With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.
This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel follows two American academics in London—a young man and a middle-aged woman—as they each fall into unexpected romances. In her early fifties, Vinnie Miner is the sort of woman no one ever notices, despite her career as an Ivy League professor. She doubts she could get a man’s attention if she waved a brightly colored object in front of him. And though she loves her work, her specialty—children’s folk rhymes—earns little respect from her fellow scholars. Then, alone on a flight to London for a research trip, she sits next to a man she would never have viewed as a potential romantic partner. In a Western-cut suit and a rawhide tie, he is a sanitary engineer from Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a group tour. He’s the very opposite of her type, but before Vinnie knows it, she’s spending more and more time with him. Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague, a young, handsome English professor whose marriage and self-esteem are both on the rocks. But Fred Turner is also about to find consolation—in the arms of the most beautiful actress in England. Stylish and highborn, she introduces Fred to a glamorous, yet eccentric, London scene that he never expected to encounter. The course of these two relationships makes up the story of Foreign Affairs—a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an entertaining, poignant tale from the author of The War Between the Tates and The Last Resort, “one of this country’s most able and witty novelists” (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
Can passion bridge ten thousand miles? Television presenter Zoya Das is reeling from a painful breakup. When she's called to solve a problem at a rental flat she owns, sparks fly between her and French guest Camille Rousseau. A short holiday fling before Camille flies back to Paris could be just the thing to help Zoya's recovery from heartbreak. But what happens when Zoya and Camille develop deeper feelings for each other and are faced with the prospect of being in love on opposite sides of the world? Don't miss this world-spanning instalment of best-selling lesbian romance author Harper Bliss' much-loved Pink Bean series. Every book in this series can be read as a stand-alone without having read the other instalments. A 2018 GCLS ‘GOLDIES’ FINALIST! ★★★★★ "A magnificent romance novel!" THE PINK BEAN SERIES: 1. No Strings Attached 2. Beneath the Surface 3. Everything Between Us 4. This Foreign Affair 5. Water Under Bridges 6. No Other Love 7. Love Without Limits 8. Crazy For You 9. More Than Words
Publicly, Bella Hudson had the world at her feet. But privately, her life was in turmoil: a humiliating breakup, paparazzi at her heels.… The Hollywood starlet needed to escape. Then she found a night of pleasure—media-free—in hotel magnate Sam Garrison's bed. Only Sam wanted more. As her escort to her new film's premiere, he'd buffer her from the press. In exchange, she'd continue their passionate affair. For although he wouldn't admit he'd fallen for Bella, he wasn't done with her. Not by a long shot.
In A Not So Foreign Affair Andrea Slane investigates the influence of images of Nazism on debates about sexuality that are central to contemporary American political rhetoric. By analyzing an array of films, journalism, scholarly theories, melodrama, video, and propaganda literature, Slane describes a common rhetoric that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s as a means of distinguishing “democratic sexuality” from that ascribed to Nazi Germany. World War II marked a turning point in the cultural rhetoric of democracy, Slane claims, because it intensified a preoccupation with the political role of private life and pushed sexuality to the center of democratic discourse. Having created tremendous anxiety—and fascination—in American culture, Nazism became associated with promiscuity, sexual perversionand the destruction of the family. Slane reveals how this particular imprint of fascism is used in progressive as well as conservative imagery and language to further their domestic agendas and shows how our cultural engagement with Nazism reflects the inherent tension in democracy between the value of diversity, individual freedoms national identity, and notions of the common good. Finally, she applies her analysis of wartime narratives to contemporary texts, examining anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-federal rhetoric, as well as the psychic life of skinheads, censorship debates, and the contemporary fascination with incest. An invaluable resource for understanding the language we use—both visual and narrative—to describe and debate democracy in the United States today, A Not So Foreign Affair will appeal to those interested in cultural studies, film and video studies, American studies, twentieth century history, German studies, rhetoric, and sexuality studies.
With six Academy Awards, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This work projects Wilder as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture.
Ministries of foreign affairs are prominent institutions of state diplomacy. They remain the operators of key practices associated with diplomacy: communication, representation and negotiation. This book fills a gap by approaching ministries of foreign affairs in a comparative and comprehensive way.
Helena Devereux is a shy, intelligent young woman, very different from her mother, the widowed Princess von Hohenbachern, who is the life of the parties surrounding the Congress of Vienna. And yet, both women notice dashing Major Brett Stanford. In the line of duty he plans a flirtation with the princess—until he discovers that his interest is held by Helena. Regency Romance by Evelyn Richardson; originally published by Signet
Paperback. Reprint. Originally published in Australia and New Zealand, imprint: Bantam, by Random House Australia in 2004. 'Walking along the drab, grey streets past bomb craters and piles of rubble, I daydreamed about a more romantic world where people spoke exotic languages, played music, sang and danced with passion.' Trapped in the austerity of post-war London, 20-year-old Valerie Barnes yearned for the good times promised by the wartime songs. Then two chance meetings catapulted her into a high-flying career at the newly formed United Nations in Geneva and the arms of a glamorous Frenchman... Joining an elite breed of independent women who travelled the world in the 1950s and 1960s, Valerie lived a jet-setting life as one of the first simultaneous interpreters, working in exotic locales and rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and presidents. In those days, United Nations was new and its staff were convinced that if they got everything right there would be no more war. There were no precedents, no protocols in place - everything had to made up as they went along. Valerie worked long hours, sometimes starting at 9 a.m. and not finishing work until 3 o'clock the following morning but it was in the interest of getting agreement on a resolution so it was worth the effort. At the same time she was juggling a Swiss chalet home, three children and an unfaithful husband. But whatever Valerie did, she threw herself into it with zest. From dancing the flamenco to being kidnapped in Cairo, wooed by an African President who wanted her to become his fourteenth wife or falling for a passionate Slav, Valerie's gift for storytelling makes this book a lively, funny, utterly delightful memoir. Her marriage started with a wedding in Geneva on a cold, dismal, rainy morning, the French family, in muddy, damp clothes trying to pull their coat collars up and their hats down to hide their bruises - the bridegroom had driven them from their home in France to Geneva at high speed causing a collision so that they had all ended up in a muddy beetroot field - and ended with a wild summer evening divorce garden party complete with a jazz band, the planting of a tree, a firework display and a midnight balloon release. Vogue: 'Oh, to have had Valerie Barnes' life!'
When an independent US businesswoman works with an African from a royal family, the two of them overcome their cultural differences and embrace the universal language of love.
