As the daughter of George and Ira Gershwin's sister, Frances, and Leopold Godowsky Jr., son of the well-known pianist, composer and teacher, Nadia Natali grew up in a privileged environment. Stairway to paradise is the memoir of her personal journey to find her own true purpose in life, leaving New York and traveling to a wild and wonderful piece of land in the coastal mountains of Southern California. Here she and her husband Enrico Natali, a Zen practitioner and photographer, raised a family and experienced unimaginable adventures, from the tragedy of losing their son to abundant and varying opportunities for personal growth, far away from the lifestyle in which she was raised.
Alex and Andrew are friends. And Barbara...Barbara is a goddess. Here is the eternal triangle, the story of three people in an unhappy tangle of emotions, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. Are any of them truly interested in reaching the ‘paradise’ they claim to be seeking, or are they actually trying to avoid it? In St. John’s hands, what is commonplace is transformed and transcendent. This is the work of an extraordinary writer.
Stairway to Paradise reveals how American Jewish entrepreneurs, musicians, and performers influenced American popular music from the late nineteenth century till the mid-1960s. From blackface minstrelsy, ragtime, blues, jazz, and Broadway musicals, ending with folk and rock 'n' roll. The book follows the writers and artists' real and imaginative relationship with African-American culture's charisma. Stairway to Paradise discusses the artistic and occasionally ideological dialogue that these artists, writers, and entrepreneurs had with African-American artists and culture. Tracing Jewish immigration to the United States and the entry of Jews into the entertainment and cultural industry, the book allocates extensive space to the charged connection between music and politics as reflected in the Jewish-Black Alliance - both in the struggle for social justice and in the music field. It reveals Jewish success in the music industry and the unique and sometimes problematic relationships that characterized this process, as their dominance in this field became a source of blame for exploiting African-American artistic and human capital. Alongside this, the book shows how black-Jewish cooperation, and its fragile alliance, played a role in the hegemonic conflicts involving American culture during the 20th century. Unintentionally, it influenced the process of decline of the influence of the WASP elite during the 1960s. Stairway to Paradise fuses American history and musicology with cultural studies theories. This inter-disciplinary approach regarding race, class, and ethnicity offers an alternative view of more traditional notions regarding understanding American music's evolution.
Alex and Andrew are friends. And Barbara...Barbara is a goddess. Here is the eternal triangle, the story of three people in an unhappy tangle of emotions, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. Are any of them truly interested in reaching the ‘paradise’ they claim to be seeking, or are they actually trying to avoid it? In St. John’s hands, what is commonplace is transformed and transcendent. This is the work of an extraordinary writer. MADELEINE ST JOHN was born in Sydney in 1941. Her father, Edward, was a barrister and Liberal politician. Her mother, Sylvette, committed suicide in 1954, when Madeleine was twelve. Her death, she later said, ‘obviously changed everything’. St John studied Arts at Sydney University, where her contemporaries included Bruce Beresford, Germaine Greer, Clive James and Robert Hughes. In 1965 she married Chris Tillam, a fellow student, and they moved to the United States where they first attended Stanford and later Cambridge. From Cambridge, St John relocated to London in 1968 with the hope that Chris would follow. The couple did not reunite and the marriage ended. St John settled in Notting Hill. She worked at a series of odd jobs, and then, in 1993, published her first novel, The Women in Black, the only book she set in Australia. When her third novel, The Essence of the Thing (1997), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, she became the first Australian woman to receive this honour. St John died in 2006. She had been so incensed after seeing errors in a French edition of one of her novels that she stipulated in her will that there were to be no more translations of her work. ‘Not much in the way of folly escapes Madeleine St John, and the oubliette she opens into the darker reaches of the spirit is unsettling.’ The Times ‘St John proves herself a comic, humane observer.’ Newsday ‘Madeleine St John is brilliant on the elliptical way lovers talk to each other.’ Daily Telegraph
Since earliest times, humanity has pondered the incomprehensible mysteries of the universe, life...and the afterlife. In The Stairway to Heaven, the second book of Zecharia Sitchin's Earth Chronicles series, the author answers these fundamental questions: Was there somewhere on Earth where, after death, mortal man could join the immortal Gods? Where was this place? By whom was it established? And does it still exist today? After years of painstaking research--combining recent archaeological discoveries with ancient texts and artifacts--Sitchin has identified the legendary Land of the Gods, and provided astounding new revelations about the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, and other mysterious monuments whose true meanings and purposes have been lost for eons. The Earth Chronicles deal with the history and prehistory of Earth and humankind. Each book in the series is based upon information written on clay tablets by the ancient civilizations of the Near East. For the first time, the entire Earth Chronicles series is now available in a hardcover collector's edition.
THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN describes nine clearly defined stages of consciousness, which explain the development of each person starting from dreamlike unawareness to full enlightenment. This groundbreaking book combines Tibetan Buddhist teachings with insights from transpersonal psychotherapy to offer a full understanding of people's psychological, mental and spiritual development. You will learn: To recognise nine clearly defined stages of consciousness in yourself and everybody else, how people's sense of self, their world view, their values and all their behaviours radically change at each stage of their development, what kind of help people need depending on their stage of consciousness, how to speed up your own development in every area of your life by applying the principles of the STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN. Tara Springett M.A. is a qualified Buddhist teacher since 1997; a qualified psychotherapist since 1990 and a successful self-help book author. Tara has been helping clients from all over the world to find love, success and happiness by applying the nine stages of consciousness of the STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN. www.taraspringett.com
Nicola should never have stepped out to buy that pack of cigarettes because the man she discovers in her living room when she returns is not the adorable, straightforward, devoted Jonathan with whom she has been sharing her life and flat for the past six years. That Jonathan would never have simply, unilaterally, decided that she should, as he abruptly put it, 'move out.' So a shocked, grief-stricken Nicola packs her bags and sets out bravely on the bumpy course that will take her fro the hellish end of an affair to the essence of the thing. With her comic timing and tender vision the brilliant Madeleine St John, author of The Women in Black, takes us into the changing nature of the human heart.
Offers twenty-one easy-to-play melodies for the piano including George Gershwin's "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" by Irving Berlin.
