The producer behind such celebrated films as The Four Feathers and The Third Man is one of the most colourful and important figures in the history of the British cinema. This gripping biography tells how with extraordinary ambition, enterprise and showmanship, Alexander Korda established in Britain a film industry that rivalled Hollywood, built Europe's biggest studio, and created world-class stars, including Charles Laughton and Vivien Leigh. The biography traces Korda's path from his rural childhood in a remote part of Hungary to a British knighthood. Korda's legacy, it argues, was a film industry that dared to dream on the largest possible scale. But he also exemplified the pattern of boom and bust that dogged the British cinema ever since he first came into the limelight in 1933 with the international success of The Private Life of Henry VIII. To understand his often turbulent career is to gain a profound insight into the nature of the British cinema both then and now.
In the tradition of The Year of Magical Thinking comes a legendary editor’s unflinching love song about his radiant wife, Margaret, and her battle with cancer. It was a warm April in Pleasant Valley when Margaret Korda, normally a fearless horsewoman, dropped her horsewhip while she was riding. Such a mild slip was easy to ignore, but when other troubling symptoms accumulated, she confided to her husband, “Michael, I think something serious is wrong with me.” Within a few rapid weeks, the fiercely independent, former fashion model was diagnosed with brain cancer, while Michael, once reliant on her steeliness, became her caregiver, deciphering bewildering medical reports and packing her beloved toiletries for the hospital. An operation performed by a renowned surgeon allowed Margaret to ride her favorite competition horse Logan go Bragh a few more times, but Margaret’s tumors quickly returned—leaving her to grapple with the reality of impending death. In rapturous prose, Korda, a modern- day Orpheus, braids her heroic story with heartrending details of their final year together. Passing, a tender memoir, is a testament to the transcendent possibilities of love.
"Cuba by Korda is the first publication of the work of the Cuban photographer celebrated for taking the most famous photograph of the 20th century - his iconic portrait of Che Guevara. The photograph - Che gazing into the distance like a prophet - has been reproduced on countless T-shirts and posters around the world." "Originally published in France, this book gives an overview of Korda's extraordinary camerawork, from his first fashion photography to "Don Quixote of the Lamp Post" - a Cuban peasant sitting high above a sea of people during a rally. It includes other striking, sometimes quirky, and lesser-known photographs, such as Fidel Castro warily eyeing a tiger at the Bronx zoo; Che Guevara playing golf; Fidel Castro and Nikita Khruschev throwing snowballs at each other; Hemingway in Cuba; and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in conversation with Che."--BOOK JACKET.
Michael Korda’s Hero is an epic biography of the mysterious,Englishman whose daring exploits made him an object of intense fascination, known the world over as ‘Lawrence of Arabia. An Oxford Scholar and archaeologist, T.E. Lawrence was sent to Cairo as an intelligence officer in 1916 and vanished into the desert in 1917. He united and led the Arab tribes to defeat the Turks and eventually capture Damascus, an adventure he recorded in the classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A born leader, utterly fearless and seemingly impervious to pain and danger, he remained modest, and retiring. Farsighted diplomat, brilliant military strategist, the first media celebrity, and acclaimed writer, Lawrence was a visionary whose achievements transcended his time: had his vision for the modern Middle East been carried through, the hatred and bloodshed that have since plagued the region might have prevented. The democratic reforms he would have implemented as British High Commissioner of Egypt, are those the Egyptians are now demanding, 91 years later. Ultimately, as this magisterial work demonstrates, Lawrence remains the paradigm of the hero in modern times.
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Battle of Britain, which was the British attempt to stop Hitler from taking over Europe, has become a symbol of courage and defiance against a more powerful and warlike enemy. But today, it has lost none of its luster. #2 The Battle of Britain has come in for its share of revisionary history and debunking, though it has not been the subject of the same harsh criticism directed towards British motives and generalship in the American Revolutionary War, the Crimean War, or World War I. #3 The what ifs of history are always difficult to answer, and they usually involve supposing an alternative outcome to a historical event. The speculation about the Battle of Britain is of a different kind. Nobody denies that we won it, but we simply do not know how serious Hitler was about invading Britain. #4 The invasion was a sham, according to many people, including Derek Robinson, the author of Piece of Cake, a BBC series about a fictional fighter squadron in the Battle of Britain. The British were prepared and armed by midsummer to defeat the Germans on the ground.
Nelly Korda won gold in women's individual golf at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Readers will learn how this award-winning pro golfer maintains her skills both on and off the green.
Cuba's greatest photographer captures the spirit of the Cuban Revolution—and of Cuba itself—in unforgettable images and text. Korda’s photographs and breathtaking reminiscences capture some of the 20th-century’s greatest moments with unprecedented intimacy as no other book ever could or will. In the first weeks of 1959, Korda joined the staff of the newly created daily newspaper of Cuba, Revolución. From that moment on, Korda documented the heady early days of revolutionary Cuba. When Fidel Castro visited the United States in April 1959, Korda went with him. When Castro visited the Soviet Union in 1963 and 1964, Korda was there, documenting intimate moments with Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev’s family and appearing to show the end of the breach that had followed their country’s divergent policies during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. But probably Korda’s greatest moment came on March 5, 1960, during a funeral ceremony for the victims of the sabotaged French freighter La Coubre, a ship carrying arms purchased by the Cuban military. Fidel knew the attack to be the work of America’s CIA. And it altered relations between the two countries forever after. Korda was less than a dozen steps from the platform where Fidel Castro was addressing the crowd of mourners. There were foreign observers present, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Che stepped forward to look over the crowd. Korda shot him through his telephoto lens, even though he was near to him. The result would turn into nothing less than one of the most enduring images of our age, though the picture would not see light of day for another year. It was first published on April 15, 1961, just before the Bay of Pigs invasion, and would only become well known when Che’s Italian publisher Gianfranco Feltrinelli printed thousands of posters of the image shortly after Che’s death.
In his remarkable memoir, at once frank, audacious, canny, and revealing, Michael Korda, the author of Charmed Lives and Queenie, does for the world of books what Moss Hart did for the theater in Act One, and succeeds triumphantly in making publishing seem as exciting (and as full of great characters) as the stage. Another Life is not just an adventure--the engaging and often hilarious story of a young man making his career--but the insider's story of how a cottage industry metamorphosed into a big business, with sometimes alarming results for all concerned. Korda writes with grace, humor, and a shrewd eye, not only about himself and his rise from a lowly (but not humble) assistant editor reading the "slush pile" of manuscripts to a famous editor in chief of a major publishing house, but also about the celebrities and writers with whom he worked over four decades. Here are portraits--rare, intimate, always keenly observed--of such larger-than-life figures as Ronald Reagan, affable and good-natured but the most reluctant of authors, struggling with his "ghosted" presidential autobiography; Richard Nixon, seen here as a genial, if bizarrely detached, host; superagent Irving Lazar, pursuing his endless deals and dreams of "class"; retired Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, the last of the old-time dons, laboring over his own version of his life in his desert retreat; Joan Crawford, giving Korda her rules for successful living; and countless other greats, near greats, and would-be greats. Here too are famous writers, sometimes eccentric, sometimes infuriating, sometimes lost souls, captured memorably by someone who was close to them for years: Graham Greene, in pursuit of his FBI file and a Nobel Prize; Tennessee Williams, wrestling unsuccessfully with his demons; Jacqueline Susann, facing and conquering the dreaded "second-novel syndrome" after the stunning success of Valley of the Dolls; Harold Robbins (who had to be guarded under lock and key and made to finish his novels), struggling to keep the IRS at bay from the deck of his yacht; Carlos Castaneda, at his most sorcerously charming, described--at last--in detail, as he really was, by one of the few people who knew him well; not to mention Richard Adams, Will and Ariel Durant, Susan Howatch, S. J. Perelman, Fannie Hurst, Larry McMurtry, and many, many more. Parts of this book that have appeared in The New Yorker over the years have brought Korda great acclaim--the chapter about Jacqueline Susann has been made into a major motion picture. Here at last, entertaining and provocative and always hugely readable, is the whole story--a book as engaging and full of life as Korda's highly acclaimed memoir of his family, Charmed Lives, about which Irwin Shaw wrote: "I don't know when I have enjoyed a book more."
New York Times Bestseller "Lively, approachable, and captivating. Like Lee himself, everything about Clouds of Glory is on a grand scale." —Boston Globe Michael Korda, the acclaimed biographer of Ulysses S. Grant and the bestsellers Ike and Hero, offers a brilliant, balanced, single-volume biography of Robert E. Lee, the first major study in a generation Korda paints a vivid and admiring portrait of Lee as a general and a devoted family man who, though he disliked slavery and was not in favor of secession, turned down command of the Union army in 1861 because he could not "draw his sword" against his own children, his neighbors, and his beloved Virginia. He was surely America's preeminent military leader, as calm, dignified, and commanding a presence in defeat as he was in victory. Lee's reputation has only grown in the 150 years since the Civil War, and Korda covers in groundbreaking detail all of Lee's battles and traces the making of a great man's undeniable reputation on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, positioning him finally as the symbolic martyr-hero of the Southern Cause. Clouds of Glory features dozens of stunning illustrations, some never before seen, including eight pages of color images, sixteen pages of black-and-white images, and nearly fifty battle maps.
