- Table View
- List View
El vendedor de silencio
by Enrique Serna«No pedía mucho, carajo, sólo que lo dejaran prostituirse a su modo.» A mediados del siglo XX, Carlos Denegri era el líder de opinión más influyente de México. Reportero estrella del diario Excélsior, tenía una red de contactos internacionales envidiada por todos los periodistas. Mimado por el poder, como columnista político sobresalió por su falta de escrúpulos, al grado de que Julio Scherer lo llamó "el mejor y el más vil de los reporteros". Industrializó el "chayote" cuando esa palabra todavía no se usaba en la jerga política. En su Fichero Político, donde fungía como vocero extraoficial de la Presidencia y cobraba todas las menciones, podía difamar a cualquiera con impunidad absoluta. Según Carlos Monsiváis, un coscorrón en esa columna representaba "una temporada en el infierno" para cualquier aspirante a un cargo público. Aunque ganaba millones por publicar alabanzas, se hizo más rico aúnpor medio de la extorsión, callándose lo que sabía de sus poderosos clientes. La personalidad pública de Carlos Denegri es indisociable de las atroces vejaciones misóginas que cometió en su vida privada. Era tan prepotente y déspota en el trato con las mujeres como en el periodismo, de modo que su patología fue a la vez íntima y social. Radiografía del machismo a la mexicana y epitafio de la dictadura perfecta, esta novela es un estudio de carácter incisivo y mordaz, sustentado en un arduo trabajo de investigación, que por momentos linda con la farsa trágica. Enrique Serna vuelve a una de sus vetas narrativas predilectas, la reconstrucción del pasado, para entregarnos un fresco histórico apasionante. La crítica ha dicho: «El arte de Serna consiste en una serie de procedimientos encaminados a hacernos más persuasiva la ilusión realista -esa que sólo puede darse en la mejor literatura-, a comunicar al lector la sensación de estar directamente enfrentado con la vida.» Ignacio Solares «En sus novelas y cuentos descubrimos un arte consumado de la sorpresa, una ferocidad no exenta de gracia y un sentido del sarcasmo que nunca se rebaja a la mera caricatura.» Claude Fell «Quien se acerca a las narraciones de Enrique Serna ríe mucho durante la lectura y al llegar al punto final un ligero malestar lo hace quedarse un tiempo pensativo, como si se reconociera de pronto en el patetismo de los personajes.» Eduardo Antonio Parra «Reconozco en Serna el entendimiento profundo, casi quisquilloso, que consiste en poner el archivo al servicio de la ficción y no ejercer ni de amanuense erudito ni de mero coleccionista de avisos y extravagancias.» Christopher Domínguez
El vendedor de silencio
by Enrique Serna«No pedía mucho, carajo, sólo que lo dejaran prostituirse a su modo.» Novela ganadora del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 2019. "El asunto histórico corresponde a tiempos próximos al nuestro, transformados en su novela en materia literaria gracias al brío de su discurso narrativo, la verosimilitud de personajes y situaciones, la velocidad de su prosa y su empeño en no dejar nada al azar, en atar todos los cabos. Serna obliga al lector a acompañarlo en cada una de sus acciones y a vivirlas con él." El jurado del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia. A mediados del siglo XX, Carlos Denegri era el líder de opinión más influyente de México. Reportero estrella del diario Excélsior, tenía una red de contactos internacionales envidiada por todos los periodistas. Mimado por el poder, como columnista político sobresalió por su falta de escrúpulos, al grado de que Julio Scherer lo llamó "el mejor y el más vil de los reporteros". Industrializó el "chayote" cuando esa palabra todavía no se usaba en la jerga política. En su Fichero Político, donde fungía como vocero extraoficial de la Presidencia y cobraba todas las menciones, podía difamar a cualquiera con impunidad absoluta. Según Carlos Monsiváis, un coscorrón en esa columna representaba "una temporada en el infierno" para cualquier aspirante a un cargo público. Aunque ganaba millones por publicar alabanzas, se hizo más rico aún por medio de la extorsión, callándose lo que sabía de sus poderosos clientes. La personalidad pública de Carlos Denegri es indisociable de las atroces vejaciones misóginas que cometió en su vida privada. Era tan prepotente y déspota en el trato con las mujeres como en el periodismo, de modo que su patología fue a la vez íntima y social. Radiografía del machismo a la mexicana y epitafio de la dictadura perfecta, esta novela es un estudio de carácter incisivo y mordaz, sustentado en un arduo trabajo de investigación, que por momentos linda con la farsa trágica. Enrique Serna vuelve a una de sus vetas narrativas predilectas, la reconstrucción del pasado, para entregarnos un fresco histórico apasionante. La crítica ha dicho: «Es una importante aportación a la historia y la literatura contemporáneas de México, salida de la pluma -o la laptop- de un autor caracterizado por su implacable ironía y su valiente voluntad estilística, virtudes que lo convierten en uno de los narradores imprescindibles de nuestro tiempo.» El jurado del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 2019 «El arte de Serna consiste en una serie de procedimientos encaminados a hacernos más persuasiva la ilusión realista -esa que sólo puede darse en la mejor literatura-, a comunicar al lector la sensación de estar directamente enfrentado con la vida.» Ignacio Solares «En sus novelas y cuentos descubrimos un arte consumado de la sorpresa, una ferocidad no exenta de gracia y un sentido del sarcasmo que nunca se rebaja a la mera caricatura.» Claude Fell «Quien se acerca a las narraciones de Enrique Serna ríe mucho durante la lectura y al llegar al punto final un ligero malestar lo hace quedarse un tiempo pensativo, como si se reconociera de pronto en el patetismo de los personajes.» Eduardo Antonio Parra «Reconozco en Serna el entendimiento profundo, casi quisquilloso, que consiste en poner el archivo al servicio de la ficción y no ejercer ni de amanuense erudito ni de mero coleccionista de avisos y extravagancias.» Christopher Domínguez
Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa
by James NeffOne of America's greatest investigative reporters brings to life the gripping, no-holds-barred clash of two American titans: Robert Kennedy and his nemesis Jimmy Hoffa.From 1957 to 1964, Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa channeled nearly all of their considerable powers into destroying each other. Kennedy's battle with Hoffa burst into the public consciousness with the 1957 Senate Rackets Committee hearings and intensified when his brother named him attorney general in 1961. RFK put together a "Get Hoffa" squad within the Justice Department, devoted to destroying one man. But Hoffa, with nearly unlimited Teamster funds, was not about to roll over. Drawing upon a treasure trove of previously secret and undisclosed documents, James Neff has crafted a brilliant, heart-pounding epic of crime and punishment, a saga of venom and relentlessness and two men willing to do anything to demolish each other.
The Vendetta: Special Agent Melvin Purvis, John Dillinger, and Hoover's FBI in the Age of Gangsters
by Alston PurvisIn "The Vendetta," author Alston Purvis recounts the story of his father, Melvin Purvis, the iconic G-man and public hero made famous by his remarkable sweep of the great Public Enemies of the American DepressionOCoJohn Dillinger; Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson. PurvisOCOs successes led FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover to grow increasingly jealous, to the point where he vowed to bring down Purvis. Hoover smeared PurvisOCOs reputation, and tried to erase his name from all records of the FBI's greatest triumphs. This book sets the record straight, and provides a grippingly authentic new telling of the gangster era, seen from the perspective of the pursuers. "
Veneno
by Roberto BrodskyAlberto Shapiro es escritor de un solo libro y vive de dar charlas en los Estados Unidos. Gruesamente, su tema es Chile y su pasado reciente. Hasta un buen día en que es invitado a dar una conferencia sobre la diáspora en su propio país de origen. Corre el año 2009, en Santiago, y el regreso a la patria es también la vuelta a las rencillas y los personajes que marcaron su salida tres años atrás: Frank ?el obsesivo editor y compañero de ruta?, Roberto Bolaño ?un amigo de la realidad y la literatura?, Fer ?el hijo de su primer matrimonio?, y la propia memoria que se abre como una tumba al tenor de los recuerdos y la escritura. Novela de la crisis terminal donde todo es calmo y sereno, el retorno de Alberto a Santiago es un viaje de ida y vuelta por las violencias, traiciones y abandonos que buscan un ajuste de cuentas en su tránsito por la ciudad.
Venetain Years, Volume 1e: Milan and Mantua
by Jacques CasanovaVenetian Years, book 1e, "Milan and Mantua"
A Venetian Affair
by Andrea Di RobilantIn the waning days of Venice’s glory in the mid-1700s, Andrea Memmo was scion to one the city’s oldest patrician families. At the age of twenty-four he fell passionately in love with sixteen-year-old Giustiniana Wynne, the beautiful, illegitimate daughter of a Venetian mother and British father. Because of their dramatically different positions in society, they could not marry. And Giustiniana’s mother, afraid that an affair would ruin her daughter’s chances to form a more suitable union, forbade them to see each other. Her prohibition only fueled their desire and so began their torrid, secret seven-year-affair, enlisting the aid of a few intimates and servants (willing to risk their own positions) to shuttle love letters back and forth and to help facilitate their clandestine meetings. Eventually, Giustiniana found herself pregnant and she turned for help to the infamous Casanova–himself infatuated with her. Two and half centuries later, the unbelievable story of this star-crossed couple is told in a breathtaking narrative, re-created in part from the passionate, clandestine letters Andrea and Giustiniana wrote to each other.
Venetian Dreaming
by Paula WeidegerWho hasn't longed to escape to the enchanting canals and mysterious alleywaysof Venice? Globetrotting writer Paula Weideger not only dreamed the dream, she took the leap. In Venetian Dreaming, she charts the course of her love affair with one of the world's most treasured cities. Weideger's search for a place to live eventually takes her to the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, one of the rare Venetian palaces continuously inhabited by the family that built it. She weaves the past lives of the family Donà with her own adventures as she threads her way through the labyrinthine city. Art and architecture are a constant presence. Yet even more strongly felt is the passage of time, the panorama of the seasons as reflected in special events -- Carnival, the Film Festival, September's historic regatta, midnight mass at San Marco. We follow Weideger as she explores the Ghetto, the expatriate community, and the lives of locals from noblemen to boatmen. Along the way she encounters everyone from the ghost of Peggy Guggenheim to the Merchant Ivory crowd, and experiences some high drama with the Contessa, her landlady. The resulting memoir is a wry and illuminating, intelligent and tender account of the once grand heritage and now imperiled future of Venice.
Venetian Dreaming
by Paula WeidegerWho hasn't longed to escape to the enchanting canals and mysterious alleywaysof Venice? Globetrotting writer Paula Weideger not only dreamed the dream, she took the leap. In Venetian Dreaming, she charts the course of her love affair with one of the world's most treasured cities. Weideger's search for a place to live eventually takes her to the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, one of the rare Venetian palaces continuously inhabited by the family that built it. She weaves the past lives of the family Donà with her own adventures as she threads her way through the labyrinthine city. Art and architecture are a constant presence. Yet even more strongly felt is the passage of time, the panorama of the seasons as reflected in special events -- Carnival, the Film Festival, September's historic regatta, midnight mass at San Marco. We follow Weideger as she explores the Ghetto, the expatriate community, and the lives of locals from noblemen to boatmen. Along the way she encounters everyone from the ghost of Peggy Guggenheim to the Merchant Ivory crowd, and experiences some high drama with the Contessa, her landlady. The resulting memoir is a wry and illuminating, intelligent and tender account of the once grand heritage and now imperiled future of Venice.
Venetian Years, Volume 1c: Military Career
by Jacques CasanovaThis book is the number 1c of "Venetian Years" by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
Venices
by Paul Morand Euan Cameron"It is after experiencing life that I have returned here to think about myself." Paul Morand was a diplomat, traveller, socialite and one of the most erudite and original writers of the twentieth century. Venices is his typically unconventional autobiography: an evocative account of a remarkable life lived surrounded by the remarkable. Its poised, impressionistic, poetically vivid scenes add up year-by- year to a rich meditation, full of astonish- ing portraits and memories, joy as well as melancholy. Though Morand's reputation was mar- red for years by his involvement with the collaborationist Vichy government, this book, in its effortless elegance, demonstrates why his influence has been so great. The thread that holds it taut throughout is Venice, the city to which Morand always returned.
Venom Doc: The Edgiest, Darkest, Strangest Natural History Memoir Ever
by Bryan Grieg FrySteve Irwin meets David Attenborough in this jaw-dropping account of studying the world’s most venomous creatures. Venomologist Bryan Grieg Fry has one of the most dangerous jobs on Earth: he works with its deadliest creatures. He’s been bitten by twenty-six venomous snakes, been stung by three stingrays, and survived a near-fatal scorpion sting while deep in the Amazon jungle. He’s received more than four hundred stitches and broken twenty-three bones, including breaking his back in three places, and had to learn how to walk again. But when you research only the venom you yourself have collected, the adventures—and danger—never stop. Bryan’s discoveries have radically reshaped views on venom evolution and contributed to the creation of venom-based life-saving medications. In pursuit of venom, he has traveled the world collecting samples from Indonesia to Mexico, Germany, and Brazil. He’s encountered venomous creatures of all kinds, including the Malaysian king cobra, the Komodo dragon, and the brush-footed trapdoor spider. Bryan recounts his lifelong passion for studying the world’s most venomous creatures in this outlandish, captivating memoir, where he and danger are never far apart.
Ventas de alta confiabilidad: Requisito esencial para las ventas
by Todd DuncanEste libro te dará un nuevo concepto de las "leyes" que gobiernan la profesión de las ventas. La primera sección incluye las leyes que tratan con las actitudes, las aptitudes, y las capacidades requeridas para que un vendedor tenga éxito. La segunda sección se enfoca en las leyes de la comunicación, el noviazgo, el compañerismo y los compromisos entre un vendedor éxitoso y sus clientes. Cada ley proporciona una descripción junto con una aplicación práctica. Si usted se encuentra en el área de las ventas usted sabe que ser un triunfador es más que una sonrisa, un Rolodex y una actitud de «todo lo puedo». Este libro le proveerá con esa «herramienta» que necesita para llegar a la cima y mantenerse allí.
A Venture In Faith: Texas to Alaska, A Road Trip to Recovery
by Carol Weishampel, Ed.D.Stalked by her abusive ex-husband and in fear for her life, Leah Gray plans an escape. Leah's faith in God and in humanity shattered, when she is forced out of her comfort zone, she secretly purchases a used motor home as a mobile hide-out and prepares to pursue a search for a meaningful life. Intrigued by her father's stories of building the Alaska Highway, Leah determines to flee into the Alaska wilderness. On her road trip from Texas to Alaska she encounters empowering women who encourage her on her road to self discovery. Leah's fear of men intensifies when she is forced to trust Barret, an Alaskan mountain man. Can Leah stop running and find healing and love, and return to her faith in God?
Venture into the Stratosphere: Flying the First Jetliners
by Dominic ColvertA fascinating, one-of-a-kind memoir that takes readers on a journey to the dawn of the jet age—and reveals how technology will shape the world to come. Drawing on engineering breakthroughs achieved during World War II, aviation in the 1950s was an exciting and uplifting sequel to the most destructive conflict in history. It gave birth to the jet age and fostered remarkable social changes. Venture into the Stratosphere is a memoir about the exhilaration and challenges of flying the first jetliners—the de Havilland Comets. Former Irish Air Corpsman and aviation engineer Dominic Colvert explains technical matters in layman&’s terms, tells a fascinating love story, examines the post-war ethos, and reveals intimate details of the flight deck in both routine and emergency situations. By opening a window onto cultural developments after the turn of the century, Colvert offers key insights into how new technologies shape behavior and values. Passenger jets have become a routine part of life for most people, but have you ever wondered—how did we get here? Read Venture into the Stratosphere to find out!
Venus and Aphrodite: A Biography of Desire
by Bettany HughesA cultural history of the goddess of love, from a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian.Aphrodite was said to have been born from the sea, rising out of a froth of white foam. But long before the Ancient Greeks conceived of this voluptuous blonde, she existed as an early spirit of fertility on the shores of Cyprus -- and thousands of years before that, as a ferocious warrior-goddess in the Middle East. Proving that this fabled figure is so much more than an avatar of commercialized romance, historian Bettany Hughes reveals the remarkable lifestory of one of antiquity's most potent myths.Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today -- and how we trivialize her power at our peril.
Venus and Serena Williams
by June SwansonIntroduces the life and accomplishments of the famous tennis-playing sisters.
Venus Envy: Power Games, Teenage Vixens, and Million-Dollar Egos on the Women's Tennis Tour
by L. Jon WertheimA behind-the-scenes look at the hugely popular and often controversial world of women's tennis featuring such household names as Venus and Serena Williams and Anna Kournikova. At a time when attendance and TV ratings for women's tennis are at an all-time high, Sports Illustrated writer L.Jon Wertheim, draws on his investigative talents and knowledge of the game to infiltrate the heretofore closed locker rooms of the women's tour and chronicle this remarkable era in the sport's history. With a narrative sweep that rockets along like a Venus Williams serve, it takes the reader from the year's first Grand Slam tournament--where a top player ignited a firestorm of controversy when she decided to come out-- to Venus' epochal victory at Wimbledon to the U.S. Open where Serena Williams defends her title and all the whistle-stop tournaments in between where the Russian vixen Anna Kournikova sent hormonally challenged teenagers, not to mention male sportswriters, into a frenzy, Venus Envy offers the reader the equivalent of a center-court seat and an all-access locker room pass. The book will contain a wealth of previously unreported, inside-the-locker room anecdotes about the marquee names in women's tennis and should engender much off-the-book-page coverage. There are more identifiable stars than ever before and the rivalries are intense and often rancorous. The book will even appeal to those readers with only a passing interest in tennis since many of the players have transcended the sport, appearing on the covers of magazine like GQ, Rolling Stone and Vogue.
Vera and the Ambassador: Escape and Return
by Vera Blinken Donald BlinkenVera and the Ambassador is a book to be savored and enjoyed on many levels. Both a behind-the-scenes peek at the operations of a U.S. embassy in a post–Cold War former Soviet satellite and a personal story of a refugee's escape and triumphant return, Vera and Donald Blinken's dual memoir openly details their challenges, setbacks, and victories as they worked in tandem to advance America's interests in Eastern Europe and to restore a former Soviet satellite state to a pre-communist level of prosperity.Hungary in all its cultural glory and historical anguish lies at the heart of this dramatic and deeply personal story. Born in Budapest just prior to World War II, Vera was only five years old when the Germans invaded in 1944. In a harrowing account, she describes how she and her mother managed to survive the atrocities of the war and, in 1950, narrowly escape Soviet-occupied Hungary for the freedom and opportunity of America. Making their way to New York, Vera settled into her adopted country with an indomitable spirit, a vow to become the best American she could be, and a hope of finding some way to give back as a show of gratitude for her good fortune in surviving the destruction of the war.That opportunity came in 1994 when her husband was appointed ambassador to Hungary by President Clinton, just five years into the country's tentative transformation from a command economy and totalitarian government into a market economy and fledgling republic based upon democratic ideals. A former investment banker, Donald might have lacked foreign service experience, but his skills as an administrator and his willingness to try innovative ideas, combined with Vera's knowledge of Hungarian language and culture and her outreach to the Hungarian community, helped them deal head-on with a variety of challenges, including a collapsing economy and the threat of a slide back toward the old ways of communism, and a brutal civil war that raged across the country's southern border in the former Yugoslavia.Replete with colorful characters from the streets of Budapest, humorous scenes at the ambassadorial residence, and accounts of tense high-level diplomatic negotiations in the run-up to Hungary's vote to join NATO, Vera and the Ambassador shows how the Blinkens helped chart a new course for American diplomacy in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, it is also the story of how Hungarians came to see them personally, and memorably, as their Vera and their ambassador.
Vera Brittain: A Life
by Mark Bostridge Paul BerryVera Brittain is most widely known as the woman who immortalized a lost generation in her haunting autobiography of the Great War, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH.Writer, pacifist and feminist, she condemned her provincial background but remained acutely conscious of the conventional elements in her own character; she revealed a richly emotional life in her writing but was outwardly sober and reserved; she possessed a fierce desire for fame and recognition but was ready to sacrifice both on matters of principle.This biography - comprehensive, authoritative and immensely readable - confirms Vera Brittain's stature as one of the most remarkable women of our time.
Vera Brittain: A Life
by Mark Bostridge Paul BerryVera Brittain is most widely known as the woman who immortalized a lost generation in her haunting autobiography of the Great War, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH.Writer, pacifist and feminist, she condemned her provincial background but remained acutely conscious of the conventional elements in her own character; she revealed a richly emotional life in her writing but was outwardly sober and reserved; she possessed a fierce desire for fame and recognition but was ready to sacrifice both on matters of principle.This biography - comprehensive, authoritative and immensely readable - confirms Vera Brittain's stature as one of the most remarkable women of our time.
Vera Gran: The Accused
by Agata TuszyñskaThe extraordinary, controversial story of Vera Gran, beautiful, exotic prewar Polish singing star; legendary, sensual contralto, Dietrich-like in tone, favorite of the 1930s Warsaw nightclubs, celebrated before, and during, her year in the Warsaw Ghetto (spring 1941-summer 1942) . . . and her piano accompanist: W³adys³aw Szpilman, made famous by Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film The Pianist, based on Szpilman's memoir.Following the war, singer and accompanist, each of whom had lived the same harrowing story, were met with opposing fates: Szpilman was celebrated for his uncanny ability to survive against impossible odds, escaping from a Nazi transport loading site, smuggling in weapons to the Warsaw Ghetto for the Jewish resistance. Gran was accused of collaborating with the Nazis; denounced as a traitor, a "Gestapo whore," reviled, imprisoned, ultimately exonerated yet afterward still shunned as a performer . . . in effect, sentenced to death without dying . . . until she was found by Agata Tuszyñska, acclaimed poet and biographer of, among others, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel laureate ("Her book has few equals"--The Times Literary Supplement).Tuszyñska, who won the trust of the once-glamorous former singer, then living in a basement in Paris--elderly, bitter, shut away from the world--encouraged Gran to tell her story, including her seemingly inexplicable decision to return to Warsaw to be reunited with her family after she had fled Hitler's invading army, knowing she would have to live within the ghetto walls and, to survive, continue to perform at the popular Café Sztuka.At the heart of the book, Gran's complex, fraught relationship with her accompanist, performing together month after month, for the many who came from within the ghetto and outside its walls to hear her sing.Using Vera Gran's reflections and memories, as well as archives, letters, statements, and interviews with Warsaw Ghetto historians and survivors, Agata Tuszyñska has written an explosive, resonant portrait of lives lived inside a nightmare time, exploring the larger, more profound question of the nature of collaboration, of the price of survival, and of the long, treacherous shadow cast in its aftermath.
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage
by Stacy SchiffWinner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all. "Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.
Vera Rubin: A Life
by Jacqueline Mitton Simon MittonThe first biography of a pioneering scientist who made significant contributions to our understanding of dark matter and championed the advancement of women in science. One of the great lingering mysteries of the universe is dark matter. Scientists are not sure what it is, but most believe it’s out there, and in abundance. The astronomer who finally convinced many of them was Vera Rubin. When Rubin died in 2016, she was regarded as one of the most influential astronomers of her era. Her research on the rotation of spiral galaxies was groundbreaking, and her observations contributed significantly to the confirmation of dark matter, a most notable achievement. In Vera Rubin: A Life, prolific science writers Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton provide a detailed, accessible overview of Rubin’s work, showing how she leveraged immense curiosity, profound intelligence, and novel technologies to help transform our understanding of the cosmos. But Rubin’s impact was not limited to her contributions to scientific knowledge. She also helped to transform scientific practice by promoting the careers of women researchers. Not content to be an inspiration, Rubin was a mentor and a champion. She advocated for hiring women faculty, inviting women speakers to major conferences, and honoring women with awards that were historically the exclusive province of men. Rubin’s papers and correspondence yield vivid insights into her life and work, as she faced down gender discrimination and met the demands of family and research throughout a long and influential career. Deftly written, with both scientific experts and general readers in mind, Vera Rubin is a portrait of a woman with insatiable curiosity about the universe who never stopped asking questions and encouraging other women to do the same.
Verás el cielo abierto
by Manuel VicentEl rumor de los recuerdos, los perfumes del fondo de la memoria, la música que nos transporta a una estancia íntima... un relato sentimental en el que Vicent reconstruye una habitación confortable aprovechando los materiales de su propio derribo. «Me gustaría que se leyera este libro como se entra en una habitación íntima, en una tarde de lluvia, y uno se pone cómodo, se sirve un té o una copa y se siente a gusto sin necesidad de ir a otra parte. Esta habitación unas veces será luminosa con la ventana abierta por donde llegan los perfumes desde el fondo de la memoria; otras, podrá ser cálida y confortable, y bastará con observar el pavimento de madera, los cuadros, los muebles, las fotos amarillas que se guardan en el álbum, mientras suena una música de jazz. Si el lector, al terminar el libro, cree que ha pasado la tarde en el mejor lugar de la propia casa que le duele abandonar, podré imaginar que he escrito lo que quería. Vendería el alma al diablo antes que refugiarme en la nostalgia. Éste sólo es un espejo interior donde se refleja el tiempo vivido.»Manuel Vicent