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Cinematic Encounters 2: Portraits and Polemics
by Jonathan RosenbaumEschewing the idea of film reviewer-as-solitary-expert, Jonathan Rosenbaum continues to advance his belief that a critic's ideal role is to mediate and facilitate our public discussion of cinema. Portraits and Polemics presents debate as an important form of cinematic encounter whether one argues with filmmakers themselves, on behalf of their work, or with one's self. Rosenbaum takes on filmmakers like Chantal Akerman, Richard Linklater, Manoel De Oliveira, Mark Rappaport, Elaine May, and Béla Tarr. He also engages, implicitly and explicitly, with other writers, arguing with Pauline Kael--and Wikipedia--over Jacques Demy, with the Hollywood Reporter and Variety reviewers of Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, with David Thomson about James L. Brooks, and with many American and English film critics about misrepresented figures from Jerry Lewis to Yasujiro Ozu to Orson Welles. Throughout, Rosenbaum mines insights, pursues pet notions, and invites readers to join the fray.
cinque consigli per una vita migliore; un piccolo libro per grandi domande
by Liv NilssonÈ un libro interessante che richiama la vita di tutti noi, che riguarda ciascuno di noi. Lo scrittore sottolinea gli aspetti della nostra vita a partire dalla sua vita personale e dalla sua esperienza, esponendo i sentimenti e le emozioni che ha provato nella sua vita e che, certamente, ha provato ognuno di noi, nel bene e nel male.
The Circle of Fire: In the Midst of the Ashes an Ember of Hope Flickered
by Justina Page Chief Rick FlanaganIn the early hours of March 7, 1999, Justina Page’s life changed forever when a four-alarm house fire ravaged and destroyed her family’s home. In the aftermath, facing the heartbreaking loss of one of their toddler twin boys, Justina and her husband had to cope with the physical injuries left behind on both her and their surviving son. The Circle of Fire chronicles the author’s journey through overcoming the devastating consequences of this catastrophic event. Justina’s is a journey of discovering that personal tragedy is not a life sentence to despair, anger, and continual pain and suffering. Instead, it can bring awareness of how something positive can be salvaged from every agonizing experience, even when your faith has truly been tried by fire.
Circle of Greed: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Lawyer Who Brought Corporate America to Its Knees
by Patrick Dillon Carl M. CannonCircle of Greed is the epic story of the rise and fall of Bill Lerach, once the leading class action lawyer in America and now a convicted felon. For more than two decades, Lerach threatened, shook down and sued top Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, Apple, Time Warner, and--most famously--Enron. Now, the man who brought corporate moguls to their knees has fallen prey to the same corrupt impulses of his enemies, and is paying the price by serving time in federal prison.
The Circle of Hanh: A Memoir
by Bruce WeiglIn this piercingly honest memoir, Bruce Weigl, who has established himself as one of our finest American poets, explores the central experience of his life as a writer and a man: the Vietnam War, which tore his life apart and in return gave him his poetic voice. Weigl knew nothing about Vietnam before enlisting in 1967, but he saw a free ride out of a difficult childhood among volatile people. The war completely changed his life; there was a before and then one irrevocable after. In the before, the injured and beaten always had a chance; in the after, young men lay in his arms with throats torn by shrapnel, pleading with him not to tell their mothers how they had died. In the before, Weigl pretended to be dead in mock battles with his friends; in the after, he watched as a boy from his unit whispered to Vietnamese corpses while caring for their inert bodies as if they were dolls. Weigl returned from Vietnam unprepared to cope with life in the aftermath of war. One day he was squatting in a bunker, high on marijuana and waiting out a rocket attack; two days later he stood in his parents’ house, breathing the old air. For years, he struggled to adjust, sleeping in different rooms each night and leaping at a person’s throat if a hand reached to touch him in his sleep. He turned to alcohol, drugs, and women in an attempt to escape his confused purgatory, but only found himself alone, watching other people’s lives from the shadows. Eventually finding his way back into the world after a long time in a zone between being and not being, Weigl drew solace from poetry and, later, from a family. Yet, it is not until a harrowing journey back to Hanoi, to adopt a Vietnamese daughter, that Weigl is fully delivered from the brutal legacy of the war. This act of salvation and recompense to a nation he helped to destroy lies at the heart of his memoir and infuses it with a profound sense of humanity and transcendence. Moving from childhood to the war to a final act of compassion and hope, The Circle of Hanh is a powerful recreation of a deeply haunted life and, ultimately, a stunning work of redemption.
A Circle of Quiet (The Crosswicks Journals #1)
by Madeleine L'EngleThe book begins:<P><P> We are four generations under one roof this summer, from infant Charlotte to almost-ninety Great-grandmother. This is a situation which is getting rarer and rarer in this day and age when families are divided by large distances and small dwellings, Josephine and Alan and the babies come from England; Great-grandmother from the Deep South; Hugh and I and our younger children from New York; and our assorted "adopted" children from as far afield as Mexico and as close as across the road; all to be together in Crosswicks, our big, old-fashioned New England farmhouse.<P> It's an ancient house by American standards-well over two hundred years old. It still seems old to me, although Josephine and Alan, in Lincoln, live close by the oldest inhabited house in Europe, built in the eleven-hundreds. <P>When our children were little and we lived in Crosswicks year round, they liked to count things. They started to count the books, but stopped after they got to three thousand. They also counted beds, and figured that as long as all the double beds held two people, we could sleep twenty-one; that, of course, included the attic. <P>We are using the attic this summer, though we haven't yet slept twenty-one. A lot of the time it is twelve, and even more to feed. Cooking is the only part of housekeeping I manage with any grace; it's something like writing a book: you look in the refrigerator and see what's there, choose all the ingredients you need, and a few your husband thinks you don't need, and put them all together to concoct a dish. <P>Vacuum cleaners are simply something more for me to trip over; and a kitchen floor, no matter how grubby, looks better before I wax it. The sight of a meal's worth of dirty dishes, pots, and pans makes me want to run in the other direction. <P>Every so often I need out; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody-away from all these people I love most in the world-in order to regain a sense of proportion.
A Circle of Quiet: A Circle Of Quiet, The Summer Of The Great-grandmother, The Irrational Season, And Two-part Invention (The Crosswicks Journals #1)
by Madeleine L'EngleThe beloved author of A Wrinkle in Time takes an introspective look at her life and muses on creativity in this memoir, the first of her Crosswicks Journals. Every so often I need OUT. . . . My special place is a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings. . . . I sit there, dangling my legs and looking through the foliage at the sky reflected in the water, and things slowly come back into perspective. Set against the lush backdrop of Crosswicks, her family&’s farmhouse in rural Connecticut, this deeply personal memoir details Madeleine L&’Engle&’s journey to find balance between her career as a Newbery Medal–winning author and her responsibilities as a wife, mother, teacher, and Christian. As she considers the roles that creativity, family, citizenship, and faith play in her life, L&’Engle reveals the complexities behind the author whose works—honored with the National Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and countless other prizes—have long been cherished by children and adults alike. Written in simple, profound, and often humorous prose, A Circle of Quiet is an insightful woman&’s elegant search for the meaning and purpose of her life. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Madeleine L&’Engle including rare images from the author&’s estate.
Circle of Six: The True Story of New York's Most Notorious Cop Killer and The Cop Who Risked Everything to Catch Him
by Robert Cea Randy Jurgensen&“The Mosque case of 1972 is the most famous case amongst the rank and file of the NYPD and Circle of Six holds no punches.&” —Joe &“Donnie Brasco&” Pistone, former FBI special agentCircle of Six is the true story of what is perhaps the most notorious case in the history of the New York Police Department. It details Randy Jurgensen&’s determined effort to bring to justice the murderer of Patrolman Phillip Cardillo, who was shot and killed inside Harlem&’s Mosque #7 in 1972, in the midst of an all-out assault on the NYPD from the Black Liberation Army. The New York of this era was a place not unlike the Wild West, in which cops and criminals shot it out on a daily basis. Despite the mayhem on the streets and the Machiavellian corridors of Mayor Lindsay&’s City Hall, Detective Jurgensen single-handedly took on the Black Liberation Army, the Nation of Islam, NYPD brass, and City Hall, capturing Cardillo&’s killer, Lewis 17X Dupree. He broke the case with an unlikely accomplice, Foster 2X Thomas, a member of the Nation of Islam who became Jurgensen&’s witness. The relationship they formed during the time before trial gave each of the two men a greater perspective of the two sides in the street war and changed them forever. In the end, Jurgensen had to settle for a conviction on other charges, and Dupree served a number of years. The murder case is still officially unsolved. In 2006 the NYPD re-opened the case, and it is once again an active investigation with full media attention. The book has received acclaim from former New York City Police Commissioners Ray Kelly and William Bratton.
Circle of Treason
by Sandra V. Grimes Jeanne VertefeuilleCircle of Treason details the authors' personal involvement in the hunt for and eventual identification of a Soviet mole in the CIA during the 1980s and 1990s. The search for the presumed traitor was necessitated by the loss of almost all of the CIA's large stable of Soviet intelligence officers working for the United States against their homeland. Aldrich Ames, a long-time acquaintance and co-worker of the authors in the Soviet-East European Division and Counterintelligence Center of CIA, turned out to be that mole. In April 1985 Ames walked in to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C. and volunteered to the KGB, working for the Soviet Union for nine years until his arrest by the FBI in February 1994.Ames was arguably one of the most destructive traitors in American history, and is most well-known for providing information which led to the death of at least 11 Soviet intelligence officers who spied for the West. The authors participated in the majority of these cases and the book provides detailed accounts of the operational contact with the agents as well as other similar important cases with which the authors also had personal involvement. The stories of the brave men who were executed or imprisoned by the Soviet Union include GRU General Dmitriy Fedorovich Polyakov, KGB Colonel Leonid Georgiyevich Poleshchuk, KGB Colonel Vladimir Mikhaylovich Piguzov, GRU technical officer Nikolay Chernov, GRU Lieutenant Colonel Boris Nikolayevich Yuzhin, KGB scientific and technical officer Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov, GRU Colonel Vladimir Mikhaylovich Vasilyev, GRU officer Gennadiy Aleksandrovich Smetanin, KGB illegals support officer Gennadiy Grigoryevich Varenik, KGB scientific and technical officer Valeriy Fedorovich Martynov, KGB political intelligence officer Sergey Mikhaylovich Motorin, KGB officer Sergey Vorontsov, and Soviet scientist Adolf Grigoryevich Tolkachev. Other operations include KGB technical officer Viktor Ivanovich Sheymov, GRU Colonel Sergey Ivanovich Bokhan, and KGB Colonel Aleksey Isidorovich Kulak. Of particular note in the preceding list of agents compromised by Aldrich Ames is GRU General Dmitriy Fedorovich Polyakov, the highest-ranking spy ever run by the U.S. government against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Described as the "Crown Jewel", he provided the U.S. with a treasure trove of information during his 20-plus year history of cooperation.The book also covers the aftermath of Aldrich Ames arrest: the Congressional wrath on CIA for not identifying him sooner; FBI/CIA debriefings of Ames following his plea bargain; a retrospective of Ames the person and Ames the spy; and a comparison of Ames and FBI special agent and Soviet spy Robert Hanssen, arrested in February 2001 and sentenced to life in prison for spying for the Soviet Union against the U.S. for over 20 years. Although not personally involved in the Hanssen investigation, the two authors were peripherally involved in what became, after many false starts the Hanssen case.
Circles around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother
by Molly MccloskeyWhen Molly McCloskey was a young girl, her brother Mike - fourteen years her senior - started showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia. By the time Molly was old enough to begin to know him, he was frequently delusional, heavily medicated, living in hospitals or care homes or on the road. In Circles around the Sun, she tells Mike's story - which is also the story of her own demons and of how a seemingly perfect family slowly fell apart and, in the end, regrouped. It is a work of extraordinary intensity and drama from a wonderfully gifted writer. 'Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves. Circles Around the Sun is this kind of book: it's a keeper. A memoir of a schizophrenic brother, written with great care and simplicity, it is one of those stories that waited until its writer was ready to tell it. ' Anne Enright, Guardian'Brilliant, at times heartbreaking . . . A remarkably courageous memoir that is as strange and rich as any fiction' Irish Times'Devastating, beautifully written . . . feels like one of those books the author simply had to get written' Dazed & Confused'Her prose is tender, sometimes dreamlike, and yet rigorously truthful' Justine McCarthy, Sunday Times'Brilliant . . . Circles around the Sun is an extraordinary accounting of singular sorrows and no uncertain triumphs that should resonate for every reader with a family of their own' Irish Times'There is a rate, uplifting honesty about this heartbreaking story' Irish Independent
Circling Home: What I Learned by Living Elsewhere
by Terry A. RepakWhen Terry Repak and her husband moved to West Africa with two small children at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, she seized the opportunity to connect with people of other cultures and bear witness to the ravages of the disease. Circling Home chronicles the adventures and challenges of raising children to be global citizens and trying to find home in countries as diverse as Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Switzerland. Her memoir spotlights the complexity, struggles, and profound lessons at the heart of the expat journey.
Circling My Mother
by Mary GordonIn this triumphant return to nonfiction after two critically acclaimed works of fiction, Gordon presents a rich, bittersweet memoir about her mother, their relationship, and her role as daughter.
The Circling Sky: On Nature and Belonging in an Ancient Forest
by Neil AnsellFrom a 2018 Wainwright Prize shortlisted author, THE CIRCLING SKY is part childhood memoir, blended with exquisite nature observation, and the story of one man's journey over a year to one of the UK's key natural habitats, the New Forest of HampshireIn the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom, and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities. It is also part polemic on our collective and individual responsibility for the land and world in which we live, and how we care for it.As Neil Ansell concludes so eloquently, 'Evolution has no choice in what it does, but we do, as a species, if not always as individuals'.
The Circling Sky: On Nature and Belonging in an Ancient Forest
by Neil AnsellFrom a 2018 Wainwright Prize shortlisted author, THE CIRCLING SKY is part childhood memoir, blended with exquisite nature observation, and the story of one man's journey over a year to one of the UK's key natural habitats, the New Forest of HampshireIn the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom, and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities. It is also part polemic on our collective and individual responsibility for the land and world in which we live, and how we care for it.As Neil Ansell concludes so eloquently, 'Evolution has no choice in what it does, but we do, as a species, if not always as individuals'.
The Circling Sky: On Nature and Belonging in an Ancient Forest
by Neil AnsellFrom a 2018 Wainwright Prize shortlisted author, THE CIRCLING SKY is part childhood memoir, blended with exquisite nature observation, and the story of one man's journey over a year to one of the UK's key natural habitats, the New Forest of HampshireIn the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom, and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities. It is also part polemic on our collective and individual responsibility for the land and world in which we live, and how we care for it.As Neil Ansell concludes so eloquently, 'Evolution has no choice in what it does, but we do, as a species, if not always as individuals'.(P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Limited
Circling the Square: Stories from the Egyptian Revolution
by Wendell SteavensonWhat happened to the promise of Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring?On January 25, 2011, the world was watching Cairo. Egyptians of every stripe came together in Tahrir Square to protest Hosni Mubarak's three decades of brutal rule. After many hopeful, turbulent years, however, Egypt seems to be back where it began, with another strongman, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in power. How did this happen?In Circling the Square, Wendell Steavenson uses literary reportage to describe the intimate ironies and ad hoc movements of the Egyptian revolution—from Mubarak's fall to Mohammed Morsi's. Vignettes, incidents, anecdotes, conversations, musings, observations and character sketches cast a fresh light on this vital Middle Eastern story.Closely observing a wide range of people from a thug in a slum with a homemade gun to the democracy/documentary makers on Tahrir Square, to fundamentalist imams and military intelligence officers, Steavenson dares to ask: what am I looking at and how can I begin to understand it?With a novelist's eye for character, Steavenson paints indelible, instantly recognizable portraits and dilemmas that illuminate universal questions. What does democracy mean? What happens when a revolution throws the ideas and values of a society into crisis? What is a revolution, and, finally, what can it accomplish?
El circo de los pueblos: Cómo dictadores, narcos, políticos y empresarios consiguieron poder a través del fútbol
by José Ignacio LladósDesde la primera mitad del siglo XX el poder busca utilizar el fútbol a su favor: Mussolini, Hitler, la dictadura argentina con el Mundial 78, jeques árabes, Pablo Escobar, la Camorra napolitana, Berlusconi, Macri o George Weah, el primer jugador en convertirse en presidente. Pero también hay víctimas como Maradona, tal vez la persona que más amó y sufrió el fútbol. El fútbol es el entretenimiento más grande del planeta. Absolutamente nada concentra tanta atención como un Mundial. No existe elección política, ni discurso, ni concierto, ni manifestación que puedan acercarse en interés global. La prueba es que el campeonato de Rusia 2018 fue visto por 3500 millones de personas. Casi la mitad del mundo. Desde principios del siglo XX el poder buscó y busca utilizar este deporte a su favor: Mussolini, Hitler, la dictadura argentina con el Mundial 78, jeques árabes, Pablo Escobar, Pelé, la Camorra napolitana, Silvio Berlusconi, Mauricio Macri o George Weah, el primer jugador en convertirse en presidente. Pero también hay víctimas como Diego Maradona, tal vez la persona que más amó y sufrió el fútbol. Con rigor histórico, sagacidad periodística y entrevistas exclusivas, José Ignacio Lladós analiza y cuenta cómo el fútbol pasó de entretenimiento deportivo a ser un negocio global que mueve millones de dólares alrededor del mundo y una plataforma de lanzamiento para todo aquel que quiera llegar a lo más alto del poder.
The Circuit
by Francisco Jiménez"'La frontera'...I heard it for the first time back in the late 1940s when Papa and Mama told me and Roberto, my older brother, that someday we would take a long trip north, cross la frontera, enter California, and leave our poverty behind." So begins this honest and powerful account of a family's journey to the fields of California -- to a life of constant moving, from strawberry fields to cotton fields, from tent cities to one-room shacks, from picking grapes to topping carrots and thinning lettuce. Seen through the eyes of a boy who longs for an education and the right to call one place home, this is a story of survival, faith, and hope. It is a journey that will open readers' hearts and minds.
El circuito de la esperanza: El viaje de un psicólogo de la desesperanza al optimismo
by Martin E. SeligmanLas memorias de uno de los psicólogos contemporáneos más influyentes del mundo. En estas cautivadoras memorias, el fundador de la Psicología Positiva, Martin Seligman, nos invita a recorrer su vida desde su infancia hasta el presente, así como a conocer las historias visionarias que hay detrás de sus investigaciones más importantes. Una historia maravillosa magistralmente contada. Reseña:«Este libro combina una historia de la psicología escrita por alguien que forma parte de ella, una exposición de ideas poderosas acerca de la vida mental y unas memorias tan deliciosamente sinceras como reflexivas.»Steven Pinker
The Circulation of European Knowledge: Niklas Luhmann in the Hispanic Americas
by Leandro Rodriguez MedinaThis book studies the circulation of social knowledge by focusing on the reception of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory in Hispanic America. It shows that theories need active involvement from scholars in the receiving field in order to travel.
The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle
by Jack LuleContributions by Lisa Doris Alexander, Matthew H. Barton, Andrew C. Billings, Carlton Brick, Ted M. Butryn, Brian Carroll, Arthur T. Challis, Roxane Coche, Curtis M. Harris, Jay Johnson, Melvin Lewis, Jack Lule, Rory Magrath, Matthew A. Masucci, Andrew McIntosh, Jorge E. Moraga, Leigh M. Moscowitz, David C. Ogden, Joel Nathan Rosen, Kevin A. Stein, and Henry YuIn this fifth book on sport and the nature of reputation, editors Lisa Doris Alexander and Joel Nathan Rosen have tasked their contributors with examining reputation from the perspective of celebrity and spectacle, which in some cases can be better defined as scandal. The subjects chronicled in this volume have all proven themselves to exist somewhere on the spectacular spectrum—the spotlight seemed always to gravitate toward them. All have displayed phenomenal feats of athletic prowess and artistry, and all have faced a controversy or been thrust into a situation that grows from age-old notions of the spectacle. Some handled the hoopla like the champions they are, or were, while others struggled and even faded amid the hustle and flow of their runaway celebrity. While their individual narratives are engrossing, these stories collectively paint a portrait of sport and spectacle that offers context and clarity. Written by a range of scholarly contributors from multiple disciplines, The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle contains careful analysis of such megastars as LeBron James, Tonya Harding, David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal, Maria Sharapova, and Colin Kaepernick. This final volume of a project that has spanned the first three decades of the twenty-first century looks to sharpen questions regarding how it is that reputations of celebrity athletes are forged, maintained, transformed, repurposed, destroyed, and at times rehabilitated. The subjects in this collection have been driven by this notion of the spectacle in ways that offer interesting and entertaining inquiry into the arc of athletic reputations.
Circus Kid (Fountas & Pinnell LLI Gold #Level O)
by Terry ShannonCircus Kid Author: Terry Miller Shannon
Circus of Dreams: Adventures in the 1980s Literary World
by John WalshSomething extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. In the space of eight years, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style, challenging - and almost eclipsing - the Establishment writers of the 1950s. It began with two names - Martin Amis and Ian McEwan - and became a flood: Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson and Pat Barker among them. The rise of the newcomers coincided with astonishing changes in the way books were published - and the ways in which readers bought them and interacted with their authors. Suddenly, authors of serious fiction were like rock stars, fashionable, sexy creatures, shrewdly marketed and feted in public.The yearly bunfight of the Booker Prize became a matter of keen public interest. Tim Waterstone established the first of a chain of revolutionary bookshops. London publishing houses became the playground of exciting, visionary entrepreneurs who introduced new forms of fiction - magical realist, feminist, post-colonial, gay - to modern readers. Independent houses began to spend ostentatious sums on author advances and glamorous book launches. It was nothing short of a watershed in literary culture. And its climax was the issuing of a death sentence by a fundamentalist leader whose hostility to Western ideas of free speech made him, literally, the world's most lethal critic.Through this exciting, hectic period, the journalist and author John Walsh played many parts: literary editor, reviewer, interviewer, prize judge and TV pundit. He met and interviewed numerous literary stars, attended the best launch parties and digested all the gossip and scandal of the time. In Circus of Dreams he reports on what he found, first with wide-eyed delight and then with a keen eye on what drove this glorious era. The result is a unique hybrid of personal memoir, oral history, literary investigation and elegy for a golden age.
Circus of Dreams: Adventures in the 1980s Literary World
by John WalshSomething extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. In the space of eight years, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style, challenging - and almost eclipsing - the Establishment writers of the 1950s. It began with two names - Martin Amis and Ian McEwan - and became a flood: Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson and Pat Barker among them. The rise of the newcomers coincided with astonishing changes in the way books were published - and the ways in which readers bought them and interacted with their authors. Suddenly, authors of serious fiction were like rock stars, fashionable, sexy creatures, shrewdly marketed and feted in public.The yearly bunfight of the Booker Prize became a matter of keen public interest. Tim Waterstone established the first of a chain of revolutionary bookshops. London publishing houses became the playground of exciting, visionary entrepreneurs who introduced new forms of fiction - magical realist, feminist, post-colonial, gay - to modern readers. Independent houses began to spend ostentatious sums on author advances and glamorous book launches. It was nothing short of a watershed in literary culture. And its climax was the issuing of a death sentence by a fundamentalist leader whose hostility to Western ideas of free speech made him, literally, the world's most lethal critic.Through this exciting, hectic period, the journalist and author John Walsh played many parts: literary editor, reviewer, interviewer, prize judge and TV pundit. He met and interviewed numerous literary stars, attended the best launch parties and digested all the gossip and scandal of the time. In Circus of Dreams he reports on what he found, first with wide-eyed delight and then with a keen eye on what drove this glorious era. The result is a unique hybrid of personal memoir, oral history, literary investigation and elegy for a golden age.
Ciro's: Nightclub of the Stars (Images of America)
by Regina Denton-Drew Andra D. ClarkeMany entertainers launched their careers at Ciro's Nightclub, often referred as "The Nightclub of the Stars." Ciro's was patronized by both famous and non-famous guests who enjoyed dancing, dining, and comedy routines featuring top-name entertainers such as Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Sophie Tucker, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Liberace, Nat King Cole, Joe E. Lewis, and Sammy Davis Jr.--just to name a few. The nightclub's house band was led by Dick Stabile, although bandleader Xavier Cugat, best known for popularizing the rumba in the United States, was a regular headliner at the club. The elite Hollywood regulars at Ciro's included some of the most popular names in entertainment at the time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and many more.