusual combination," Nizer's movie-like plots of real-life courtroom drama will keep you captivated until the very last page.
My Life on the Road
by Gloria SteinemGloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. Every fall, her father would pack the family into the car and they would drive across the country, in search of their next adventure. The seeds were planted: Steinem would spend much of her life on the road, as a journalist, organizer, activist, and speaker. In vivid stories that span an entire career, Steinem writes about her time on the campaign trail, from Bobby Kennedy to Hillary Clinton; her early exposure to social activism in India; organizing ground-up movements in America; the taxi drivers who were "vectors of modern myths" and the airline stewardesses who embraced feminism; and the infinite contrasts, the "surrealism in everyday life" that Steinem encountered as she travelled back and forth across the country. With the unique perspective of one of the greatest feminist icons of the 20th and 21st centuries, here is an inspiring, profound, enlightening memoir of one woman's life-long journey.
My Life with Wagner: Fairies, Rings, And Redemption: Exploring Opera's Most Enigmatic Composer
by Christian Thielemann'Idiosyncratic, humorous, enlightening and written by one of the finest conductors alive ... This is the book to buy if you are going to see Wagner or listen to him at home' LITERARY REVIEWOver a distinguished career conducting some of the world's finest orchestras, Christian Thielemann has earned a reputation as the leading modern interpreter of Richard Wagner. MY LIFE WITH WAGNER chronicles his ardent personal and professional engagement with the composer whose work has shaped his thinking and feeling from early childhood.Thielemann retraces his journey with Wagner - from Berlin to Bayreuth via Venice, Hamburg and Chicago. Next he takes each opera in turn, his appraisal illuminated by a deep affinity for the music, an intimate knowledge of the scores and the inside perspective of an outstanding practitioner. And yet for all the adulation Wagner's art inspires in him, Thielemann does not shy away from unpalatable truths about the man himself, explaining why today he is venerated and reviled in equal measure. The result is a richly rewarding read for admirers of a composer who continues to fascinate long after his death.